Assignment: Neighborhood takes over from occupation
The 2001 census confirms the impression that we increasingly segregate ourselves in various ways and are becoming more complex. Some of the more notable trends are:
- Young people attending university have resulted in the conversion of traditional working-class neighborhoods into student territory, where bars and cheap restaurants, convenience stores, launderettes and travel agents drive out traditional hardware stores, betting shops and old-fashioned pubs. The growth of student numbers is a principal cause of regeneration in many large provincial towns such as Bristol, Leeds and Nottingham.
- Lower marriage rates, the trend towards cohabitation and easier separation have resulted in many more single people and childless partners wanting to own a small house or flat. This has resulted in ‘dinky development' - cheap, typically two bedroom flats, built on brown-field sites for people for whom easy access to city centre fun is more important than the quality of schools and the size of gardens.
- Second-generation immigrants from Asia and the Caribbean are now moving from the communities of big divided houses where their parents lived - Brixton and Willesden - into areas of older Victorian terraces such as Edmonton and Croydon, previously occupied by white clerical and manual workers.
- Indians, in contrast to other immigrant groups, have moved to more prestigious areas of inter-war semis in places such as Harrow, Hounslow, Alford and Wolverhampton, to create a new type of neighborhood ‘Asian enterprise'.
- The continuing sale to council tenants of better quality, low-rise council estates, particularly in Scotland and the south-east of England, has reduced the differences between council housing and much of the cheaper privately owned housing built during the 1930s. Unemployment on these estates is low and car (and white van) ownership is high.
- Better-off people, who would once have retired to a coastal resort, are increasingly favoring picturesque country villages, particularly in the south and south-west of England, rendering them unaffordable to local youngsters. In 2001, Britain's countryside had a far older age profile than in 1991.
- the 2001 census marks the arrival of a category of rural neighborhood: ‘summer playgrounds'. Older, wealthier, urban Britons are releasing equity in their main home to purchase a rural get-away for weekends and summer lettings. Pad stow, Sercombe and Sheringham are examples of communities dominated by affluent weekenders.
Question
1 Identify various goods and services which might be impacted, favorably or unfavorably, by the trends identified.
2 What other implications for society and government might follow from the trends identified?
The response should include a reference list. Double-space, using Times New Roman 12 pnt font, one-inch margins, and APA style of writing and citations.