Cambridge Fieldwork Resources

This has been under construction for the last three years. It will make a change to wander down Regent Street and not see construction underway (except the Bus station will probably still be being built...)

We will be doing a day in Cambridge. This will provide us with the information you will need for the 'AS' Advanced Geographical Skills paper, along with the report you wrote after the Physical field day on the Norfolk coast. (see details elsewhere)

County town of Cambridgeshire. University town for over 600 years. Tourism and transport issues, along with high house prices due to the commuter effect from London are important in the city. IMAGES will be needed from the day. Get hold of a digital camera, or get a single-use one. Mobile phone pictures are better than nothing...but only just. Images are a key aspect of teaching and learning.

Some pictures taken in 2006 available HERE and the (incomplete!) DATA is HERE.

Check out the new features on GOOGLE MAPS: MY MAPS, which will allow you to create your own maps with DRAWING TOOLS and PLACEMARKS with detail on where and how you collected your fieldtrip data. Interesting development.

We will be exploring a selection of areas. These questions / tasks will be developed by the students themselves, but :

The retail trade and commercial area of a city or an area of very high land valuation, traffic flow, and concentration of retail business offices, theatres, hotels and services. Recommend that you revise this (and other key) definition

Will also be considering the identification of the ZONE OF DISCARD. This is an area outside of the CBD where one will find evidence of transitory businesses, boarded up premises and evidence that commerce is not as successful. There will also be smaller, more specialist retailers.

Consider how the CBD can be identified. When would you know that you were in the CBD ?

Look at the number of storeys in the buildings. As land values increase, so the need to make the most of the ground area increases. What is the difference in the usage of the ground floor and that of the upper storeys ? Look up and around... Be observant... Remember you're a geographer!

Also keep an eye out for SKIPS as a sign of GENTRIFICATION. When areas are being redeveloped and improved, this is a sign that areas are attracting new investment. Look also at the number of empty properties or TO LET signs.

We will also be looking at the issue of CLONE TOWNS. This will need a bit of preparation before the day goes ahead as we need to explore what this means and explain the method used.

This involves looking at King's Lynn and comparing with Cambridge. We will produce 3 scores for Cambridge during the day.

Starting at the Tuesday Market Place and working towards the Saturday Market Place.

There are proposals for change in several areas: the area around the RAILWAY STATION has a development plan.

There is also the GRAND ARCADE plan on the old Robert Sayle (John Lewis) site. The demolition of this was well under way as we passed in 2006. Look up the Grand Arcade planning on the Cambridge City Council website. What impact will it have on the CBD when it opens ?

What other areas of Cambridge are changing ? What other plans are there ? (e.g. the area around the Railway Station close to the new footbridge..)

Starting at the railway station and passing along Hills Road and Regent Street as far as Kettles Yard and up the hill to the Castle.

The transect is split up into 6 stages. At each one, data is going to be collected - during the transect, and also at the end of each section:

NUMBER	START POINT	FINISH POINT
1	Cambridge Railway Station	End of Station Road - junction with Hills Road
2	Along Hills Road	Catholic Church - start of Regent Street - corner of Parker's Piece.
3	Along Regent Street	Start of St. Andrews Street, and Emmanuel Street turn off into the Bus Station - opposite Post Office.
4	St. Andrews Street - through the pedestrianised area	Sidney Sussex College (opposite Sainsbury's)
5	Junction of Bridge Street and Jesus Lane	Magdalene Bridge
6	Magdalene Bridge / Chesterton Lane	Up the hill to Castle Court & Cambridge Castle.

Large taxi rank and bus station offer people the option of taking transport to their destination. If they are shopping, the CBD is a short (ish) walk away, but not everyone would choose to do this.

The road away from the railway station has a range of uses. There is little sign of residential land use. Plenty of offices, and some derelict properties suitable for redevelopment.

Along Hills Road. Passing through a range of typical edge-of-CBDs businesses, cafes, sandwich shops serving commuters walking from train station, internet cafes - ends at the imposing church and OCR offices.

Along Regent Street and in towards the centre. Past the Grand Arcade scheme. A large number of estate agents, with evidence of CLUSTERING of certain types of land - also pass the entrance to Parkers Piece: one of the large open spaces provided in Cambridge

From the bus station, through to the Sainsbury's supermarket outside the entrance to Sidney Sussex college. This is where we will see the majority of chain stores, and are also likely to count the most shoppers and see buskers etc. This is due to the larger 'FOOTFALL' in this area.

From Sidney Sussex to Magdalene bridge. Towards the punt people, who will be out if it's sunny...

Up to the mound of Cambridge Castle, next to the council offices. Don't expect to see a load of battlements !

This is a technique which involves the students moving along a designated route, and keeping track of the people walking past them in either direction, and only counting the people they pass, rather than the people they see.

