Lincoln Road Millfield Peterborough and City Road Cardiff

For this assignment i have chosen to look at how material things contribute towards differences between Lincoln Road Millfield Peterborough and City Road Cardiff. Lincoln Road is a mixture of shops and houses just on the outskirts of a mixed culture area of peterborough. Stretching over a mile long, scattered along the road are numerous houses, shops, pubs, and takeaways including chain stores like iceland, lots of different ethnic shops and numerous charity shops. The term different is used when one thing is unlike another.

I will be looking at the differences between physical space of people and shops and different uses of buildings. On Lincoln Road there is asian fruit and vegetable shop which lays it produce on the pavement in front of the shop. In some places along the road the pavements are not that wide; ultimately this leaves a small amount of space for people to pass by. This is quite dangerous because sometimes you have to walk on the busy road which is putting people in danger. By watching the DVD (The Street 2009), i noticed that the shops and pavement were a lot easier.

City Road is shown to be ordered and it seems to run smoothly, but Lincoln Road with its pavement problems in places to fall short of order (Blakeley et al. , 2009, p. 39). Moving on to the next difference is how the big chain shops like tescos and spar have moved on to City Road and knocked out a small number of independent small business. Colin Butwell the newsagent did say how the opening of the spar supermarket 25 years ago did knock out the newsagents next to him (The Street, 2009, scene 3).

The increase of students and ethnic minorities has increased the demand of ethnic shops and larger supermarkets with more choice and longer hours. ” so the reshaping of society which is this constant re-shaping, creates some winners and some losers” (Making social lives on City Road, 2009, scene 3). A lady who is being interviewed in (Material lives, 2009 scene 2) says she does not like tesco opening but she did say she shops there all the time, which just shows you thre lure of big chain shops is attractive to people for an easy option.

But on Lincoln Road the smaller independent shops are all thriving and there are no plans for any more bigger chain shops. The cheaper, budget shops are common on Lincoln Road due to people not having the money to spend in the more trendy expensive shops in Peterborough town centre. This the perception of a more working class community and shows the differences in wealth in Lincoln Road to the rest of the Peterborough area.

With the issue of class, i am going to look at The Mackintosh Centre in City Road, in the day its an exclusive and seems like a expensive sports club, that has the perception by the local people as not being accessible due to it being daunting and gated off (Making social lives on City Road, 2009, scene 7. ). But at weekends on a saturday it is turned in to a farmers market, when local people feel more accepted. According to (Blakeley et al. , 2009, p21) ” The same physical space maybe used differently by different people at different times”.

In Lincoln Road there is a simliar transformation going on in The New England Complex on Lincoln Road. During the day it is used has a school for kids who have been expelled from other schools and when no other school will have them and a nursery school , but during the evenings it is used for numerous othe activities, like a recovery centre for people with addicitions , dog training club as well as childrens clubs such as brownies. This shows you repairing the society by using the complex, the organisers of this service are helping people overcome their addicitions, which could lead to a better fulfilled life.

In conclusion there are many material things in both City Road and Lincoln Road that contribute towards differences a few i have written about. There are things that are similar between the two, like the layout and class structure and the differences; such has City Road has accepted bigger chain stores, but on Lincoln Road this has remained local independent shops. However a sense of community is very much in both roads (Making social lives on City Road, 2009, scene 3).