GEOGRAPHY P3 - CHELMSFORD FIELDWORK

Question studied

To what extent can Chelmsford City centre be considered economically successful

Description and suitability of Chelmsford

Chelmsford is fitting as it is a large city, so a larger sample size and the city centre is an economic hotspot with many people of different backgrounds & ages available to survey (representative of population). Accessible data collection as there are no regulations and it's public land.

Methods used

Land use survey

Pedestrian count

Questionnaire

Environmental Quality Survey

Noise count

Land use survey method

Walk along Bond Street & High Street and note the type of buildings (chain, independent, public/consumer services)

Advantages of land use method

Quick, easy, cheap

Shows how land is used

Can compare with previous land use models

Not intrusive

Quantitative

Considered all shops

Disadvantages of land use method

Hard to distinguish where a shop starts/ends if they are large

Hard to categorise (can be two)

No economic explanation for vacancy (bankrupt vs relocation)

Bond St. private property ∴ had to do discretely & quickly so less accurate

Not best method to determine which is economically successful (consumer services and retail are both economically successful).

Can't tell success of each shop - consumer spending (better to measure how many people go into a shop).

Land use conclusions

Pie chart: Bond Street had more chain store retail (60% low-order and 20% high order), and less consumer services (food and non-food), whilst High Street is more mixed (33% retail low order)

For both, high order is roughly 3x low order

Land use presentation advantages

Shows proportion of different land uses

Side-by-side is easy to compare

Using colours makes it visual

Easy to construct

Used average of class data

Land use presentation disadvantages

Doesn't show precise values.

Isn't a comparative pie chart (better as it refers to size refers to number of shops).

Some sectors too small for label.

Pedestrian count method

Count number of pedestrian passing a point in a time frame

Pedestrian count method advantages

Easy, cheap

Not intrusive

Quantitative ∴ easy to present & compare

Pedestrian count method disadvantages

Affected by time, day of week, weather & seasons so must repeat

May mis-count people

Many locations needed

Affected by construction works at start of High Street

For High Street we counted people going up and down, for Bond Street, only people entering - not equal.

Judgement sampling for choosing location- may not representative

Pedestrian count conclusions

Proportional symbol map: High Street got higher counts (52 by Superdrug walking up/down, compared to 22 going into Bond Street)

Pedestrian count presentation advantages

Visual & easy to interpret on a map

Pedestrian count presentation disadvantages

Scale must be accurate - hard to work out exact values.

Does not show exact values.

We had 2 circles at Superdrug (people entering BS and going up and down HS by Superdrug) - very hard to tell which is which.

Questionnaire method

Asked questions on their opinions of Chelmsford

Questionnaire advantages

Diversity available.

Easy way to collect opinions from a large audience.

Relatively quick & cheap

Qualitative ∴ harder to present & compare

Questionnaire disadvantages

Need to repeat.

Low response rate and is intrusive.

Opportunity sampling - may not representative - should use systematic/random (harder to sample)

Hard to represent qualitative data

May lie for sensitive topics

Couldn't interview people on Bond St.

Questionnaire conclusions

Modal value for how often visiting Chelmsford city centre is weekly. Most people shop in Bond Street more than they shop in High Street. Bond Street has 70% positive descriptive words, and High Street only has 50%. 60% of respondents are economically active so higher disposable income, so more likely to spend in Chelmsford ⇒ higher profits.

Environmental Quality Survey method

Rank quality of urban environment across different locations to see how appealing it is to visitors

Environmental Quality Survey advantages

Easy and quick

Indicator of human sustainable development

Can conduct at any location & compare

Quantitative ∴ easy to present & compare

Environmental Quality Survey disadvantages

Very subjective & hard to differentiate between ranks

We subconsciously tend to pick middle ranks

Judgement sampling for choosing location - may not representative

Environmental Quality Survey conclusions

Radar graph with categories: buildings, pavements, graffiti, litter, green spaces, pollution, street furniture. Both HS and BS did equally bad in green spaces, equally good in pollution and graffiti but BS did better in pavements, buildings, street furniture, so it is more successful. Adding up, High Street (13) did worse than Bond Street (9).

High Street has more variation, but BS is more consistent.

Environmental Quality Survey presentation advs/disadvs

+ Easy to see trends and compare

+ Multiple variables presented visually

- Overlaps between data points means that it is hard to interpret one data set on its own.

Noise count method

Use phone to measure average noise levels for 1 min

Noise count method advantages

Shows how busy the area is

Numerical & not subjective

Easy to carry out

Quantitative ∴ easy to present & compare

BS levels includes car park noises of people coming into BS

Noise count method disadvantages

Using phone's mic is inaccurate

Hard to do without influencing levels yourself

Affected by other non-pedestrian noise (construction, birds)

Affected by time, day of week, weather & seasons so must repeat

Bond Street only has one data point (Wed), which may not be representative.

All data taken within the same week/season

Only 2 sites in Bond Street vs 5 for HS -chosen via. Judgement sampling - may not representative

Noise count conclusions

Dispersion graph with x: location, y: Noise levels, and different points: Wednesday AM, Monday PM, Monday midday, and mean of the three for each site. Noise was same across BS and HS (both av. of 63dB on Wed), so both are as economically successfully as each other

Noise count presentation advantages

You can easily see spread from mean decibel reading

Can see lowest and highest easily

Can compare lots of datasets

Anomalies shown easily

Noise count presentation disadvantages

Only looked at mean of Wednesday morning, Monday afternoon & midday - may have been variations in the mean, useful to present with error bars to plot range/uncertainty