The last three columns were used to fill in any additional comments such as the number of storeys, and the land use of upper storeys.
I commented on whether each house had double glazing, because that was common within the street, and I also commented on whether the houses had villa or bay windows, also the amount of storeys was also used. This sheet is attached overleaf.
There was also one more column to add any additional comments about each building along side Lea Street and round the corner onto Comberton Hill. There was a change of land use there, because it was a change from a residential area to shops and a range of supermarkets and other services.
I predict that as you move towards the centre of the CBD, the average size of frontages will increase because there will be huge chain stores and department stores as you go towards the CBD.
The Frontages was measured in the amount of paces, at each of the ten surveys, I had to measure by pacing out the frontage of the 10 closest properties. I then recorded the results in a table. I had some problems when measuring the frontages of buildings because on this investigation we had to work with partners so that the data could be collected quickly and not to waste that much time.
My partner Manbir, was considerably taller than me so that meant that his paces were longer strides than mine, which would give him different results and would not give us accurate results.
Also, another problem with the frontages were when we had to measure corner sites, because it was difficult to measure them and could potentially give me inaccurate results shown on my transect route (attached in my data presentation). Another reason why the frontages wasn't accurate because it was tiring which affected the stride towards the end and start of the field trip. The weather was also dull which might has affected the moral of the students which then therefore affected the results. An improvement to this method could be using a metre wheel, which gives you a more accurate result quicker. There would be no physical effort required when using the metre wheel, other than pushing it along.
As we got closer to the CBD, instead of describing the shop quality, I had to describe the environmental quality, because it is known that the closer you get to the CBD the more shops, offices and in general more buildings, also street cleanliness will improve. This means that if we had carried on with analysing the shop quality, the amount of data would be large; this is why the description changed to environmental quality. This was shown in my results.
As we go further west of Kidderminster, towards the CBD, we came across a ring Road, it is here we carry on using the environmental quality and frontages sheet, but this time we had to include building details as we walk down Oxford street, still keeping to the left hand side of the road getting closer and closer to the CBD. I know this because, the height of the buildings was starting to increase, and as in my prediction the frontages of each building was decreasing in width, this is because as described by a typical CBD, there is more competition of land which can potentially produce smaller shops, because we all know the Central Business District is infamous for attracting tourists, business people and the public it self.
The evidence to show this was that on Oxford street, the size of the frontages were an average of 8 paces with ‘ Thursfield Solicitors’ as an example shop, and on vicar street (the last street leading to the heart of the CBD) the paces were on an average of 5 and ‘The Orange Shop’. This shows us that the quality increases while the frontages decreases.
As the group eventually reached the CBD, we then had to analyse the amount of pedestrians in comparison from the CBD going back towards Lea Street. A time limit of 5 minutes per point was decided between both me an my partner, this was because we had to evenly use the same amount of time for each transect route, otherwise the investigation would not be fair.
The number of pedestrians was recorded on the pedestrian count sheet. On the sheet we recorded the number of men, women, and under 16 year olds visible and then the total number of pedestrians, this was done at 10 different transects. Each individual was recorded as tally, and after five minutes the timer was stopped and the tally was then totalled until all 10 transects were completed.
There were not that many problems that my pair and me encountered when doing the pedestrian count, my opinion is that it was the most effortless task to follow.
The only problem could have happened near the end of the pedestrian count was that near to transect E2, there is a school opposite it, this could of meant that more children would of became a factor if the school was to finish while we were conducting our experiment. Fortunately, this was not a problem for my partner, and me because thankfully the school had not ended in time when we were counting the pedestrians
The weather, as I have mentioned before was dull and it may have affected my results for the pedestrian count also, because the gloomy weather may have restricted pedestrians to their homes, forcing them not to go out. I will talk about this theory in-depth when analysing the results.
Data Presentation and Analysis
The hypothesis in my introduction were used to collect my data and arrange them into graphs an chart in order to state that basically, “Kidderminster has the features of a typical CBD”. In order to justify this statement, graphical data will need to be presented. In my methodology, the following tasks were investigated so that there was hard evidence that Kidderminster does have some features of a CBD:
- The Frontage measurement when going towards the CBD
- The Environmental quality, which includes surrounding shops and offices as you travel towards the CBD
- The amount of pedestrians present at each transect route for a limited time, and how the it changes
- The different land use through out the Kidderminster investigation
- Does Kidderminster follow the Burgess Model, Hoyt model, Core an frame model or neither of these land use classifications
I will firstly look at the pedestrian count, the table below shows the data collected an from the pedestrian count, I have produced my own pedestrian count table which is attached, but I thought that if I used my original pedestrian table an used it along side the graph that I am going to use, it would be more affective at portraying the differences in pedestrians at different transect points.
