Your aim is to compare two areas of Southampton - Bevois and Bassett: (REVISION TABLE HERE)
1. Make sure you know where the two wards are - MAP - what assumptions might you make about the two wards?
= State your hypothesis and explain it. Take a tour of the two areas via Google Earth too.
2. You must have a look at the Neighbourhood Statistics website and the vast array of data sets it can provide - it will also allow you to plot the data as charts and can bring up an interactive map of all of Southampton's wards. However, because this can be so time consuming I have collated the main sources of data you need to use - look in the files section of this folder at all the excel spreadsheets.
Neighbourhood Statistics will allow you to gather data for each ward on the following:
Housing
Ethnicity
Age Structure
Wealth and employment
health
Use these spreadsheets (in folder on right - select files) to produce appropriate graphs - bars are best - (look here!) that compare this information for Bevois and Bassett and complete this TABLE to comment on your findings
3. Southampton City Council has its own GIS map of Southampton - use it to compare statistics for deprivation, income and crime. You can also add and remove layers so you can consider the provision of services in each area e.g. doctors, dentists, hospitals, sports facilities, open spaces...
Once you have had a look Southampton's GIS map for yourself you might find this useful - a selection of maps and advice on how to tackle a possible exam question.
4. You should now be able to write a COMPARISON of the two areas of Southampton -focus on population characteristics, housing, wealth and employment, provision of services (go through your table and quote specific supporting evidence)
- to what extent do the areas fit the expected characteristics of an inner city and suburban environment?
5. Discuss how well each area provides for the social welfare of its community.
Social Welfare means more than access to state benefits. It is the well-being of communties. It refers to the access that groups of people, or individuals, have to job opportunities, housing, health care, education, a safe environment, and unpolluted environment and a freedom to practise one's culture, religion and so on.
Social welfare can therefore be more or less available:
in different parts of a city, to people of different social classes, to diffferent ethnic groups, age groups and even genders. Geographers are most interested in spatial distributions of social welfare.
Southampton's Polish Community - what are the implications for social welfare?