Human Fieldwork - Nine Elms Flashcards
What was the aim of our fieldwork?
To investigate the redevelopment of Nine Elms
What was our research question?
What are the impacts of reurbanisation in Nine Elms?
What variables did we sample? [4]
- Land Use
- Transport
- Building Quality
- Environmental Quality
- Demographics
What was our hypothesis?
Nine Elms does not conform to the definition of a CBD
What type of sampling did we use?
Systematic
How did we measure our data?
- Environmental Quality: Done by a survey
- Land Use: Done by RICEPOTS Land Use Survey
- Transport: Done by counting the amount of vehicles passing a certain point in a space of time
- Building characteristics: Counting floor number, estimating age and quality
- Demographics: Done by a survey
How did we present our data?
- Environmental Quality: Displayed bar chart
- Land Use: Pie chart
- Demographics: Pie and Bar chart
- Building Characteristics: Displayed bar chart, and line combined with bar chart
What were our conclusions with each variable?
- Environmental Quality:
- Land Use: Pie chart
- Demographics: Pie and Bar chart
- Building Characteristics: Displayed bar chart, and line combined with bar chart
What was our conclusion about transport and environmental quality with regards to the hypothesis?
- Transport and environmental quality: Somewhat disagreed with hypothesis, as the transport had been improved, with a large number of buses, tube, and rail stations, but also because of it’s extension of the northern line.
- However, supported the hypothesis as some areas, particularly in the Patmore Estate, proved to have too little traffic to be considered a CBD as they were not very busy.
What was our conclusion about land use with regards to the hypothesis?
It proved massively to disagree with the hypothesis, as over a quarter of land use was residential, which is highly uncharacteristic of a CBD; needs to be dominated by commercial and retail. Over a fifth of land proved to be green space, again showing this as it would therefore not have such a high population density as a CBD.
What was our conclusion about demographics with regards to the hypothesis?
Massively supports the hypothesis; the largest proportion of people asked walked to work and worked from home, showing that it is not a CBD as people otherwise would have had to commute into the area.
What was our conclusion about building characteristics with regards to the hypothesis?
Massively supported the hypothesis, as a majority of the buildings, particularly in the Patmore Estate and the South-Eastern area of Nine Elms, proved to be of poor building quality, which shows a lack of development of a level significant to call a CBD.
Also, most buildings were under 5 floors, which contributed to the idea that few buildings are used commercially, again indicating that it is not a CBD.
The Patmore Estate contained the most proof of this, as the building age there was far older and the floors and building quality were much lower there, further indicating that Nine Elms cannot be called a CBD.
What is the overall conclusion of the hypothesis?
- Nine Elms is definitely not a CBD
- More like a Zone in Transition or a Central Activity Zone
- Has some popular areas like the Embassy and the Oval nearby, so can be a CAZ
What are the key points for evaluation?
- Only went on one day; could have been anomalous, so go on more days for more reliability
- Survey done at a time when most people were at work, so the demographics survey was very skewed
- EQS and Building Characteristic subjective; varies from person to person, so more than 1 person should have judged and take an average
- Visited different sites at different times and so there may be inaccurate readings of traffic and footfall
- Vehicle count hard to do on main roads, so get more than one person counting, or do more than one and take an average
- Didn’t get many surveys as people didn’t want to stop, so there are only a few results, which makes it unreliable.