Figure 1
KEY:
= North
Transect
= East
Transect
Figure 1 shows us the variation in pedestrians from an urban area, to a CBD. The prediction that as you move closer to the CBD, the greater the amount of pedestrians there will be. This is still implied in the table of results however, the circled marks I made on the chart indicate the anomalous results, and this will be show more clearly in the graphs below.
Figure 2
The graph above indicates that the closer you are to the C.B.D the greater the population density. This is what I hypothesised. Pedestrians do increase, but fluctuation does occur.
The reason why the pedestrian count would rise when travelling towards the CBD, would be because of the wide variety of shops in which the public could do shopping. Offices are located in Kidderminster’s CBD, this means that business executives or other forms of office workers travel to the CBD because of their career.
Unusual results occurred at transects 8 and 9. There are various ways of why this could of happened, which are listed below.
- At transect point 8, there could have been a sale at a department store, because transect 8 is at the beginning of the CBD shall we say, because it is on Vicar Street, where the Town Hall is. There are many famous shops included on Vicar Street including The Orange Shop, Nationwide and WHSmiths etc.
- The weather, day of the week, date and time was recorded because any of these may have affected the survey. For example, the weather could affect the survey because if it were dry then there would possibly be more people outside than if it were raining. This is my theory, because in my opinion, I believe that pedestrians enjoy spending time outdoors if the climate is good. The day of the week could affect the survey because there would come into town at certain times of the year, for example at Christmas or at holiday be a different number of people in town on weekdays than at weekends. The date was important, as there may be more people who would seasons. The time of day could affect numbers of people if it was half day for example. Also the closing and opening times of shops must be taken into consideration.
- There could have been people near the CBD waiting, or travelling on important routes, for example, people who are waiting for a bus at the buss stop. This could mean that high pedestrian densities were found in areas where the other predictions of Central Business District properties weren't necessarily true. For example there may be poor shopping quality and a high pedestrian count. In this aspect, the survey is flawed, but not many surveys are perfect. As so many points were done, one or two anomalies shouldn't matter too much to the overall theory that Kidderminster has the features of a CBD.
- At transect point 8, there are only three under 16’s which are noted, this could have been a human error, or another reason might be that most children might have been in school, but this does not suggest the reason why there are 21 under 16’s which are at point 9 on the graph shown in figure 2.
Figure 3
If I compare my results to the North Transects results I can make sum conclusions. Seen as though the students analysing the North transect points had overall more pedestrians in their survey could be more reliable than the East transects results, because the students doing the Northern transect might have stayed at each transect point for longer and therefore more reliability has gone into their results. However, in the East transect, there might have been less pedestrians rooming the streets or going to work, or any other. This could mean that in some transect points there would be less pedestrians in others, e.g., figure 2 at Transect point 8.
Neither less, the two graphs (figure 2 and 3) prove that my prediction is coming into action, because the number of pedestrians does increase as you go towards the CBD.
In my Introduction I made some predictions to state that Kidderminster has the features of a CBD. One of my hypotheses was that, “The Shop and Environmental quality will increase, as you get closer to the CBD”. This is because a CBD has the most shops, offices, entertainment and culture. The area has a lot of money to be spent on improving pedestrian activity.
Figure 4
Figure 4 above shows the shop quality from transect 1 to 10. Each point on the graph has a score out of 15 for its shop quality, for example E8 has a score of 9 out of 15, which is above average. The graph will help me to determine whether the shop quality increases, the further you move into the CBD, this will also assist me to conclude whether my prediction was right about the CBD in Kidderminster.
The graph pattern shows that the closer you get to the CBD the higher the quality building score. This is what I predicted earlier on. Unusual results occurred at transect 1 where you would expect to find a lower shop quality because it is further away from the CBD although shop quality is higher is obviously higher than transect 2 and 3. The reason for this could be that the land at transect 1 is in the suburbs and the buildings may be of a better quality because of urban expansion has taken place.
