Hi, welcome to this lesson all about urban fieldwork.

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

And I'm going to talk you through some of the techniques and skills that you can use if you are undertaking fieldwork in an urban area.

Let's begin.

By the end of today's lesson, you will be able to collect primary and secondary data in an urban area, and you're going to be able to use that data to help you answer a geographical inquiry question.

So let's look at some of the keywords for today.

So first of all, regeneration.

Regeneration is where changes are made to a built environment to try to improve it for residents and workers.

Bipolar scoring is a score scale that uses both positive and negative values.

And then finally, proxy indicator.

This is a variable which indirectly suggests that another variable may be true.

Now, if it's not quite clear what that is yet, don't worry because we're going to have a look at an example later.

In terms of the structure of the lesson today, it's in three parts.

So we first are all going to think about what inquiry questions can be used in towns? How do geographers collect data in towns? And then finally, what secondary data is used to study towns? So let's start with the first of those about the types of questions we can ask in towns.

So urban areas are dynamic places to study.

They're always changing.

And changes to the built environment, and by built environment we mean things like roads and buildings can be very dramatic, and their impact is often felt straight away.

Geographers often study regeneration and attempts that local and national governments make to improve urban areas.

So the kind of questions that we can ask might be things like, what impact has the regeneration of the town had on public perception? How do people view it now? Inquiries into changes in the built environment often also look at sustainability.

This means geographers study environmental impacts or how the changes will affect people in the long term.

So here we might have some inquiry questions like, to what extent is Swansea served by sustainable transport? Or you might have, how environmentally sustainable are the changes to Southampton Waterfront? So it's kind of evaluating the urban area based on its level of sustainability.

So let's do our first check for understanding.

We've got some missing words to fill in here.

Complete the sentences with the missing words, pause the video, and I'll come back with the right answers in a moment.

Okay, let's look at what you got.

So urban areas are exciting places to study because of potential and actual changes to the, it's giving us a clue here because it's talking about roads and buildings, so it's got to be the built environment.

The impact of these changes can be studied as well as the extent to which the changes are sustainable.

Hope you got those.

Geographers also study the quality of the built environment and how it might differ across towns.

This can also be linked to the quality of the lived experience of people who reside or work in the town.

Now, lived experience is like the everyday experience that people have of living somewhere.

Geographers might ask inquiry questions like, how is urban environmental quality affected by land use? They can also ask, how does the quality of lived experience vary between residential areas? These are very common types of questions that geographers like to ask.

So another check for understanding here.

Which of the following questions could be asked about the quality of the built environment in an urban site? First of all, to what extent does the condition of the buildings vary either side of the River Itchen in Winchester? To what extent do the green spaces in Winchester promote improved public health? To what extent are Winchester's roads fit for purpose? And finally, to what extent does Winchester welcome and celebrate a diverse community? So we're looking for question or questions that are to do with the quality of the built environment.

And I will give you a clue here, there's more than one correct answer.

Pause the video, read the questions again, and then think about which ones might apply here.

Okay, did you manage to find the right questions? So first of all, it's A, yes.

To what extent is the condition of the building? So that's to do with the built environment, and it's seeing about how they vary different sides of a river.

And then C, to what extent are Winchester's roads fit for purpose? Because remember, the built environment isn't just the actual buildings.

It could be things like roads and bridges and infrastructure as well.

Hope you got those right.

So we've got our first practise task of today's lesson here.

Sort the inquiry questions into those about regeneration, sustainability, the quality of the built environment, and the quality of the lived experience.

The questions are on the next slide, don't worry.

Some of the questions might fit into more than one column, okay? So it's very rare that geographers will only ask a question about one thing, and this is a good example of that.

Write the letter code in the correct column.

So let's take a look at these questions now.

So you can see you've got your four areas of the table that you need to consider here: regeneration, sustainability, quality of built environment, and quality of lived experience, four key areas that geographers think about when they're doing inquiries in town.

You've got four questions underneath.

How might the change in land use at Forge Island affect people's everyday experience of Rotherham? To what extent has Bicester met the criteria needed to be an eco town? How might the quality of pavements and street furniture affect how people use the centre of Southport? And finally, how might the development of Warner's Fields make Digbeth more environmentally friendly? Do pause the video.

You might want to have a chat with somebody nearby to see what their thoughts are, because it's a little bit tricky this practise question.

Pause the video and then come back to me.

So let's see what you got here.

So yes, there are definitely more than one letter in some of the columns there.

First of all, let's look at question A.

So this is about changing land use, so we know it's going to have to be in the regeneration column.

And then it's talking about how that change in land use affects people's everyday experience.

So everyday experience is another way of thinking about lived experience.

So A also appears in that fourth column there as well.

