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

2 This was the settlement hierarchy 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 changes 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 Hamlet Village Town City I have missed out lots – can you think of any?

4 It 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 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 Hamlet Village Town City

5 high order services and low 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 M Hamlet Village Town City

6 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 M Hamlet Village Town City

7 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 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. convenience goods 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 class goods And we have another way of looking at this group too. comparison goods 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 Just checking … Comparison Convenience goods are Lower order Higher order goods which have a greater a lesser Sphere of influence a smaller a larger range. An example of this type of good is …. A loaf of bread A satellite dish

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 a few hundred 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 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. Settlement size- increases Number of functions million 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 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.