Lesson video

Hi there.

My name is Chloe and I'm a geography field studies tutor.

This lesson is called Changing Economic Sectors in Urban and Rural Areas, and it forms part of the places and people in the UK unit of work.

In this lesson, we're going to be looking at how the different economic sectors have changed in the UK, and we're gonna be looking at four examples of places where those sectors have had an impact.

Let's get started.

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to compare the changes that have occurred in different economic sectors.

There are four key terms for us to review, first of all.

Mechanisation is the development of machinery and technology in industries such that it reduces the need for human labour.

The global shift is the movement of manufacturing industries from developed countries to emerging and developing countries.

A science park is an area of land dedicated to businesses specialising in science and technology.

And financial services is a tertiary sector industry that deals with banking, investments, pensions, and insurance.

The lesson is in two parts.

We're first going to look at the decline of primary and secondary industries, and then after that, we'll look at the growth of tertiary and quaternary industries.

Let's start there with the decline of primary industries.

So we're going to be looking at the reasons for the decline of those industries in the primary and secondary sectors, and then we're going to be looking at two examples, Easington and Blackburn.

After that, we're gonna look at the growth of the tertiary and quaternary industries, and again, our two examples going to be London, Docklands, and Cambridge.

Let's start with those reasons for the decline of certain industrial sectors.

The biggest change in primary industries has been the increased use of machinery and technology, and this is known as mechanisation.

In farming, this machinery includes combine harvesters and milking parlours.

In mining, the mechanised drills become larger and more powerful, so those machines have taken over where human labour was once needed.

Mechanisation in farming and extractive industries means that fewer people need to be employed.

Workplaces are potentially safer and more primary products can be made in a shorter amount of time, and of course, what that means is greater amounts of profit.

Now, it's important to also remember that despite a general decline in something like farming, specialist farming, such as the production of organic or artisan foods is growing.

So it's not true that all areas of farming are in decline.

Compared to some other countries, the UK has limited amounts of farmland and coal reserves.

So let's look at the UK in comparison with some other countries.

The UK has 18 million hectares of farmland roughly, compare that to the USA with 158 million hectares.

In terms of things like extractive industries, coal reserves in the UK has been identified as about 3.

6 billion tonnes.

We go over to China and it's 143 billion tonnes.

So you can see that the UK simply cannot compete with other nations because it just doesn't have either the land or the resources that are needed to keep those industries going.

This is something that Laura and Andeep are going to discuss here.

Let's have a look.

Laura says, "Why don't the UK government just invest more money in farming and mining?" Andeep points out, "If there just isn't the land or the coal reserves, then there's not much we can do.

I guess we are just too small to really compete with other countries." I think that's really true.

We've gotta remember the UK, relatively is a really small country.

If we don't have the resources available, there's no way we can make a profit from those industries.

If we look at secondary industries, we can see that these declined in the UK as UK companies could not compete with goods made in developing and emerging countries.

Izzy is starting to recognise this.

She's got two jumpers here, one's made in the UK and the other in Bangladesh.

The one made in the UK is a lot more expensive.

She says, "I can see why people choose to buy goods from outside the UK." To remain competitive, UK companies began to move their operations overseas.

This was known as the global shift.

Countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, and China could offer large and cheaper workforces, cheaper land on which to build new factories, cheaper transportation of goods to market, and sometimes these locations were also closer to the raw materials themselves that were used in the manufacturing process.

All of those factors together again, mean the greater levels of profit can be made.

So true or false, all forms of primary industry have declined across the UK.

Pause video and have a think about what we've just learned and then come back to me.

Well done, if you recognise it's a false statement, now tell me why it's false.

Yes, hopefully you recognise that.

Though there is a general trend of decline in the primary industries, some small scale aspects of these industries are growing, such as a production of organic and artisan foods.

We'll now look at some examples of primary and secondary industries in decline, we're going to go to different parts of the UK to explore that.

We're gonna start with a village called Easington Colliery in County Durham.

It's a small village that has a history of coal mining with pits being operational between 1910 and 1993.

Now, all that remains of that industry is one of the old cage shafts.

You can see it here in the photograph.

At its peak in 1930, the colliery, which is the term used to describe the mine and all of its associated buildings, employed over 3,200 people.