Question B, to what extent has Bicester met the criteria needed to be an eco town? Now, even if you're not sure what an eco town is, you can imagine it's going to be something to do with environmental sustainability.

So yes, it's going to go into column B.

How might the quality of pavements and street furniture, oh, this sounds a little bit like the quality of a built environment, so that's going to be in the third column, quality of built environment, how does the quality of the pavements and street furniture affect how people use the centre of Southport? So that second part of the question is about people's everyday lives, the quality of lived experience, so it goes in that final column as well.

And finally, D, how might the development of Warner's Fields, so that's regeneration, make Digbeth more environmentally friendly? So that's all about sustainability as well, so it can go in that column too.

Now let's move on to the second part of today's lesson, how do geographers collect data in towns? So geographers studying urban regeneration are not going to easily compare the kind of before and after scenarios, so before regeneration and after regeneration.

And that's because the timeframe for the inquiry will just be too long.

Regeneration projects, even relatively small ones, often take many years to complete.

Therefore geographers have to look at other evidence in the landscape.

Geographers can look at how integrated the regenerated area is with its surroundings.

So in the after scenario, it can actually look at how well the regenerated area kind of sits within its town.

Field sketches and photographs taken at the boundary between the regenerated and the original buildings can show the difference in style.

One will be able to see whether the regenerated area stands out in a positive way or if it appears isolated in character from the surrounding area.

And you can see a really great example here.

This is actually from Birmingham city centre where you've got the old red brick in the foreground and then the kind of more metallic glass-like buildings in the background.

And different people might think differently about this, but, you know, they're certainly quite different styles from each other.

How well does the new area of Birmingham kind of blend in with the old? Is it even important if it blends in or not, that's a whole different question perhaps.

Geographers can also compare how busy a regenerated area is to an area that's not been regenerated.

So we've gotta remember that the idea of regenerating a place is to make it more successful for people who live and work there.

So if there's lots of people there, we kind of would assume therefore that it has had a degree of success.

This might be done through a traffic count and a pedestrian count.

This is where you can stand in one spot for five minutes and geographers count the number of vehicles or people that pass them in that time.

Ideally this activity would be done in pairs so it can take place at the same time in the two different areas.

So one person standing in the regenerated area and one person standing in the area that hasn't been regenerated.

This means that the data can then be comparable, and it also means there's less chance of double counting, because in theory, of course, somebody could walk from one area to another in that timeframe.

Let's have a check on things now.

So Sofia wants to collect data to see the impact regeneration has had on a retail area.

Why is she unlikely to be able to compare the shops before and after the regeneration project through primary data? Let's look at our options.

There'll be too many shops to make the data collection practical.

The regeneration project is likely to take many years to complete.

The rise of online shopping means the regeneration project is unlikely to be successful.

Now all of those sound plausible, but which one is the reason she will be unlikely to be able to compare the shops before and after the regeneration project? Pause the video and have a think about what we've just learned, and then come back to me.

So what did you get? Let's have a look.

Well done if you got B.

Yes, the regeneration project is likely to take many years to complete.

You know, Sofia's not going to have that amount of time to actually complete her project.

So it's really unlikely she'll be able to compare the shops before and after the regeneration project.

The quality of the built environment can be measured in many ways, and one of the most common methods is an environmental quality survey.

This measures a number of criteria against a bipolar scoring system.

So for example, if the criteria is something like quality of street furniture, so things like benches, bins, and street lights, and that kind of thing, you could have a scoring system that goes from -3, through to 0, then through to +3.

So if you are on the -3 end of the scale, this is a score that indicates that the street furniture maybe is vandalised or it's broken or it's really unattractive.

If you are on the other end of the scale, it might mean that that street furniture is really well looked after or it's really interesting piece of art, or, you know, that kind of thing.

So it's the more positive end of things.

So bipolar scoring system, you're going from a negative to a positive integer and you have to choose a score that fits on that scale.

Other criteria in an environmental quality survey could be to do with things like noise levels, litter levels, how much greenery there is, how much public art, anything that's to do with the kind of idea of environmental quality.

Now, you can apply a bipolar scoring system in other ways.

So something like a housing condition survey, you could still use a bipolar scoring system, but you'd probably want to change your criteria so they're more specific to housing.

So you might include things like quality of the driveway or the quality of the windows and doors or the guttering, or, I don't know, anything that's to do with the actual condition of the house itself.

So you're still using maybe a -3 to +3 score, but your criteria are what would change.

Housing surveys might also look at the age of the property, the type of property, the size of the home, things like that.

And these can be quite difficult to judge from the outside.

And this is where we might use things called proxy indicators.

So for example, it's difficult to know how large a home might be in terms of the number of rooms or the size of the floor plan.

If you're standing on the street looking at the building, it's really unlikely you're going to be able to tell that kind of information.

So instead you use a proxy indicator.