At point 8 in the graph, there is a downfall in quality, this may be because, and there would have been a derelict shop, in which there was next to the Orange Shop. The reason for the derelict building may be because, the competition for land is so fierce that another company has either taken the business of that shop away or another company has brought the shop and is refurbishing the store. This agrees with the Core and Frame diagram, in which the frame represents the smaller shops tend to cluster together to take advantage of competition.
As I mentioned before, when I was analyzing the pedestrian count results, I said that the reason for the pedestrians to increase when going closer to the CBD was because of the “wide variety of shops in which the public could do shopping”. To see if this theory is true, I will compare both pedestrian count and the shop quality in order to justify the statement.
Figure 5
Figure 6
If you study both figure 5 and figure 6, you can see that the shop quality in Kidderminster may or may not affect the amount of pedestrians in that particular area. Unfortunately my hypothesis was wrong in which was “The reason why the pedestrian count would rise when traveling towards the CBD, would be because of the wide variety of shops in which the public could do shopping”.
This is not the case if we look at transect point E2 on figure 5, we can see that as the shop quality was 0 (0 = no shops) out of 15, the amount of pedestrians was 14.
Also at transect point E8 on figure6, we can see that the amount of pedestrians has increased dramatically, but the shop quality is 9 out of 15, whereas the next transect point (E9) has a shop quality of 13 out of 15, but only attracts 94 pedestrians.
I can now conclude that Shop quality is not a major factor in affecting pedestrian numbers. The shop quality scores do rise as the further you go into the CBD, so do the pedestrian numbers, but are not affected by the other.
Figure 7
Figure 7 shown above indicates and supports my prediction in saying that, “The Shop and Environmental quality will increase, as you get closer to the CBD.”
The reason why the environmental quality increases is because, the CBD is a well looked after area; there are various different department and chain stores situated inside the domains of the CBD such as “British Home Stores”. Now because this store is famous for the various amounts of products it has, if there is litter or graffiti near or next to the store, this will be a push factor towards the pedestrians and this in tern will be a loss of profits for the store itself.
Also, the CBD has maximum security so that if any vandals or jus people whom through litter on the ground, they will be caught on CCTV. In Kidderminster, when we reached the CBD there were numerous amount of police officers on patrol to make sure everything is running “smoothly” inside the CBD.
Figure 7 suggests a high environmental quality throughout, with a steady but gradual increase. My only concern is at transect point E7, where the environmental quality has decreased. I believe this is because, point E7 is located at the end of Oxford Street where there are many small, privately owned businesses, such as newsagents, cafés and hairdressing Salon’s. E7 could be low on environmental quality because their could be a lack of rubbish bins in which therefore pedestrians could easily and have no other choice but to throw their waste on the ground, without considering the environment.
My prediction does not entirely support the graph on figure 7, because at transect point E1 and E2 the environmental quality is on the increase, this is because that is where Lea Street is located and therefore a residential area. However, the closer to get to the CBD, you reach some shops that are of local quality and this is where the environmental quality decreases steadily until transect point E8.
Neither less, the environmental quality does increase as you travel towards the Central Business District.
Figure 8
This graph above shows us that the traffic increases as you go towards the CBD; I know this because at point E8, E9 and E10, the score for the survey in 5 out of 5, this may be because there are pedestrians shopping at different shops.
At transect point E6 and E7, the pedestrians safety is surprisingly low, this is because there is the last road before the CBD, and it must be busy throughout the day.
The closer you get to the C.B.D the greater the traffic/pedestrian segregation. This is shown in the graph above this is what I expected as the closer you get to the town centre the greater the population density (as shown in the population density graph) and the smaller the roads resulting in traffic congestion
Figure 9
Figure 10
The two pictures suggest the major differences throughout my investigation in Kidderminster, because when we started off in the residential Zone of Lea Street, the quality was very basic and sometimes, unattractive to look at. However, as I gradually made my way to the CBD I could then begin to see that the land use had changed and the area had become more pedestrianised
The land usage when analysing Lea Street was also noted and the data representation of the actual land usage on that street is shown overleaf, in which each building on Lea Street will be classified.
