AQA GCSE Geography Fieldwork: Cardiff Bay

Title of human fieldwork enquiry:

•  How successful has the regeneration of Cardiff Bay been?

Explain why your topic was suitable for geographical enquiry.

• The questions/investigation was appropriate because it is clearly geographical, and was small scale so data could be collected in one day.

Outline the geographical theory/concept underpinning the enquiry.

• Geographical theory of urban regeneration: predicts that regenerated areas will attract more: people, tourists, business, investment, employment and improves local environment. Theory predicts that regeneration will improve the economic, social and environmental characteristics of an area – “live, work and play”.

Outline appropriate sources of primary data which you collected.

• EQA

• Pedestrian Count

• Photos

Outline appropriate sources of secondary data which you used.

• Old photos

• Census data 

Why was your chosen location appropriate for carrying out your fieldwork investigation?

• The location is an example of urban regeneration, it is small scale so data could be collected in one day and the investigation was generally low risk with the use of a risk assessment. 

List some potential risks you faced and explain how you tried to reduce these risks.

• Stayed in groups of 3 to reduce the risk of stranger danger and/or getting lost, wore sensible clothing e.g. walking shoes to reduce the risk of slips and trips

• Making sure that we crossed roads at pedestrian crossings to reduce the risk of being hit by a car

Outline how you identified and selected appropriate data with respect to the aims of your investigation.

• EQA - measured the EQA along 8 sites starting at the regenerated area of Mermaid Quay. If the EQA scores are high, the environment is good quality and we can assume that urban regeneration has been successful

• Pedestrian count - measured at 25 sites, some regenerated and some not. If the areas which have been regenerated have a higher pedestrian count then this means urban regeneration has been successful as more people are visiting/living/working in the area.

How did you deploy different sampling methods to help measure and record data?

• EPQ - Systematic (8 sites, every 100m starting from Mermaid Quay) to see whether the environmental quality stayed consistent the further you move from the regenerated area

• Pedestrian count - stratified to make sure areas which had been regenerated were chosen as well as those which hadn’t been regenerated to allow comparison

Describe your data collection methods.

EPQ: We walked around Cardiff Bay, from near Bute Dry Dock to Havannah Street. Each time we saw a building which fit the 8 land use categories we had defined beforehand (residential, industrial, commercial, entertainment, public building, open space, transport, services) we placed a tally next to it in our pre-drawn table. We then totalled up the values for each land use category.

Pedestrian Count: We sampled 19 sites in Cardiff Bay, noting down an Environmental Quality Assessment (EQA) score and a pedestrian count. We gave each site a score between 1 and 5 against 12 different metrics (covering attributes such as open space, litter and vandalism). 1 was the most negative score, with 5 being the most positive. As such, each site received a score between 12 and 60. The closer to 60 a site received the better the environmental quality. At each site, a pedestrian count was also carried out. For two minutes, each pedestrian who walked past - in both directions - was counted on a click counter and then noted down.

Explain how your methods ensured accurate and reliable data was collected.

• EQA: Sampling 8 sites to look at a larger area and increase reliability.

• Decided the initial score as a group to reduce subjectivity.

• Pedestrian count: Repeating each count to increase reliability. 

• Taking an average of the repeats to increase accuracy.

Describe, explain and justify your presentation methods.

• EQA - Proportional circles using GIS (plotted onto a map). This was appropriate because:

  • It is visually effective and uses clear symbols: the larger the circle the greater the EQA score and vice versa

  • Allows us to show the location on the map so that we could compare data from different sites within Cardiff Bay

  • Map shows lots of data in a succinct way

  • Easy to identify an overall pattern and anomalies

• Pedestrian Count - bar chart using Excel. This was appropriate because:

  • It is visually effective as you can easily see where footfall count was highest and lowest

  • Excel increased the accuracy of results by getting rid of human error

  • Anomalies were easily identifiable

Give examples of where you adapted your presentation methods.

• EPQ Issues? The key groups the EQA scores as a range so we cannot match up exact scores to the location without looking back to the data table.

• Solutions? Add overall scores onto the circles 

• Pedestrian Count Issues? Location of the sites not shown so have to refer back to the data table so it is difficult to make quick judgements about success of various sites as opposed to overall comment.

• Solutions? Use GIS to locate the data onto a map of Cardiff Bay

Provide some description, analysis and explanation of your results.

• EQA - The largest circle which was a score of +53 was located next to Mermaid Quay which was a major part of the regeneration. This suggests that regeneration has been very successful as the quality of the environment has clearly been improved by the regeneration project to create a nice environment for people to live, work and play. Lower scores were further from the centre of regeneration/the bay e.g. score 27 and 30 along Bute Street. This suggests that regeneration has been successful to some extent as areas further from the regeneration are not places that people want to live, work and play. It does highlight that not all local people will benefit from the regeneration which limits the overall success.

• Pedestrian Count - Highest count of 120 was outside the Millennium Centre, 113 was outside the National Assembly. Lowest count was further from the bay and the regenerated areas e.g. 6 by the Havannah Street Car Park. This suggests that regeneration has been successful as more people are visiting the regenerated areas and therefore Cardiff Bay has become an attractive area for people to live, work and play.

Outline your use of appropriate statistical techniques (only EQA).