Almost all these workers came from the village itself, and almost all the residents had some connection with the colliery.

The fact that the village is called Easington Colliery tells you perhaps all you need to know about the close connection between the people and the pit.

If you're looking at the graph here, Jacob recognises something clearly happened in the mid to late 1980s to cause the sudden closure.

Here we've got the number of employees.

It rises very steeply at the start, as you would imagine, then maintains a fairly stable pattern, and then suddenly drops off in the late 1980s.

So let's look at what happened in that time period.

By the 1980s, natural gas had become affordable.

Coal from Poland, USA, and China was a lot cheaper than UK coal.

When you put those two factors together, it meant the demand for UK coal declined.

The UK government refused to subsidise the coal industry and coal mines across the northeast closed.

And the closure of the colliery in 1993 sent Easington into sharp economic decline.

Many people moved outta the area to find work.

However, they did not always have a range of skills they could use in other industries.

Many young men, and it was in general, young men would join the colliery when they came straight outta school, age 15 or 16.

They would then work in the colliery for their entire working life.

When the colliery suddenly closed, they didn't really have a big body of skills, which they could transfer into other forms of industry.

With low income levels across the village, local shops and services struggled to remain open.

Workers' former homes were sold off cheaply, they were boarded up, and some streets were demolished completely, leaving large green areas.

You can see here in the sketch, there are some houses which have had their windows boarded up, and in the middle there you can see a large green area that once would've held another row of houses.

When the demand for housing reduced, basically, there was no need to keep those houses in place and they were demolished.

True or false, the closure of Easington Colliery caused a decline in the area both socially and economically.

Think carefully about those two terms, socially and economically.

Is that true or false? Pause the video and then come back to me.

Well done if you got that.

That was true.

Now tell me why that's a true statement.

Well done.

High unemployment meant former miners had low income levels.

That would be an economic impact, forcing many to move out of the area, and that would be a social impact.

Now, Blackburn in Lancashire is a former mill town.

This is a town that's been dominated by a particular part of industry, and that's textile weaving.

You can see where Blackburn is on the map there.

Compared to Easington, we're going a bit further back in history here.

So factories began to be built in Blackburn in the 1790s, and by 1910, there were 150 mills in operation employing 42,000 people just in Blackburn alone.

Now we look at the reasons for the decline of the textile industries in Blackburn.

Well, first of all, we'll go to the 1920s.

It was then that India started to boycott UK textiles in protest of colonisation.

In the 1970s, Portugal, Pakistan, Brazil, and Hong Kong started to make cheap cotton textiles.

This meant the demand for UK textiles declined.

Cheap textiles began to flood UK markets, and the mills in Blackburn started to close as there was so little work for people to do.

In 1980, the last mill, called the Imperial Mill, you can see it here, closed in Blackburn.

Blackburn as a whole town had been the centre of cotton textile production for so long that it was difficult for it to transition to other industries.

Businesses that supported the textile industry such as transport companies, also suffered.

Derelict mills and their infrastructure remained in the town for some time.

You can see this sketch here, we've got an old mill.

It's got vegetation growing outta the windows, the brickwork is falling apart, it's really not looking in a great state.

I'll check for understanding now, which of the following was not a direct impact of the closure of Blackburn's textile mills? Was it large scale employment, the closure of businesses that supported the mills, the opening of new retail spaces, or derelict mills and infrastructure? Which one was not a direct impact of the closure of the mills? Have a think and then come back to me.

Well done if you got that.

It was C, yes, the opening of new retail spaces.

Now, that did happen in Blackburn, and it happened a long time after many of the mills had closed, but it was not a direct impact of the closure.

Our first task of the lesson, in what ways were the closure of the Colliery at Easington and the closure of the textile mills in Blackburn similar? Secondly then, in what ways were the closures different? Compare and contrast what happened in Easington and what happened in Blackburn.

Do pause the videos so you can have a think about this.

It's gonna take a little bit of work and I'll come back to you with some Ideas that I've got.

Right.

Let's look at some of the answers that you might have had.

We're looking at how Easington and Blackburn were similar in the way they lost their industries.

At both Easington and Blackburn, the decline of industry came about because cheaper goods were coming to the UK from overseas.

