Showing posts with label Cultural Landscape. Show all posts

Narborough Road in Leicester

Narborough Road in the late 40s
Narborough Road in Leicester was named the most diverse street in Britain by academics. The shooting street has shop owners from 23 different countries including Zambia, Uganda and Tanzania. There are also shopkeepers from eastern European counties, a fish and chip shop boss from Hong Kong and a bookmakers ran by a Canadian couple. Researchers have named it the most diverse street in the UK after discovering the owners of its 220 shop units come from 23 different counties. Members of the Braunstone History Group have spoken about how the area has changed over the years. Helen Caterwell said: 'Narborough has changed from being aa residential area to lots of shops over the years. We've seen different communities come in from different nationalities and I think it's actually quite and interesting area to be in because of the diversity of people.'

Academics at London School of Economics (LSE) admitted they were amazed at the number of nationalities when they visited the road in a suburb of south west Leicester. Dr Suzanne Hall, lead researcher, said 'What is interesting is about Narborough Road is that it's not a Little Italy or Chinatown'. 'It is the world in a microcosm, all these people, from all these different place, different cultures, living cheek by jowl, working wth each other and living in harmony. It is really an incredible array of nationalities in one place.'

Narborough Road as it is today 
The countries represented on the steer are Britain, Uganda, Lithuania, Canada, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Iran, China, Tanzania, Poland, India, Cameroon, Turkey, Afghanistan, Kenya, Pakistan, Zambia, Jamaica, Kurdistan, Iraq, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Malawi.

Tajinder Reehal, 55, who was born in Nairobi, Kenya and runs Scorpion smoking shop said: 'I've seen the street change in the past 16 years. It's come alive. More bars, more restaurants. It's much more vibrant. I've seen the different nationalities come and go, too. Lots of Polish and Eastern Europeans now, but before that, it seemed to be mainly Turkish and Spanish.'
'I like it. It gives the area its identity. It feels cosmopolitan. You don't have to go into Leicester if you live here. It's all on your doorstep.'

Researchers found that shopkeepers on the street also trade skills with each other. The Canadian couple who run the bookmakers get a free haircut or free meal at a restaurant because they help other owner fill in the forms.

Lloyd Wright, who is half English and half Polish and runs a music shop said: 'There are people here from all over the world, but there's no tension. It's a very relaxed atmosphere. I'm proud to tell people this is wheel I'm from.'

I think that Narborough Road is the perfect example of an ethnoscape. The road shows the effects that migration of people across cultures and borders has led to. This is a cultural landscape that you can read from the shops and the different people who work on the street. It is a mini community of people from a variety of cultures working in harmony.

Why is Leicester so diverse? 
The city became four times lager as people moved to Leicester during the industrial revolution to find work in the shoe and textile mills. After Indian population grew in the post-war years, the authorities took out adverts to discourage Ugandan Asians from moving there in 1972 during Idi Amin's dictatorship. But the adverts have been heavily criticised by community leaders and they actually had the opposite effect encouraging the group to come to the city.
The 2011 census showed that less than half of Leicester's population described themselves as White British. The census reported: 'Of the 110,843 born abroad, 36% arrived since 2004.'

See the article written by the Daily Mail here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3432300/How-things-used-Evocative-pictures-street-named-diverse-Britain-looked-years-ago.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3429838/Most-multi-national-high-street-Britain-boasts-business-owners-23-different-countries.html

Dr Suzanne Hall (LSE): http://www.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/Experts/profile.aspx?KeyValue=s.m.hall@lse.ac.uk

Cultural Landscape and the 4 -Scapes



A cultural landscape can range from thousands of acres of rural tracks to a small house with a front garden. Like historic buildings and districts, thesis locations reveal aspects of our country's origins and development. Cultural landscapes revel a lot about our evolving relationship with the natural world. It is defined as "a geographical area, including both cultural and natural resources and the wildlife or domestic animals therein, associated with a historic event, activity, person(s) or exhibiting other cultural or aesthetic values". There are four main types of cultural landscapes:
1. Historic Designed Landscape: a landscape which was consciously designed by a landscape architect or horticulturalist. The landscape may be associated with a significant person(s), trend or event landscape architecture. Aesthetic values play a significant role.
2. Historic Vernacular Landscape: a landscape which has evolved through use by people whose activities or occupancy shaped that landscape. Through social/cultural attitudes of an individual, family or community, the landscape reflects the physical, biological and cultural character if those everyday lives.
3. Historic Sites: a landscape significant for its association with a historic event,  activity or person.
4. Ethnographic Landscape: a landscape containing a variety of natural and cultural resources that associated people defines as heritage resources.

