Describe_in_Equalities_on_a_Street_You_Know

In this piece of work, I will try to show what inequalities I have observed on Lower High Street in My town. Having grown up in My town, it is a street I know well and during these years a great many changes have occurred within the town, from demographics and infrastructure to the uses of retail units in the town centre. My town is now classed as an area of social deprivation and the town centre shows symptoms of a town in financial difficulty. Lower High Street itself is centred on daytime activity; there are no restaurants, cafes, bars, or other evening-based businesses. The units on the street are typical of a main street in a socially deprived area; the retail units are all aimed at the lower end of the market – for example in a 100 yard section there are 3 “cheap shops” and 3 second-hand charity shops. There are no fashion chains or independent grocery traders and apart from a large Tesco in another part of the town centre, there is nowhere which sells “luxury” items. In the course materials we see that City Road is reflective of an ethnically diverse population. In contrast, although My town is now over 30% Asian in population (Local Council datasheet, 2009), this is not fully reflected on High Street. As I mentioned earlier, the retail units are mainly budget shops and there is nothing in the area to attract more affluent shoppers, and the only food outlet is a Greggs sandwich shop. There is nothing to encourage “browser” shoppers who would spend time in the town centre and have their lunch while they shopped in the 80s and early 90s. Observed foot traffic on the street are women with children, men on their own and elderly people. The infrastructure of the road includes a one-way and two-way traffic flow system, which is newly in place. For hundreds of years the road was two-way. As I mentioned previously, the bus stops a few now – most of the buses now go from the main bus station. The women mostly gravitate to the walkway leading to the large Tesco store, and the men appear mostly to pay speedy visits to the banks or visit the opticians. The elderly tend to wander, visiting random shops and a few of them sit on the benches, watching the world go by. The town centre has recently been changed to a one-way system, apart from this section of road, this has meant noticeably less passing traffic within the town centre. Buses which used to stop on this road now stop in the refurbished bus station, away from the main road and closer to the Tesco, Netto and Iceland big stores, diverting more foot traffic away from High Street. When looking from High Street down to the car park of the Tesco, it is obvious that (as quoted in Making Social Lives”) “this is the great Temple of contemporary consumption”. The car park is rarely quiet and the types of vehicles within the car park range from old bangers to top of the range sports cars. Tesco is the only place within the town centre which shows the diversity in the population of My town, which as well as social deprivation has areas of affluence. . In conclusion, High Street tends only to the low income section of the population and needs great investment to encourage higher spenders into the town centre.