This created a lower demand for UK coal and textiles, making it more difficult for these industries to make a profit.

In both places, the decline of industry created unemployment, which continued to have a knock-on effect on local businesses.

Hopefully, you've got something along those lines, that you have noted that the reasons for the decline are very similar, but also the impacts of the decline are similar as well.

Now we'll look at the other side of things.

In what ways were the closures different? So here are some answers that you may have.

In Easington, the increased use of machines and technology to do the work of manual labour meant that fewer people were required to work in the colliery over time.

Though mechanisation would also have had an impact on the textile mills in Blackburn, that industry already had large amounts of machinery.

In Easington, after the closure of the colliery, some of the former workers' houses were demolished, while in Blackburn, the mills were often left in a derelict state many years after they closed.

Hopefully, you got those ideas as well.

Now we'll move on to the second part of this, and we're not going to look at decline anymore, we're now looking at growth.

So we're looking at the growth of the tertiary sector and quaternary industries.

We're going to start with thinking about the reasons why these industries began to grow in the UK.

Years of manufacturing and trade created a lot of wealth for the UK.

The government could invest more in key services such as education, healthcare, and redevelopment.

Successive improvements in education meant that people left school with more skills and qualifications.

No surprise, if you invest more in education services, you're going to get a more skilled population at the end of it.

Having higher-level qualifications often meant people did not want to work in jobs that required hard, manual labour.

Education opened up new choices to them.

Most people now leave education wishing to use their advanced skills in the tertiary and quaternary sectors.

The UK also became more globalised when it traded its products, and this meant it developed close political and economic ties with other countries and regions, and this has attracted further investments.

These investments have created new tertiary and quaternary industries in former manufacturing and industrial areas through redevelopment schemes.

So the areas that used to have secondary employment, factories, warehouses, and so on, those areas have received investment into new sectors of industries.

These schemes will often focus on things like retail, entertainment and hospitality, transport, and business and science parks.

I check for understanding now.

What is the link between the UK government's wealth and education standards and qualifications? Is it that better schools create more wealth through taxation? Is it that as the wealth of the country drops, people want to become more qualified? Is it that the government can spend its wealth on improving schools and raising standards? Or is it that the government saves money when education standards are high? You're going to want to pause the video so you can have a read back through those options and have a really good think about what each one of them means.

So what is the link between the UK government's wealth and educational standards and qualifications? I'll come back to you with the right answer in a moment.

Well done if you've got the idea that it is C: the government, because of its wealth, means it can spend more on improving schools, and when it does that, it raises educational standards.

Well done.

Now let's look at examples of where this growth in tertiary and quaternary industries has taken place.

We're going to start by looking at London Docklands.

The Docklands area of East London was the former port of the city, but now has a significant number of offices of financial service businesses.

The docks were heavily bombed during the Second World War, and afterward, they fell into further decline as the wharfs, or the port sides, were no longer large enough to deal with modern ships.

Remember, the ships were getting bigger, but the docks weren't getting any bigger themselves, so unfortunately, it meant the docks went into decline.

In the 1980s, the London Docklands Development Corporation oversaw a huge redevelopment of the area.

If you look at the photograph here, you can still see the water where the boats would have been moored, but look at the surroundings, it's completely changed.

There was a designated enterprise zone which encouraged international investors.

There were waterside apartments with very fashionable amenities, and there were modern office buildings.

It really transformed the area.

The modern facilities and economic incentives attracted the headquarters of a number of international banks.

The Docklands area became a hub for financial services.

Look at the way that the employment has changed over time.

Here we've got a graph.

It shows the population of the Docklands in the thousands.

You can see the decline happening all the way through to the 1980s, and then it starts to rise up again and has continued to this day.

So these financial services that were coming into the Docklands area created increased tertiary employment, and they attracted workers from all over the UK, and indeed internationally.

Let's now have a look at another check for understanding.

Complete the sentences with the missing words.

You've got a paragraph here, which is all about the Docklands redevelopment.

Pause the video so you can have a look and see if you can work out which words fill the gaps.

Right, let's see what your answers are.

London Docklands Development Corporation was a body that planned the redevelopment.

You might have put regeneration, and that's fine too, of the Docklands area.

The old wharfs or the docks of the city were converted into modern apartments and offices.

