WJEC GCSE in Geography Place

What is this concept about? 'Place' has different layers of meaning. Describing the location of a place is a skill. The features of a place can be described. Places have character and identity. As such, people become attached to places. It is this third, deeper meaning that should be investigated in a fieldwork enquiry that investigates the concept of place.  The Ram is associated with the city of Derby. What symbols are associated with your place?

Landscape character Students could investigate the features of this place by collecting: quantitative data such as altitude, wind speed, plant type and plant abundance. qualitative data such as photographs or interviews. Each student could list the first five adjectives that come to mind. This data could be represented in a word cloud. A number of different factors may come together to give somewhere its sense of place. These factors might include physical features of the landscape. These may be natural features such as spectacular landforms. However, they are just as likely to include some very ordinary features, for example: in a rural environment: amount of livestock, types of crop, size of field, type of field boundaries, in an urban environment: amount of traffic, the range of shops in the town centre, cultural diversity of the population. in either environment: dialect, historic buildings, building materials and local style of building can give a sense of place. None of these features may be particularly unusual on their own. But, when combined together they will give a place its identity. Please note that Pen-y-Fan may not be suitable for GCSE fieldwork because it is over 400m in height. However, it is chosen to illustrate the point that distinctive landscapes may be particularly distinctive despite the lack of recognised geographical landforms such as river meanders!

Assessing landscape features The significance of a landscape feature can be assessed by taking photographs of the same feature from different distances.  The tors at the Stiperstones can be seen on the horizon. At 6km they are a small but significant feature in a complex landscape  At 200m the tors dominate landscape

River or coastal fieldwork Students could investigate the features of this place by collecting: quantitative data such as cross section and velocity. qualitative data such as photographs or bi-polar surveys. Photos could be used to compare the significance of the river in the landscape here to its significance downstream. River or coastal fieldwork If your fieldwork takes places close to a river or the coast, you could investigate whether people who live in two contrasting locations have different perceptions of the physical landscape. You could investigate whether people who live within site of the river or coast may have a different sense of place compared to those who cannot see the feature. For example, do the people living in these two places perceive the river/coast as an amenity or as a potential flood risk? Varying attitudes towards a river’s positive and negative influence on place (e.g. its aesthetic value or its amenity value) could be gathered using bi-polar surveys.

Tourist honeypots If your fieldwork is taking place somewhere that gets lots of visitors (for example, a rural honeypot or a seaside resort) your enquiry could focus on: Which features attract visitors to this place? How did they get to know about this place - how was it represented in the media? How does the reality of the place compare to what they expected?

Using re-photography to investigate changing places Changes to landscape (physical and human) can be evidenced by re-photographing an historic image. Postcards, available to view or purchase from online auction sites, provide a useful source of images that are dated and can be up to 110 years old. This postcard, of the Hayes in Cardiff, is dated 1904. Students could analyse the changes in the streetscape through annotation – in this case the Library building and statue are still present but no longer seem to be significant in the environment. Instead, the streetscape is dominated by features designed to make the place attractive to pedestrians. The architecture is dominated by the much larger St David’s Hall.

Retail investigations: clone towns In a retail environment, the closure of independent shops and the development of national chains (using national rather than local architectural styles) has led to the erosion of identity in the high street. A clone town survey involves classifying shop types. The clone town score for the present could be calculated using primary data. Two towns could be compared to see which one has the greater local identity.

Changing places / rebranding Places change over time so fieldwork could focus on how and why the identity of a place is changing: old industries close. Brownfield sites are redeveloped and docks become gentrified. Seaside resorts, once popular, become faded and need to be rebranded to attract new visitors. People have such a strong connection to the place that they know that change is sometimes opposed. Your fieldwork enquiry might focus on the Not in My Back Yard attitude of local people who are opposing a local planning issue. Your fieldwork could focus on: why people have adopted a NIMBY attitude – what aspect of the place do they want to conserve and why? how have they managed their campaign? You could use text analysis to investigate the language used in blogs and newsletters. Students could investigate how a place is branded by finding evidence in the environment, but also by finding images online. They could analyse why these images been chosen. What do they represent? What do they NOT show?