An alternative is to stand and count for a designated period of time, and note people walking either towards or away from the CBD, or along particular designated routes. It would also be interesting within Cambridge to consider cycle movements, as there is a lot of encouragement for cyclists in the road markings and lane provision.

QUESTIONNAIRE

A sample is HERE. This is not the best example, but you will be developing your own after all...

New for 2006 & repeated in 2007 and 8 is a CLONE TOWN survey of 3 areas of the city: one which will be carried out during the lunch break in the CBD, one at the Grafton Centre and nearby streets, and one at the end of the day down Mill Road. This will compare 2 different parts of the city. Shops are identified and recorded in a number of different categories.

We looked at 3 different areas of CAMBRIDGE.

CAMBRIDGE CBD

GRAFTON CENTRE

MILL ROAD

We concentrated on the area around the market (which is a great asset for the city) - excellent bread stall!

The Grafton Centre has benefited from the recent arrival of Robert Sayle (John Lewis) store which has relocated to Burleigh Street due to the planned creation of the Grand Arcade. We saw the old store being demolished on the way in. There is a Park and Ride stop and station just outside the centre. The centre is celebrating 21 years of opening. Over 70 shops and food hall.

Mill Road is to the SE of the CBD, at the other end of Parker's Piece. It is more of a 'real' Cambridge shopping experience, as it serves a thriving residential area. It has great polycultural appeal: we noticed 6 or 7 different types of cuisine in just a small section of the parade of shops. There are also specialist retailers, delicatessens and a cybercafe. This area of Cambridge is also part of 'silicon alley'.

Mill Road has been described as "perhaps Britain's most internationally eclectic street"

http://www.camcity.co.uk/cambridge/Mill_Road/ - has a useful list of businesses which would be good for a classification exercise, and to allow you to see the great variety of ethnic specialisms which would be unlikely to be found in the CBD

IAN KITCHING's site has a fascinating viewpoint on the problems facing Mill Road, although it seems to date from the 1990's

A POWERPOINT PRESENTATION showing the various locations along the transect. Will also use GOOGLE EARTH to visit Cambridge and set up the locations for the fieldwork.

The FIELDWORK DATA collected by the SHOPPING QUESTIONNAIRE will also hopefully be made available.

4 IMAGE GALLERIES NOW AVAILABLE

E-mail if you want a larger version of any of the images - thumbnails only due to bandwidth

This has some rather good ADOBE ACROBAT maps which can be downloaded, and used in your report.

On the edge of the city is the CAMBRIDGE SCIENCE PARK. This is an area worth visiting at another time, as it illustrates the modern trends in Industrial location which form part of the Human Geography course.

When taking groups of students it is important to prepare for all reasonable risks. A Risk Assessment has been carried out. This proved to be acceptable, although there were a few possible additions for future reference, and will be further reviewed each year. We always seem to have some minor incidents whenever we go out...

Thanks to Dr. S. Hitch for posting a link to the NEW ECONOMICS FOUNDATION site. This is a PDF file which has 2 pages to it.

The CLONE TOWN assessment will form part of the day's work. Make sure that you are familiar with the process and the rationale.

You won't be asked to do a major report as you were with the physical one, but there will be a requirement to fill in some follow up sheets over the Easter break ready for the exam, as this could potentially come up in the exam.

The Round Church - we will pass this - built about 1130 AD. Church of the Holy Sepulchre - built by the returning Crusaders based on buildings they had seen on their travels.

Also consider the COMMODIFICATION of places: that it now costs money to enter buildings that used to be free: placing a value on entering a building - can you think of other buildings where this is the case ?

Walking out along Bridge Street towards Magdalene Bridge, note the old houses with jettied upper floors, which date back to the 16th Century - 'The Mitre' is an 18th Century coaching inn. This part of town was once the Danish area. This was a Roman road especially as one walks up the hill towards the council offices.

Magdalene Bridge stands at the original crossing place of the River Cam - also past Kettles Yard Art Gallery: this marks the edge of the old Roman town

Cambridge Castle: as you will have noticed, there were no battlements... It was a motte and bailey castle built around 1086

Turns into Trinity Street with college on both sides of street - this is the 2nd most visited of the Colleges: most of which have an entrance fee - what does the money go towards ? Sir Isaac Newton a student at Trinity College - college owns a lot of land, which influences the pattern of development, which suggests that Cambridge might not fit the usual pattern in the land use models

The river is central to tourism, particularly in the summer when the punts are operating.

Market Street is a give away name. Peas Hill was the medieval fish market area. Bene't Street is short for Benedict Street: there is a Friars house on the corner and the Cavendish laboratory on this street is where the atom was split in 1932 and the structure of DNA was deciphered in the 1950s. The tower of St Bene't's Church is the oldest building in Cambridgeshire, dating from 1025. Eagle Pub is a 17th Century coaching inn.

Trumpington Street leads around to Silver Street with the famous Mathematical bridge of Queens College.