An enterprise zone attracted the headquarters of international banks, creating high levels of tertiary employment in financial services.

Well done if you've got those.

Now we'll look at how there's been growth in the quaternary sector, and for this, we're going to go to Cambridge.

Cambridge has been nicknamed Silicon Fen, because of the high number of high-tech industries found there.

Since 1970, Cambridge has been home to the UK's largest science park.

It attracts science and research industries to the area through its close links with Cambridge University and the highly skilled graduates that that university produces.

If you look at this word cloud here, you can see some of the areas of work within Cambridge Science Park, things like data management, diagnostics, health research, artificial intelligence.

All of those things which fall into the quaternary sector really neatly are found in the Cambridge Science Park.

Over 1500 science and technology companies are located in the Cambridge area.

Many companies collaborate and use each other's facilities and expertise to further their own businesses, growing the quaternary industries from within.

Another check for understanding all about Cambridge, which of these is not a reason for the growth of the quaternary sector around Cambridge? Is it the proximity of a prestigious university? Is it the area having a large pool of highly skilled graduates? Is it that complementary businesses can share expertise and facilities? Or is it that there's competition between Oxford and Cambridge universities? Pause the video and see if you can remember what we've just talked about and then come back to me.

So which one doesn't fit? Well done if you recognise that it's D.

Yeah, competition between Oxford and Cambridge has not really been a reason for the growth of the quaternary sector in Cambridge, whereas the other three definitely have.

Our second task of this lesson.

Study the graph of UK employment carefully.

Let's take a quick look now.

So you've got two percentage bars there, one for employment in 1950 and one for employment in 2020, and you can see how employment in the different sectors has changed over that 70-year period.

How did the tertiary and quaternary sectors change between 1950 and 2020? So here you're going to want to draw on evidence that you can see in that graph.

And then your second task.

To what extent is it likely that there'll be further growth in these sectors? A slightly more tricky thing to think about.

So have a go at these two tasks by pausing the video, having a chat with somebody nearby to see what their thoughts are, and then come back to me with your answers.

Right.

How did you get on? Let's take a look at that first task where we need to talk about how the tertiary and quaternary sectors changed between 1950 and 2020.

Remember, we're gonna draw on evidence from the graph.

Here's what your answer may include.

The tertiary sector has grown by roughly an additional 20%, while the quaternary sector did not exist in 1950, and now employs 10% of workers in the UK.

Together, the tertiary and quaternary sectors make up roughly 85% of the workforce in 2020 compared to 50% in 1950.

It's really important that you've actually taken data from the graph itself in order to answer this question.

Do check your answer now to see that you've done that.

The second part of this is to comment on to what extent it is likely that there'll be further growth in these sectors.

Here's something your answer may include.

There may be further growth in these sectors as more young people attain higher educational standards.

This means they'll be more attracted to tertiary and quaternary work.

However, any increase in the percentage of these sectors means a decrease in primary and secondary employment.

As these figures are already low, there is a limit to how much more change there can be.

In other words, the amount of primary industry that there is in the UK at the moment is so low, could we possibly lose any more? Continuing, it says it is unlikely the UK will lose all its primary industry as it would then be completely reliant on other countries for food and fuel.

Look back carefully at this wording that's been used in this question.

It starts with "to what extent," that means you can actually look at both sides of the argument and then weigh them up within one answer.

Now, let's summarise our learning from that lesson.

The decline of the primary and secondary economic sectors has come about due to mechanisation, increased competition with imported goods, and the global shift of industries overseas.

The growth of the tertiary and quaternary sectors has come about due to improvements in education and investments in those sectors by the UK and EU governments.

Different areas of the UK have experienced change in different ways.

Well done.

There was a lot to get through there, wasn't there? Now, I wondered if you noticed that both of the examples that I gave for the decline of primary and secondary industries tended to be in the north of the UK, while the areas of growth of tertiary and quaternary industries tended to be in the south.

This is certainly not by coincidence, and it's a pattern that you'll see repeated if you look at other towns and other cities up and down the country.

Those changes are happening in generally a north-south divide pattern.

Depending on where you are in the UK, you may want to look at your own local case study of growth and decline, and you can certainly look to see the impact that has had on you, your family, your community, and those around you.