2. Different Ways of Representing Places
Key Idea 2.b:Places are represented through a variety of contrasting formal and informal agencies.
Learning Objective:
To explore the different ways to represent a place.

3. Starter
Watch the following film clip which has a strong sense of place and make notes about your perception of the place shown e.g.
socio-economic status of the characters.
What kind of place it is.
The personal situation of the characters.
What film is this from?
What do you think the place is like?
How would you describe this place?
Do you think you have made any stereotypes of the people or place?

4. Task 1
Can you think of any British TV shows/dramas that have a strong “sense of place”?
What about …….
And …..
Or …..
In pairs, choose one of the soaps and do the following:
Name and locate the place.
Watch a 10/15 minute clip of an episode.
Bullet point/mind map the ways in which the programme portrays this place. E.g.
Physical geography – landscape; street layout; architecture; age of buildings.
Human geography – age; gender; ethnic profile; occupations; religion.

5. Feedback
What representations of the programme’s location are the programme-makers trying to convey? How successful are they?
Eastenders:
Inner city
Multi-cultural
Lower socio-economic status
Manual and low paid jobs
Poor area
Emmerdale:
Rural
Little ethnic diversity
Agricultural
Middle class
Middle managers
Coronation Street:
Inner city
Working class
Multi-cultural

6. HW Task Collect census data for your chosen place.
Compare the data against your own perceptions of this place.
To what extent does the data agree with your initial thoughts of the people portrayed or represented in the TV show?
Do you think you made any stereotypes of the people or place?

7. What information is collected in a census?
What is a census?
According to the UN a census is:
‘the total process of collecting, compiling and publishing demographic, economic, and social data pertaining, at a specified time or times, to all persons in a country or delineated territory’.
The UN recommends that a census is carried out every 10 years.
What information is collected in a census?

8. What information is collected in a census?
Age
Sex
Marital status
Birthplace
Ethnic background
Education
Economic activities
Household structure
Housing tenure

9. Why is census data useful?
For governments:
Helps a country plan for future development
For social scientists:
Can be used to support collection of primary data
Census data is an example of secondary data, this is data that has been collected in the past by someone else.
Primary data has been collected first hand in fieldwork enquiries. This could be a questionnaire or an environmental quality assessment.

10. Problems with census data
UK census data is not always reliable:
Census is taken every ten years in the UK. The last census was in This makes much of the information out-of-date.
In the UK the areas used in the census do not necessarily match with local authority, district or ward boundaries.
Boundaries can and have changed which means that making comparisons over time is difficult.
Homeless people may be difficult to record.
Staff who carry out the census may miss out households.
Some of the more detailed census data is based on only a 10% sample of the population.
Census data can be manipulated, for example the establishment of ‘Jedi’ as an official religion on the UK in the 2001 census.

11. The NeSS hierarchy
Census data in the UK is organised according to scale, from areas that contain a few postcodes to UK regions (e.g. South West England).
Country England
Region South East
County / unitary authority East Sussex
Districts Wealden
Super output area middle layer (minimum population 5,000) Wealden 001
Super output area lower layer (minimum population 1,000) Wealden 001A
Output area (a group of postcodes) UHGZ0002