plymouth fieldwork

Question 1

Describe the location of my fieldwork

Answer 1

1. Plymouth
2. Located in the county of Devon
3. City in the SW of the UK located on the South coast

Question 2

What are the physical features of Plymouth?

Answer 2

Located on mouth of river Plym and Tamar

Question 3

What are the human features of Plymouth?

Answer 3

• population of 256,384

- population density of 3210 per square km

Question 4

Justify why we went to Plymouth

Answer 4

• large enough to see variations in the city

- mot too big - safe to navigate around

Question 5

What is my enquiry question for Plymouth?

Answer 5

Plymouth changes as you move towards the CBD

Question 6

What are my hypotheses?

Answer 6

1. as you move away from the CBD, the quality of the environment changes
2. as you move away from the CBD, the type of people change
3. As you move away from the CBD, the proportion of land used for commercial and business purposes change

Question 7

What methods did I use?

Answer 7

1. land use survey (land use changes)
2. place check (type of environment changes)
3. pedestrian count (type of people changes)

Question 8

Describe how I carried out the land use survey

Answer 8

1. using a city goad map, each building was categorised into one of 6 categories
   for example 1 = flats and 6 = offices
2. this was carried out along 8 streets in the three areas of Hartley, Mutley and the CBD - the modal value for each street was recorded (stratified sampling used to select 3 areas along a northwards transect to the north of the CBD, within each area, 8 streets/output areas were selected at random to ensure the data was representative of each area)

Question 9

How was accuracy ensured in the landuse survey?

Answer 9

1. groups to ensure everyone agreed on classification
2. 8 streets examined within each of the three locations to ensure more representative results
3. modal value taken to ignore the influence of extremes

Question 10

How were Plymouth results represented?

Answer 10

1. results for pedestrian count were represented using a compound bar chart - location on x axis and no of people on the Y axis
2. useful as it allowed more than one set of data to be plotted on one graph e.g. elderly and families on same graph - making easy for comparison
3. however difficult to draw and need an accurate scale

Question 11

How were results analysed?

Answer 11

1. landuse results analysed by using GIS from GE graphs
2. coded (+/-) place check results into positives and negatives
3. compound bar charts analysed trends

Question 12

What secondary data did I use?

Answer 12

• data from 2011 census compared to primary data collected enabled me to see if primary data was in line with more large scale data allowing to question the validity of data
• Hartley - 32 /39
  Mutley - 22 /39 for most deprived (1 being most deprived)

Question 13

How has technology been used to support my fieldwork?

Answer 13

1. GE graph used to enable the modal landuse value to be overlaid on top a map for Plymouth
2. this enabled one to see the spatial variations visible between the different areas

Question 14

How many positive and negative words did each place have to describe it?

Answer 14

Hartley - 1n 12p
Mutley - 9n
CBD - 8n

Question 15

How many families were there in different areas?

Answer 15

Hartley - 15
Mutley - 15
CBD - 92

Question 16

How many elderly were there in different areas?

Answer 16

Hartley - 16
Mutley - 27
CBD - 250

Question 17

What were my conclusions?

Answer 17

1. landuse does change as you move away from the CBD
   - most common in CBD was retail (4/8 streets had it as their modal value and 2/8 had flats)
   - most common in Mutley was terraced housing (6/8 streets had it as their modal value)
   - most common in Hartley was detached/semi-detached with 8/8
2. this was expected as it was in line with the Burgess Model - land use in CBD is expensive so therefore high density buildings e.g. flats or for commercial use who can afford higher rents - Mutley proximity to CBD means higher land costs so high density housing compared to Hartley where cheaper land prices mean larger houses are built at a lower density thereby taking advantage of the green space

Question 18

What went well?

Answer 18

1. large volume of data collected (8 sub locations)
2. variety of qualitative and quantitative data provided representative results
3. backed up by secondary data
4. bias minimised with groups

Question 19

What didn’t go well?

Answer 19

1. only a Northern transect was studied meaning assumptions made that things change in the same way in other directions
2. Plymouth only visited once in a weekday in January meaning findings may not have been accurate

Question 20

How could I improve my study of Plymouth?

Answer 20

1. visit more regularly at different points of the year to compare results e.g. in July as well as different times of days as this clearly effected our pedestrian count with an abnormal amount of elderly compared to families
2. study different transects e.g. Southwards