Stage One - Planning Stages of the Investigation
What were the three subquestions (and main question?)
To what extent is Chelmsford High Street in Decline?
- Is the environment in decline within the central shopping area?
- Is there a zone of discard within the central shopping area?
- To what extent does Chelmsford provide a unique retail experience
Stage One
Why was Chelmsford selected?
- Accessibility
- Antecedent knowledge
- Access to historical data from Chelmsford County Hall
Stage One
What did the pilot survey conclude?
- EQS points reduced from every 500m systematically to every 100m for greater precision
- Instead of selection of points based on random grid selection, a systematic linear path radiating from the PLVI out was used - theory - Bid-rent - should expect more decline where less investment is
- Removal of leading questions
- Qualitative data reduced to 20% of the questionnaire - favour quantative in order to make graphical presentation easier - objective data
- Scales of 1-5 to offer a 3 as a neither agree nor disagree point
- Quota sampling (50 people) for convenience, stratified by demographic too difficult to guess + rude to ask
- Chewing gum selected based on a 100x100 quadrat rather than paving slabs which were variable in size
Stage One
What else did you do?
- Risk assessment likelihood vs severity
- Aquired equipment - tape measure, quadrat, smartphone (Apps: Decibel10th, iOS compass, Google Maps, camera, voice recorder, google drive and photosynth)
- Data collection forms coordinated online through google drive
- Use of Yahoo weather app to determine the weather within 7 days. 40% chance of precipitation - not too bad.
Stage Two
Justification of zones
- Chewing gum - transect from PLVI outwards would provide clear line to measure fluctuation which could be tied to bid rent
- Bin Mapping - comprehensive mapping given the low numbers and to allow accurate judgements
- EQS - systematic transect offering distance decay
- NEF clone town survey uses nation wide comparison
- questionnaire - rich source of quantative and qualitative data with insight and perceptions otherwise unobtainable
Stage 2
Geographical Context
- bid rent theory - explains the rise of blue chip stores
- Burgess and Hoyt - explains trends further
- Geography Review Vol 25 No 3 2012 - handling census data
- Geography review vol 25 no.3 2012 - regen of liverpool
- Channel 4 Special Report on High Streets - 25,000 closures in 2000-2012
- Peter Scott, geography of retailing - falsified Christaller’s model
Stage 2
transect detail
Linear, from PLVI
- Follows 1km
- Compared to a 1km transect in Basildon, used as a control town
Stage 2
Describe data collection
- Bin Mapping - isoline map - at points where bins were located, a geopin was placed, lat and long.
Chewing gum - systematic transect, quadrat
- Graffiti - photos
- EQS - sketch maps
- Questionnaires - quota,
- Secondary - library
- Tertiary - wikipedia
- Gridlock due to bus crash meant surveying delayed
Stage 3
Questionnaire - composite Bar charts
Des: Various forms of qualitative responses (such as rate 1-5 the vibrancy of Chelmsford) presented on one graph. Dominant bars illustrate dominant trends
Pros: Dominant trends are easily identifiable without compromising the accuracy of the data. Mass presentation
Cons: Can become crowded, especially on smaller maps. Geographical context lost
Stage 3
Catchment Sphere of Influence w/ Proportional icons
Des: An overlay of translucent spheres, indicating 5 mi. delineations, with prop. Silhouettes to indicate catchment
Pros: Visually identifiable, without need for data. Identifies geographical trends through overlay
Cons: lacks numerical analysis, symbol size easy to misinterpret
Stage 3
Transport Pictogram
Des: Different transport modes representing vehicle frequency plotted against one another
Pros: Simplified, maintains numerical data with visual qualities
Cons: Easily confused – the length of one bus requires 5 equivalent walker silhouettes to reach same length. Instead of measuring x-axis value, may be read as more walkers to buses.
stage 3
Questionnaire Speech Bubbles
Des: Qualitative comments from questionnaire displayed in speech bubbles
Pros: Provides means of inputting qualitative data otherwise lost Cons: Speech bubbles alone are dislocated from age, gender, ethnicity and geographical location of the person quoted from. May lack wider context available at the time of study.
Stage 3
NEF Spectrum Bar
Des: A spectrum ranging from 0 (blue) to 50 (red) upon which various towns are placed alongside Chelmsford to give an illustrative account of its position in relation to national patterns
Pros: the vast amount of data from the NEF makes the study far more accurate, as it gives a sense of Chelmsford on a national, sscale.