The data shown, gives a summary of the descriptions taken from Lea Street. The data shows the frontages for the buildings and the land use classification type. By studying this piece of data, I can see that the type of land use was residential, because the frontages were virtually the same throughout the street, which shows us that the buildings were built at the same time and are not supposedly potentially larger or smaller than one another. The street was fairly clean, but there were some signs of uncleanness, such as litter and un-kept front gardens.
A Photograph to show a section of land use on Lea Street
Figure 12
From looking at figure 12, we can see that the quality of living in Lea Street is not below average, because the photograph does show that some homes have satellite dishes, which means that they have a broad range of TV channels, also there are also some residents of Lea Street who have double glazing for their windows, which provides minimum heat loss and is also sort to be a luxury item. However, the houses on Lea Street have their disadvantages, because there is no garage space for cars to be securely parked away, and are just parked on the street. There is less room in these houses because of the linear formation, which can be a disadvantage in some ways.
When we reached the end of the street, we come across a specialist shop, which has size 11 frontage, which shows us that the frontages could start to increase beyond the street.
My next analysis is of the land use throughout the Eastern transect, from Oxford Street to the High Street. My aim in this analysis is to see how the land use differs.
Figure 13, which is provided, shows the difference in land use from the start of Oxford Street, up until High Street. From the data given, I used the “Land Use Classification” sheet as a key for each building and its classification.
If we start at Oxford Street, which is just outside the main core of the CBD, we see that there are plenty of shops and a range of other services, such as café, hairdresser, convenience shop etc. This is because we are approaching the CBD and therefore, there must be services to the public, this also supports my prediction in that there will be a range of different shops.
As we go passed Oxford Street onto Vicar Street, we see that the buildings are mainly shops providing a service to the public. At the start of Vicar Street, we firstly meet a Town Hall, now this suggests that we have reached the CBD, because not only that, but the road is now pedestrianised and there are more on the pavements, and on the actual roads leading up to High Street. There are Specialist shops that provide expensive goods to the public, such as T.H. Baker for example; the total atmosphere is rather busy and exciting. Near to the end of Vicar Street, we can see on the land use data map, that there are two shops that are under “Change” in the classification.
This is because that the shops are under construction to produce a new building, probably for a major chain store, because as I said before; there is high competition for land in the CBD, and this therefore makes the land use more expensive which means that high Multi-chain companies would be in position for these slots in the CBD.
As we then reach the High Street, we see that the buildings are mainly Department/ variety/ major chain stores. The quality of the surrounding area is at its utmost highest and the frontages get smaller, as the competition for land increases.
Data Interpretation
From the graphs, photographs, tables and diagrams, I can obtain the following overall results:
- The number of pedestrians does increase as you go towards the CBD
- The shop quality scores do rise, the further you go into the CBD
- The environmental quality does increase as you travel towards the CBD
- The closer you get to the C.B.D the greater the traffic/pedestrian segregation.
- The quality of land usage increases, the further you get to the CBD.
These results are proof to the fact that “Kidderminster does have the typical features of a CBD”. I have carried out many tests in which this theory has been proven correct.
Through the analysis of each graph and the comparison between the Northern transect’s results for the Pedestrian Count, it was made clear that the amount of pedestrians does increase the further you reach the CBD. This was the same result for the North Transect route also.
In deciding whether the Shop quality increased, I used a scatter graph to view the data. I also compared the results with the results of the pedestrian count in the eastern transect. I did this because I believed that as the pedestrian count increased, the shop quality also increased, however this was not the case because my theory was proven wrong. However, the overall shop quality did increase.
The same was proven for environmental quality, because there was a gradual increase, this is not entirely shown, because at Lea Street, the overall quality was good, but then the environmental quality went on a slope, but then revived it self and there was a steep increase in the graph on page 13. To improve on this result, I would have to take more readings of the environmental quality and observe it better.
There was a dense population in the “heart” of the CBD, which was also agreed with the textbook definition and my own hypothesis. This is because, the CBD basically attracts people far and wide to shop, work, and relax in that particular district. On the graph (Figure 8) on page 14, it shows an unusual pattern in the traffic/pedestrian segregation, this could have been because; it is unpredictable to account whether pedestrian would be at a certain point in time.