So you might do something like count the number of windows, and so the more windows there are, that you can count from the street at least, the larger the home is likely to be.

Let's check our understanding so far.

Complete the sentences with the missing words.

You've got three there to find.

Do pause the video, have a think about what you've just learnt and then I'll come back to you with the right answers.

Okay, let's look at what kind of answers you got.

So it is difficult to judge some aspects of a home from the outside.

Geographers use a something indicator, a proxy indicator instead.

For example, they count the number of windows as an indicator of the size of a home.

Hope you got those.

Now, retail spaces might be investigated.

So we're coming away from residential homes now.

We're now thinking about things like the high street.

So we might look at things like accessibility, and we might use an accessibility survey to measure that.

Geographers map all the features in the town that aid accessibility.

And these could be things like wide pavements, accessible parking bays, tactile paving, in other words the paving that has like a texture to it where there are slopes instead of steps, handrails.

There's lots and lots of features which can help people to be as accessible as possible within a town space.

The variety of shops might also be studied, and this is where we might use something called a clone town survey.

And this tells geographers whether a town's shops are unique or they're simply a clone of every other UK town.

In other words, they're exactly the same set of shops in one town as you might find in another.

So how do you go about doing this? First of all, as you walk around the retail area of a town, you tally the type of shop and whether it is independent or a chain store.

And you can see in the table there, it's just a simple tally chart.

You've got one independent clothes store, but you've got four clothes stores which we might consider part of a chain, so maybe a big brand or something like that.

Then what you do is you look at the total number of types of shops, so the number of different categories of shops that you have found within the town, and you multiply that value by five, and we're going to call this value A for the purpose of this demonstration.

Next, what you do is you total up the number of independent shops that you have tallied.

So you add all those tally marks together, and then you multiply this by 50.

That's giving you what we're going to call value B.

You do the same for the chain stores, you add up all those tally marks, but this time you multiply it by five, and that's going to give us what we're calling here value C.

What you then do is add together value A, B, and C and divide it by the total number of shops that you've surveyed, and that's going to give you a score, and we call this the clone town score.

So you can see that a clone town is a score where there is less than 30.

In other words, it's all almost all chain stores.

There's very few independent stores.

If, on the other hand, it's the other end of the scale where you've got a score of more than 40, we call this a hometown, and that means that it's much more populated with independent stores.

And so if you live in a home town, your town is quite unique compared to other towns in the UK.

If it's in the 30 to 40 bracket, it's called a border town, and that means it's got some elements of being a clone town, but it's also perhaps got some elements of being a home town as well.

So let's check our understanding on that.

A clone town survey aims to find out how diverse a town's retail space is compared to other UK towns.

Is that true or false? It is true.

Can you come up with a reason why that statement is true? Okay, so we have to remember exactly what a clone town survey is designed to do.

It's designed to tell geographers the extent to which the shops in a town are clones or copies of those in other towns.

So, our second practise task of today.

Aisha wishes to study the quality of the built environment in a town.

List three criteria she could put in a survey to help her investigate this.

And your second part of that, practise completing a clone town survey.

You do not actually have to be in a town centre to do this, although I would recommend it if you can.

You could complete the survey by using something like the street view option on a digital map, so you could digitally walk around a town instead.

Note down any ways in which your method is perhaps not as accurate as you might like it to be.

So the clone town survey isn't without its faults.

See if you can find some of the issues.

Okay, let's look at some of your answers now.

So three criteria that Aisha could use to put in a survey to help her investigate the quality of the built environment of a town.

There's so many things she could put, these are just some of them.

So she could look at the quality of the street furniture, how much noise there is, how much litter there is, how well greenery enhances the space, or how much greenery there is.

If there's public art, how well that enhances the space.

You undoubtedly will have different things to that, but that's the kind of things that you might have as part of your criteria.

Then we've got you conducting a clone town survey and some of the ways that your method might not be as accurate as you might like it to be.

So there's a few things here.

First of all, a shop's name or or what the shop looks like, it doesn't always tell the geographer what actually type of shop it is.

Some of them are really obvious, other ones maybe not so much.

And then you've got those shops that kind of don't fit into just one category.

They might actually cover a lot of different categories.

So it's a bit difficult to know what to do with those.

Do you put it in the one where it applies most or do you just not include it at all? Then you've got shops that are closed down or appear to be empty, but perhaps you are not sure if they're empty or not, you're not sure if they're closed down.

There are lots of shops which unfortunately might apply in that state in our high streets today.

And then there's some shops which are in a chain, but it's quite a small little local chain, so it only is known to local people.

So something like a branch of bakeries, but you would only find those bakeries in that town or that region.

You wouldn't find them nationwide.

So are they a chain or are they independent? It's quite a difficult one to think of there.