• EQA: We used the Spearman’s Rank test to assess whether the environmental quality of an area is related to the pedestrian count in that area. The test gave us an r_s value of 0.8 which shows a positive correlation. This shows that as environmental quality increases, so does the pedestrian count. This shows that regeneration has been very successful because efforts to improve the environment have encouraged more people to visit the regenerated areas to ‘live, work and play’.

Identify anomalies in your fieldwork data.

• EQA: There was a higher than expected EQA score of 40 at site 8 by the housing estate which is the furthest location from Mermaid Quay. This anomaly suggests that regeneration in this area has been successful to some extent, however, although the environment here was better, it was a residential area which may explain why the environment was of a higher quality. It also still scored 13 less than the Mermaid Quay area.

• Pedestrian Count: There was an abnormally low pedestrian count of 32 people outside the harbour front restaurants in the centre of the regenerated areas. This anomaly suggests that regeneration has not been very successful however can be explained by the fact that we conducted our counts during lunchtime, so less people were walking outside as they may have been inside eating lunch. 

Outline your evidenced conclusions with respect to the original aims of the enquiry.

• The results of the pedestrian footfall count show that the well-managed areas tend to have the highest footfall, and the footfall size decreases as you move away from these developed areas. The highest footfall was 120 outside of the Millenium Centre, followed by 113 outside of the National Assembly. Havannah Car Park was an area not regenerated and had a low footfall of 6. This suggests that urban regeneration has been successful because more people are visiting the regenerated areas and therefore Cardiff Bay has become an attractive area for people to live, work, and play. There was an abnormally low pedestrian count of 32 people outside the harbour-front restaurants in the centre of the regenerated areas. This anomaly would suggest that urban regeneration has not been very successful, however it can be explained by the fact that we conducted our counts around lunch time when most people would have likely been sat down having lunch. Overall, the areas with the highest footfall are those which have been regenerated, and the areas with low footfalls move away from the regenerated centre. This proves that urban regeneration has been successful as more people go to the regenerated areas as it’s become a place where they can live, work, and play.

• The results of the bipolar EQA survey show us that the well-managed and regenerated areas tend to have the higher EQA scores For example, the largest circle on our cartographic map had a score of 53 and was located near the Mermaid Quay on the waterfront which was a large part of the regeneration project. This shows that urban regeneration has been very successful as the quality of the environment has clearly been improved by the regeneration project to create a nice environment for people to live, work and play. Lower scores were further from the centre of regeneration —  for example a score of 27 and 30 walking up Bute Street. This shows that as you move further from the areas of regeneration that environmental quality worsens. An anomaly would be quite a high score of 40 at the final site. This could be due to the fact that it was a residential area and therefore residents take pride in that area and are more likely to look after the environment. Overall, the areas with the highest EQA were located around the centre of regeneration, which proves that urban regeneration has been successful to some extent. However, the results do highlight that not all areas and local people have benefitted from the regeneration.

• In conclusion, our results prove that urban regeneration  has successfully provided an area for people in Cardiff to live, work, and play by improving the environment which has attracted more people to come to the area. 

To what extent are the conclusions you have drawn reliable?

• We conducted an Environmental Quality Assessment of 8 sites within the area of Cardiff Bay that has been subject to urban regeneration.  The highest EQA scores were closest to the main sites of regeneration, for example a score of 53 was recorded at Mermaid Quay. The lowest EQA scores were further from the centre, for example a score of 27 was recorded along Bute Street. You could however argue that these results were not 100% reliable. Firstly, we only collected data along 8 sites which is a small sample size and therefore not representative. The EQA scores are very subjective and are dependent upon the person rating the factors and therefore this reduces the reliability of our conclusions to some extent.

• The highest pedestrian count of 120 people was outside the Millennium Centre and 113 was counted outside the National Assembly. The lower counts were further from the bay and the regenerated areas for example 6 by the Havannah Street Car Park. These results prove that urban regeneration has clearly been very successful at attracting more people into the main areas of Cardiff Bay to ‘live, work and play’. This helps us to reliably answer our key question as the sample size of 25 sites was large and so representative of the whole area. However, there was a degree of human error when doing the footfall count as some people could have been counted twice or even missed and this reduces the reliability of our conclusions to a small extent. We also only collected data on one day which again could impact the reliability of our conclusions.

• Although the results help to show that the regeneration of Cardiff Bay has been successful, you can argue that they may not be representative and may include some inaccuracies which mean my conclusions may not be 100% reliable.

Identify some limitations of your data collection methods.

• EQA: Subjective

• Only collected data at one time of day / only collected data once (weekday around lunchtime)

• Error in calculating the score

  • The scores for all 8 sites could be inaccurate as they were completely subjective which could over/underestimate the overall success of regeneration. However, we made sure that one person in each group ranked the same area of the survey to increase consistency and therefore reliability.

• Pedestrian Count:

• Human error with timing – often just over 5 minutes

• Human error with counting – people missed or counted twice

• Only done on one day at one time – footfall would change

  • The pedestrian count of 120 people outside the Millennium Centre could be inaccurate and therefore over/under estimate the success of urban regeneration. However, we conducted the counts at 25 sites and this is representative enough to remove anomalies.

With respect to your investigation, what other data might you have liked to collect?

• We could have conducted a traffic count to see if more vehicles have been attracted to the areas in Cardiff Bay that have been regenerated. 

• We could have completed a questionnaire with local people/businesses to see their opinion of the regeneration 

• We could have completed a land use survey to see if there are a mixture of land uses e.g. shops, residential areas, restaurants.