Looking at shopping and other services

1. Looking at shopping and other services Who has them and how far do they have to go to get them

2. M City Town Village Hamlet This was the settlement hierarchy we looked at before A settlement hierarchy Why is it a pyramid? Why is the mega city so small? Why is the mega city at the top?

3. Hamlets have a smaller population than the other settlements They also have fewer services What are services? Shops – yes But also schools, Police station. Buses, And big ones like Sport stadiums and airports M City Town Village Hamlet It is not just the size that changes I have missed out lots – can you think of any?

4. So what you would expect, is that the higher you go up the hierarchy, the more of these services you would get Not 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 route But in the big city you might have an airport and a sport stadium ( or maybe even 2) M City Town Village Hamlet It is not just the size that changes

5. M City Town Village Hamlet high order servicesandlow order services • For this reason, we classify services as lower order if they occur in most settlements and are quite small • And high order if they only occur in the larger settlements and there are not many of them

6. M City Town Village Hamlet Sort into high order, medium order and low order services • College, secondary school, primary school • Corner shop, Blue Water Development, Superstore • Heathrow, local bus service, Intercity rail service

7. Shopping hierarchies

8. But when it comes to shopping … Where would you put things like food, petrol, newspapers? And a carpet, a television or a package holiday?

9. You decided that … • … food, petrol, newspapers were lower order goods • But 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 goods.

10. You decided that … • …….. a carpet, a television or a package holiday were higher order goods • And 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 goods

11. Lower Order services • Are services such as a local shop, a pub and maybe a visiting library van and playgroup in a village hall • These 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 small • This is another way of saying people will only travel a short distance to get there

12. Higher Order services • Are High Street shops, cinemas, railway stations • These are the services are used by everyone in a much larger area • So the range of these services is larger • This is another way of saying people will travel a longer distance to get there

13. Another 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.

14. An example • Students do not travel far to the nearest primary school • They will travel further to a secondary school • And further still to an FE college. Why is that?

15. Comparison Convenience Lower order Higher order Just checking … are which have goods goods a greater a lesser Sphere of influence An example of this type of good is …. a smaller a larger A loaf of bread A satellite dish range.

16. How does it appeared to have changed? • Geographers say that • the sphere of influence has got larger in recent years • It would appear now that more people have cars, they use them to go further • So that Higher Order settlements have more services and lower order ones have fewer services

17. What does this mean? • The local butchers and bakers in the small villages have closed down • The banks have left the small towns • There are bigger hospitals in the higher order settlements, as the smaller ones have been closed

18. 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 threshold • This is the size of the population needed to allow a service to exist

19. The threshold of a service varies • So a paper shop may have a threshold of about 350 households it is suggested • Whereas a large supermarket had a threshold of a few thousand • And international airport has a threshold of several million • Here are some other thresholds: • primary school 500 • shoe shop 25,000 • a large supermarket 60,000 • large department store 100,000 • University 1 million

20. But these thresholds change • Take 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 day • In 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.

21. But 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.

22. 1998 1million 1940 Number of functions Settlement size- increases Here is graph that shows much the same thing • Settlement functions (services) change over time • This 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 But what does it show about the number of services available in the large settlements?

23. Low 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