You might have other things as well, but those are certainly some of the things that I've thought of.

Right, let's move on to the final part of today's lesson, all about secondary data and what secondary data we can use to study towns.

Urban areas are centres of population.

Geographers often want to know more about that population to find out if the urban area is serving their needs.

The UK census takes place every 10 years and collects data on many aspects of people's lives, including employment, health, income, education, and lots of other criteria as well.

The Index of Multiple Deprivation takes some of this census data and it can then actually plot regions against each other on a map according to different criteria.

This shows how deprivation varies from place to place.

Geographers might use this data to understand whether an area is in need of regeneration or not, and if so, what type of regeneration might be needed.

So you can actually find the places which are perhaps most economically deprived and then think about ways in which that town could be regenerated to improve its economy.

Crime data is also available online.

It provides information on the type of crime and where it was committed, and that tends to be as much information as you will get.

Geographers have to be very careful therefore that they don't try to use crime data as a proxy indicator of deprivation.

And this would be wrong because some types of crime happen everywhere, unfortunately, regardless of the level of deprivation in the area.

And it is probably also fairly true that the perpetrators of crime, the people who commit crime, will not necessarily live in the area where the crime was committed.

So it wouldn't quite be right to assume that because somewhere has a high crime rate that that's the area that is deprived as well.

So there's a lot of nuance in there.

There's a lot of finer detail that we need to think about when we analyse crime data.

Let's check our understanding of that point.

Crime statistics are a proxy indicator for economic deprivation.

Is that true or false? It is false, but why is that statement false? Well, an area that experiences high levels of crime does not necessarily have a high level of deprivation.

It's a lot more complicated than that.

Now, other forms of secondary data, old photographs, of course.

Old photographs of urban areas can provide a valuable insight into how areas have changed.

There might be key structures that actually haven't changed very much at all over time, and things like bridges and churches, town halls, obviously some of the older buildings, they tend not to have gone anywhere.

So you can use those as what we call anchors.

This allows the geographers to recognise changes that have occurred around those structures.

So you find something like a bridge, you use that as an anchor point in the photograph, and then it allows you to see everything that's changed around it.

So here's a good example of that.

We've got Tower Bridge here, and we use a technique called re-photography.

Geographers use this to highlight the changes that have taken place.

They use an old photograph as a guide, and then what they attempt to do is find the exact spot on which the original photographer stood, and then they take a new photograph of the exact same view.

And this then allows them to highlight similarities and differences between them.

It can be a little bit tricky to find that exact spot, particularly if the town's gone through lots and lots of changes in that time.

So it doesn't necessarily work everywhere, but you can see by the example that we've got in the animation here, that if you find the right spot, it can really be eye-opening in terms of what's changed around a particular structure.

So let's have a think about that particular phrase.

What is re-photography? Is it A, taking a photograph of a view that has greatly changed, taking a photograph in the same position as a photographer of an old photograph, taking photographs of the same view over many days, or taking a photograph of an old photograph or a painting? Pause the video and just check that you know which one it is.

Okay, did you get it right? It's B, you are taking a photograph from the same position as the original photographer when they took the old photograph.

So, our final task of today.

Andeep is studying whether the changes to the town centre over a 10-year period, and that's important here, 10 years, have made it more suitable for the changing health and physical needs of the local people.

So quite a specific angle there that Andeep's taking.

Over a 10-year period, has the changes to the town made it more suitable for the changing health and physical needs of local people? What sources of secondary data might support his inquiry? Have a good think about all the different types of secondary data that we've looked at today.

Which of those would actually help Andeep answer his question? So let's have a think about this.

Well, he would probably be looking at census data.

It's over a 10-year period, so that fits in perfectly there.

He will look at how the age demographic has changed over the last 10 years.

Have people generally got younger or older in the town? Has it stayed the same? We would naturally assume maybe that if the town has got younger, it might need certain facilities.

If the town has got older, it might need other facilities to help people with their changing health and physical needs.

Census data on how the physical health of the population has changed.

So it's kind of matching those two things together.

So has the population effectively got healthier over the 10-year period or has it declined? And therefore, what type of changes might be needed? And then looking at the other side of things, at old photographs to show how the built environment has changed over that 10-year period.

So what changes have happened and how do those match up with the health and age of the people of the town? You might have some other ideas as well.

Those are just some of the ones that I thought of.

So let's summarise our learning today.

There are many geographical inquiry questions that you can investigate in urban areas, such as questions about the quality of life, sustainability, and regeneration.

Data collection techniques in an urban area can include environmental quality, housing, and clone town surveys.

Geographers use secondary data to allow comparisons to be made and to understand more details about urban populations.

Well done, everybody.

There are a lots of techniques there that you can use in an urban area.

Do remember of course that although we have framed these within an urban context, they can be used in lots of other places as well.