Cons: The NEF exhibits a bias towards the exemplification of clone towns - not comprehensive. Comparing Chelmsford to other locations doesn’t account for different developmental history
Stage 3
Chewing Gum Distance Decay
Des: The linear transect of data is translated into a line graph detailing the rate of change over distance, in expected negative corr.
Pros: Supports the theory of distance decay, bid-rent and PLVI
Cons: Lack of cartographic detail fails to account for some anomalies
Stage 3
EQS bi-polar
Des: Using a +2 to -2 y-scale, EQS detail was plotted with different coloured lines. Lines consistently above the x axis were more successful than lower ones
Pros: Effectively captured 6 different forms of data on one table. Data not compromised for graphics
Cons: Sheer volume of data made analysis difficult. Fluctuations made determining highest scorer difficult
Stage 3
Land use mapping w/ isoline overlay
Des: a blank OS map was shaded according to colour code, with numbers additionally indicating quality. An isoline identifying bin density was applied for trends
Pros: Isolines illustrated clusters, colours visual
Cons: density of information hard to interpret.
Findings
Questionnaire composite bar charts
When asked about how good the environmental quality of basildon is? 40% rated the environment as good (4) along with 27% rating it as very good(5). and only 7% rating it below average. Chelsmford seems to have aquired better results with 33% rating it as very good (5) supported by a high 37% who rated it as good(4).
Chelmsford had an average rating of 3.9/5 in comparison to Basildon which had 3.7.
Findings
Questionnaire Speech Bubbles
What did people like about Chelmsford-
It provides brilliant pedestrianized links through much of the town centre. For a wheelchair user, they particularly liked Tindall.
The Square of the high street and the area from stone bridge to baddow road as these area contain much of what little historic architecture remains.
What Disliked
Slippery paving, high chelmer ugly, slippery paving, street clutter, paving slabs looking shabby now.
Need more recycling bins that have a closed lid as rubbish can fly out.
Findings
Clown Town Survey
13.9. This indicates that Chelmsford is a clone town. In comparison to Basildon, Chelmsford is more unique as Basildon received a score of 8.9. On the spectrum provided by NEF, Chelmsford is placed far within the clone town Bracket with the next clone town at a score of 23.9 and the closest border town score by Oxford with a score of 28.9.
Findings
Chewing Gum Distance Decay
The graph shows that within Chelmsford, there is a negative correlation and a very high average of 13 pieces of chewing gum in each transect. Basildon on the other hand has a positive correlation and an average gum count of 14. Anomalies to mention: At 400m away from PLVI in both Basildon and Chelmsford, there appears to be anomalies whereby Basildon’s score disrupts the trend by receiving a score of 21 which is 7 pieces higher than the previous count and Chelmsford drops low to a score of 14 then 7 which disrupts the steady descending trend.
Findings
EQS Bi-Polar
Chelmsford’s-The further we moved away from the PLVI, the reduction in Environmental quality. The average results go from an average of approx +0.5 to -0.3. Must acknowledge the generally low rating due to reduced green space and more litter which received a score of -1 and 0 at all locations
Findings
Land use mapping
We found that the occupation of buildings along the high street were more specifically chain stores and high order goods such as WHSmiths, Vodaphone and cahin restaurants such as Mcdonalds.However, there did appear to be an area of unoccupied areas which were approximately 300m away from the PLVI.
Conclusion
“Is the environment in decline within the central shopping centre?”
- The EQS BI-Polar, Chewing Gum Count and Questionnaire composite Bar graph suggests that Chelmsford’s environment is not in decline.
- Although Chelmsford has a high gum count, most specifically near the PLVI, the Gum count of chelmsford 6/10 of our counts showed a count of less than 14 pieces whereas Basildon, our model for rejuvenated area showed 7/10 times the count was above 14 pieces.
When looking at the Bi-Polar graph, the decline in environmental quality the further away from the PLVI does not indicate environmental decline as our comparison with Basildon’s score and our previous knowledge of Bid Rent theory, Core frame model - allows us to accept that environmental decline is inevitable and that we only gave a score of -2.0 in 4 questions, which does not indicate extreme environmental decline that might concern us.
Conclusion
To what extent does Chelmsford provide a unique retail experience?
- Evidence proves that Chelmsford is a clone town and therefore might not be particularly unique in terms of providing a retail experience.(It shared a similar independent/chain shop ratio.
- 40% of people said that they preferred to shop at other occasions most specifically lakeside and stratford. However, looking at the Essex street diversions in 2012 shows increasing efforts by the local councilto keep attracting people to Chelmsford which proved successful as thousands of people turned up for the event.
