Changes on the Periphery of Cities.

There have been a variety of changes taking place on the rural urban fringe. Due to congested and overpopulated central business districts (CBD) in cities such as Newcastle, many people move out to the suburbs (suburbanisation) and even further to the rural-urban fringe; which can be defined as a zone of expansion, growth and change, where rural and recreational land use is increasingly urbanised; (RUF). It can be identified, by the number of people that commute to the urban area, conventions being 25%. This causes massive changes on the periphery of cities. Due to congestion in the city, many people move out into the RUF, to get away from the traffic and pollution. By ward (administrative districts of a city), Newcastle, whose population has fallen from 275 to 259,000 (1991 2001) has seen a marked increase in population in certain inner wards (with large desirable Victorian and Edwardian housing and good access to schools, shopping and CBD) such as Jesmond, but mostly wards such as Castle, Westerhope and Dene have registered increases in population due to their placement on the rural-urban fringe. This is not a marked trend as wards such as Woolsington, on the RUF, has had a decrease in population by 31%+ (1971 1998), due to the expansion of the Newcastle airport and the inclusion of a dual carriageway and light rail metro system, thus causing the creation of a rural-urban continuum. In addition to this, quality of life is also shown to have increased in rural wards such as Stannington with over 50% of households owning 2 or more cars while almost none of the people are unemployed as of 2001. This in contrast with one of the three innermost wards; West City holding the highest percentage of unemployment at almost 10% with one of the lowest percentage of people with good health at approximately 57%. In accordance to this shift onto the RUF, there has been a massive increase in the use of Greenfield land for the building of large scale retail stores and malls such as the Merry Hill centre. Between 1980 and 1989 the percentage of large multiple outlets developed out of town has increased from 65% to 75% with shared of food turnover between 1971 to 1992 changing drastically, with 85% of food turnover shares between 1971 to 81 before retail parks were mass developed, happening in town, and the remaining 15% at other areas out of town. In stark contrast, between 1987 and 1992, there has been a 45% decrease in in town food turnover, 10% happening at other out of town areas, and 55% of food turn over coming from retail parks suggesting a large amount of people flocking to retail parks out of town. Merry Hill centre with a floor space of 1.39 million square feet and an annual turnover of 390 million, has created 10,000 free parking spaces and has 350,000 visitors per week. This is perhaps due to increase car use, with 84% of shoppers arriving by car, and a population of 1.75 million within 30 minute driving distance of the retail park. This has caused for increased pollution in the Greenfield sites as most of the shoppers travel by car. The opening of mass retail centres such as Merry Hill has also caused 89 branches of stores to be closed by parent companies, while stores such as Marks and Spencers and Sainsburys all relocated to upper and ground floors of the retail park. Lastly, the RUF has faced a large amount of growth due to accessibility of previously mentioned retail parks, airports and industry which has all been suburbanised. An example of this is the Newcastle Great Park (NGP) which is a 484 hectare site of formerly greenfield land than now has 2500 new houses, 500 small/medium businesses, and major new roads to the AI (The AI western bypass, which re-routed traffic from the CBD to the fringes, increasing accessibility to and from the city centre.) at a total investment of 800 million. This has caused the redevelopment of major sporting venues such as the Newcastle Falcons rugby ground and suburban housing developments that were completed in the 1990s.

Varun Tumuluru 21/11/13