1

Looking at Looking at shopping and shopping and other servicesother services

Who has them and how Who has them and how far do they have to go to far do they have to go to

get themget them

2

This was the settlement This was the settlement hierarchy we looked at beforehierarchy we looked at before

A settlement hierarchy Why is it a

pyramid?M

Hamlet

Village

Town

City

Why is the mega city

at the top?

Why is the mega city so small?

3

It is not just the size that changesIt is not just the size that changes

Hamlets have a smaller population than the other settlementsThey also have fewer servicesWhat are services?Shops – yesBut also schools, Police station.Buses, And big ones like Sport stadiums and airports

M

Hamlet

Village

Town

City

I have missed out lots – can

you think of any?

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It is not just the size that changesIt is not just the size that changes

So what you would expect, is that the higher you go up the hierarchy, the more of these services you would getNot only that, but the kind of services you get in villages and hamlets would be things like a general store or a pub and maybe a bus routeBut in the big city you might have an airport and a sport stadium ( or maybe even 2)

M

Hamlet

Village

Town

City

5

high order serviceshigh order servicesandand

low order serviceslow order services

For this reason, we classify services as lower order if they occur in most settlements and are quite smallAnd high order if they only occur in the larger settlements and there are not many of them

M

Hamlet

Village

Town

City

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Sort into high order, medium Sort into high order, medium order and low order servicesorder and low order services

College, secondary school, primary schoolCorner shop, Blue Water Development, Superstore Heathrow, local bus service, Intercity rail service

M

Hamlet

Village

Town

City

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Out-of-town shopping centres

Large and purpose-built centres just for shopping and sell high order goods to people from the wider area e.g. Trafford Centre

Central Business District (CBD)

The town centre is busy and has specialist shops that attracts people from all around

Small shopping centres and small town high streets

Small undercover centres found near the city centre and stock low and high order goods

Shopping streets Either in the suburbs or near large areas of housing, have some small shops and services e.g. hairdressers

Corner shops (inner city housing estates), village

shops

Sell low order goods to people living nearby

Shopping hierarchiesShopping hierarchies

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But when it But when it comes to comes to

shopping …shopping …Where would you put Where would you put

things like food, petrol, things like food, petrol, newspapers?newspapers?

And a carpet, a television And a carpet, a television or a package holiday?or a package holiday?

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You decided that …You decided that …

… food, petrol, newspapers were lower order goodslower order goodsBut we have yet another way of looking at this group.You will be less keen to travel too far for the first group so being local or convenient is the most important thing – so you will not be surprised to hear they are called convenience goodsconvenience goods.

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You decided that …You decided that …

…….. a carpet, a television or a package holiday were higher order goodshigher order goodsAnd we have another way of looking at this group too.You would be quite happy to go further for this group. But you would probably search around to see which shop was offering the best deal for some expensive like these items – you would compare prices - so you will not be surprised to hear they are called comparison goodscomparison goods

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Lower Order servicesLower Order services

Are services such as a local shop, a pub and maybe a visiting library van and playgroup in a village hallThese are the services that are only used by people who live nearby – you would not travel 10 miles to get a newspaper!So the range of these services is smallThis is another way of saying people will only travel a short distance to get there

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Higher Order servicesHigher Order services

Are High Street shops, cinemas, railway stationsThese are the services are used by everyone in a much larger areaSo the range of these services is largerThis is another way of saying people will travel a longer distance to get there

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Another way of looking at itAnother way of looking at it

Instead of talking about how far people will travel, it is easy to look at a map of a place and see where the customers come from.This circle (or nearly) is called a sphere of influence.

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An exampleAn example

Students do not travel far to the nearest primary schoolThey will travel further to a secondary schoolAnd further still to an FE college. Why is that?

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Just checking …Just checking …

ComparisonConveniencegoods

are Lower orderHigher order

goods which have

a greatera lesser

Sphere of influence

a smallera larger

range.An example of this type of good is ….

A loaf of breadA satellite dish

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How does it appeared to have How does it appeared to have changed?changed?

Geographers say thatthe sphere of influence has got larger in recent yearsIt would appear now that more people have cars, they use them to go furtherSo that Higher Order settlements have more services and lower order ones have fewer services

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What does this mean?What does this mean?

The local butchers and bakers in the small villages have closed downThe banks have left the small townsThere are bigger hospitals in the higher order settlements, as the smaller ones have been closed

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But which came first?But which came first?

Did the services close down and so people HAD to travel?Or was it easier to drive to the out-of-town supermarket and so the little local stores lost custom, and could not stay open?There have been domestic changes (deep freezers) means rural household, no longer make use of daily low order services (village shop)This is down to another idea, called the thresholdThis is the size of the population needed to allow a service to exist

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The threshold of a service variesThe threshold of a service variesSo a paper shop may have a threshold of about 350 households it is suggestedWhereas a large supermarket had a threshold of a few thousandAnd international airport has a threshold of several millionHere are some other thresholds:

primary school 500shoe shop 25,000a large supermarket 60,000large department store 100,000University 1 million

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But these thresholds changeBut these thresholds changeTake a local pub, in the 1960s ( before drink drive laws)There was nowhere else to go, so a village of say 800, about 30 or even more at the weekend would visit every dayIn the year 2000, the population may have got up a bit, to say 1000, but people do other things – they may go to the cinema in the town or play sport at the sports centre or …, leaving maybe 5 or 10 visiting the pub – too few to survive, so it closes.So the threshold is now higher than it was.

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But these thresholds changeBut these thresholds change

So what this says is that thresholds change. You may need a bigger threshold population for a particular service to survive now than you did in the past.This could also explain why small local shops have shut.It only takes a few people to go somewhere else for the threshold to go up and so there are not enough people to use the services to make it viable.

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Here is graph that shows much the Here is graph that shows much the same thingsame thing

Settlement functions (services) change over timeThis shows that over the past 50yrs in the UK, decrease in the number of services available in small settlements.Which in tune with what we said last week about Rhayader in 1900s – but we are lucky we still have more than 30 shops, banks and restaurants

Settlement size- increasesN

umbe

r o

f fu

nctio

ns

1940

19981million

But what does it show about the number of services available in the large settlements?

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Low order services at workLow order services at work

The Pint and Post, St Giles on the Heath, Devon. The Titcombs took over the shop and post office in 1999. When local people said that they would like a pub, they took up the challenge. The Pint and Post now incorporates a tea room, pub and provides home-cooked meals, as well as a local shop and post office