The last results I acquired from my data presentation were the land usage. This was a broad result, in which the land was used for the same things at different points, for example an newsagents can be located at transect point 4 and transect point 9. My overall result was that the main land usage for the CBD was of major, well-known stores such as, W.H. Smiths, All Sports, and The Orange Shop etc.
There was point about Kidderminster that I came across and that should be notified, one is that Kidderminster is a fairly large town, and in order for it to be a typical CBD it should have high rise buildings, this may be because Kidderminster is not a big enough town to have high rise buildings, because it would use valuable land, this is a disadvantage for Kidderminster not being a city.
Evaluation
In hindsight, I believe that my fieldwork investigation was a success, because I was able to prove my hypotheses by producing results in the form of graphs and tables so that the data is easily legible.
However, not everything went so smoothly when carrying out the investigation, also there are many improvements that can be made to the investigation, to make it even more reliable, as I will explain.
My first problem I encountered was when dealing with the frontages measurements. This was because the results of the frontages were basically unreliable, because my partner had a considerably taller height to me, so the length of each building would be shorter to my partner because he would have had longer strides.
A way to improve on this method of frontages is to use a metre wheel, because this is easy to use and is an effective way of recording the frontage of each building, without having to take strides each time.
The reliability of data is not accurate, because on the Eastern Transect route, I never saw any factories of work, this does not mean that there are no factories in Kidderminster. It just means that the route was not well thought out, because we have to see the whole surroundings of the CBD, in order to make valid conclusions and evaluations about whether Kidderminster has the features of a typical CBD.
The weather played an important part in this investigation, because when carrying out the Pedestrian count survey, the weather may have influenced the pedestrians to return home, or to find shelter in doors. The atmosphere was rather dull when doing the count, which could of made people to stay indoors. Also, “Under 16’s” had to be included in the count, but the investigation was carried out on a school day, which meant that most under 16’s would be in school.
To improve this part of the investigation, the pedestrian count should be carried out on the weekend, when no people are restricted to schools, or other institutes. This survey, and the entire investigation can also be repeated on a separate day to compare the results, and this can also give more stability to the overall results of the pedestrian count.
Another problem was the environmental and shop quality, because this was purely measured by my own opinion of what I could see, and not by using hard evidence. I did have an anomalous result in Figure 5, in which the shop quality did not following the natural trend of the table. To improve upon this method, a range of people could pass their judgement to whether the environmental quality and shop quality scores high or low. A collective view can produce more accurate results, but my results according to my graph, proved my prediction correct overall.
When recording the details for each building along the left hand side for Lea Street, I had to fill in a range of details for the land type, quality and frontages. However, there was also another box in which you could put in any addition comments about each building. This was also un-reliable, because it was not specific, and the comments could include details such as age of the building, whether it had double-glazing or not, name of the building etc. Some of these choices are sufficient enough to use, such as double glazing for quality, however the choices are unlimited and some can be used purely opinion based, such as how old the building looks.
If I compare Kidderminster to Birmingham, I can see that they both differ greatly, because firstly Birmingham is a well-established city, whereas Kidderminster is a town. In Birmingham, the CBD has high-rise buildings, chain and department stores, office blocks and banks, tourist attractions such as the newly built Bull Ring.
This in comparison to Kidderminster is a complete and fully-fledged CBD, because it meets all the requirements from textbook definitions, and to my hypotheses.
Kidderminster relates to my hypotheses but because Kidderminster isn’t apart of the West Midlands Conurbation, it can’t be compared to a city such as Birmingham, because it has a great CBD.
The investigation in Kidderminster went very well in my opinion, but in some cases improvements could be made to achieve more accurate and reliable results. The graphs that were plotted off the results show trends in surveys such as the pedestrian counts in which it increases. Kidderminster met most of my predictions and it would be safe to say that Kidderminster does have the features of a typical CBD.
Bibliography
-
The Kidderminster maps were used from “Dorling Kindersley: World Atlas” and search Kidderminster map
-
The Burgess and Hoyt Models were taken from the web site
- Other sources of information such as information about the Burgess Model and the Hoyt Model were used from the following textbooks, Understanding GCSE Geography and Complete Geography by Chapman.
- To create the graphs and tables, I had to use Microsoft Excel to measure and accurately produce these pieces of information
- The photographs of Kidderminster were used from Mr Phillips (Geography teacher) who provided the photographs.