Dd131_Tma_01

DD131 TMA 01 P.I With reference to what you have learnt about city road, outline some of the differences across time and space on a street that you know. I will be looking at Uckfield High Street. Uckfield High Street is a busy town centre with a collection of independent retailers and some larger chain stores. It seems to have an eclectic mix of outlets that reflects the types of consumer I will look at how Uckfield High Street is used during day and night and also how different groups of people use it. During the day Uckfield High Street appears to be a busy hub of shoppers and employees/employers going about their daily business, like City Road (“The Street”, 2009, scene 1) A collection of different people use “Poppins” café, much like City Roads “Tastebuds” café (Blakeley et al., 2009, p.19) “Poppins” café in Uckfield, like most café style eateries does not stay open in the evening so you will generally find younger families and older people use the facilities more so, this seems to be no different on City Road. There is a small shop called S.A.U.K on Uckfield High Street, this shop provides South African goods for one ethnic minority group in this area, this is similar to Janet Symmons City Road shop “Xquisite Africa” (Blakeley et al, 2009, p22), this shows the similarity of our smaller “town” street to that of City Roads “City” status. Just a short distance from Uckfield High Street is “The Civic Centre”, this is a town commodity where during the day it is used as a Restaurant “Luxfords” and also a booking office for the evening or afternoon events that they host, “Luxfords” Restaurant then turns into the venue bar. “The Civic Centre” is also used as a wedding venue, so bringing another use for its multi-use status, this also changes the way another group of people use Uckfield High Street and its facilities, whether that be of drinking establishments, food outlets or accommodation. “The Civic Centre” is a multi-use building and takes on many different identities during the day and at night, also each day seems to be different. This is like The Mackintosh Centre sports club on City Road (Blakely et al., 2009, p.20) which is set out to be a multi-purpose facility, Mon to Fri it is a sports centre and on Saturdays it becomes a farmers market. The traffic issues on Uckfield High Street during the day are quite complex and as mentioned in the DVD ( Dr S. Bromley, Material lives, 2009, scene 2) it seems to be a conduit street, where not much traffic turns to the left or right but passes straight through to continue its journey, either to the A22 and beyond or to the outlying industrial estates. The traffic light system calms during the evening as the traffic volume decreases and also the number of pedestrians falls. This significant change in traffic both vehicular and pedestrian has an almost soporific effect on the atmosphere of this street at night, it almost changes ones perception from being all about wits to one of relaxation and enjoyment, this is also exacerbated in the summer months where recreational facilities become prime, and people seem to behave in a much more affable manner. Uckfield High Street at night is different from City Road (“Connected lives”, 2009, scene 1) as there are far fewer people; it being an inner city environment and Uckfield a small town centre, but you can still see similarities in the behaviour of the different generations as there are pubs, restaurants, take aways a cinema and a small night club, something to cater for everyone as City road does (Blakely et al., 2009 p.20) Uckfield High Street looks very different at night when the heavy traffic issues resolve and parking for the use of restaurants becomes very easy, the difference in traffic levels during the day and night is actually quite phenomenal, it is so busy during the day that only last week a young boy was hit by a car whilst trying to cross the road. It sets a very different scene at night when the commuting traffic subsides, it is seemably a safer environment for people. In summary, the differences across time and space on City Road and Uckfield High street seem to be few, although the size of the streets are very different the similarities are strong, the ways in which there are multi use buildings, the ways in which traffic is controlled (an invisible connection) (Material lives, 2009, scene 2), the ways in which different groups of people use the streets facilities in the space of a 24 hour period. The main difference appears to be location, people seem to be creatures of habit and require order in their lives. 772 Words. Refs: Blakeley, G., Bromley, S., Clarke, J., Raghuram, P.,Silva, E. and Taylor, S. (2009) Introducing the Social Sciences, Part One: Learning Companion 1, Milton Keynes, The Open University. “The Street” (2009) Making Social Lives [DVD], Milton Keynes, The Open University. Self Reflection I have enjoyed the beginning of this module but I have also found it quite daunting, however, meeting Pam Shaw and some other students at the 2nd tutorial allowed me to feel that I was in fact equal and am far more capable than first thought!! The things I found difficulty with was being concise as we only had 750 words, so with all the information that was taken in, it was overwhelming to pick out which pieces were best to write about