The World Heritage Committee define a cultural landscape as the "cultural properties [that] represent the combined works of nature and of man". A cultural landscape can be...
1. "a landscape designed and created intentionally by man"
2. an "organic evolved landscape" which may be a "relic (or fossil) landscape" or a "continuing landscape".
3. an "associative cultural landscape" which may be valued because of the "religious artistic or cultural associations of the natural element".

St Kilda in the United Kingdom is an example of a traditional cultural landscape. St Kilda is a volcanic archipelago. It has some of the highest cliffs in Europe, which are home to large colonies of rare and endangered species of birds such as Puffins. Uninhabited since 1930 St Kilda bears the evidence of more than 2000 years of human occupation in the extreme conditions prevalent in the Hebrides. The island is preserved from when the last occupants left the island, and is a cultural attribute.

Arjun Appadurai looked at models of cultural flows and came with the 4 -scapes, these are ethnoscape, technoscape, finanscape and mediascape.
Ethnoscape:
He defined an ethnoscape as a "landscape(s) of a persons who constitute the shifting world in which we live in;""tourists, immigrants, refugees, exiles, guest workers and other moving groups". In its simplest form an ethnoscape is the migration of people across cultures and borders. Examples of this are tourists, immigrants and refugees.
Technoscape:
A technoscape is the "global configuration of technology" which now moves quickly across previously imperious boundaries". Simply it is cultural interactions due to advancing technology.
Finanscape:
A finanscape describes the movements of capital across different borders. It  describes how money moves around the world.
Mediascape:
A mediascape looks at the use of the media that shapes the way in which we interpret out imagined world. This can be through digital media such as TV or film, or through other forms of media such as print-based media like newspapers and magazines. These different "-scapes" can come together and interact to create an ideascape. The definition of an ideascape is ideas formed through the combination of the other 4 "-scapes". How they interact can be shown through the cultural web. Appadurai's idea of the different -scapes present culture and globalisation as flowing and being interactive instead of being static.

Landscapes can be 'read'- we can deduce the landscapes meaning by interpreting symbols and features used in their creation. Symbols could include the placement of monuments/religious structures; relationships between the buildings; the architecture, symbols and art used; and the relationship between natural and man made features.

What is Culture?




Culture;
Culture is a complex concept, with multiple meanings but universal importance to human populations. In many parts of the world consumption is the dominant, but not only, culture. Culture varies spatially and has a distinct geography, with some areas being relatively homogenous while others offer greater diversity. Large urban areas often produce diversity, which is reflected in the population, services and built environment of cities. Attitudes to cultural diversity differ, both personal and political/national.

Cultural Patterns;
Globalisation is seen by some as a key process in driving culture towards a global model, and media TNCs and communications technology aid this process. However, the pattern is complex and localised cultures do survive and new cultures can be generated. Culture, to some extent, determines our attitude to the wider environment in terms of consumption, conservation, exploitation and protection. Attitudes to the environment differ between cultures; however the dominance of today's consumer capitalism is difficult to resolve with pressing global environmental concerns.

The Oxford Advanced Learners dictionary defines culture as "the ideas, customs and social behaviour  of a particular peoples or society". It also defines culture as "the attitudes and behaviour characteristic of a particular social group." This shows that culture can exist on a variety of scales from global beliefs to isolated tribes of less than 100 people. Culture is everything that humans do; it includes an endless range of thing. "It includes aspects of society, politics and the economy, and can be categorised by a range of different (and sometimes overlapping) groups". Cultures can take a variety of forms and can be considered mainstream, sub- or counter-. Culture has its own strand of geography called cultural geography which explores context and culture, looking at how cultural activities and contexts interact with each other and why cultural activities occur in particular ways.

Culture is all around us, we are all part of different cultures and live in a world where traces of past and current cultures surround us. Take Nelsons column for example this is a cultural trace, it represents the military and power of the British Empire. The Column is supposed to inspire pride and patriotism for the country. Even though is was built over 200 years ago. Trafalgar Square and Nelsons Column are still places where many national events and celebrations are held. However, it is also a place where anarchy occurs and protests take place, such as the 1990 poll tax riots. Political artist Banksy recognised this by stencilling "designated riot area" on the plinth, intentionally playing with the notions of power and authority. This shows that Trafalgar Square is not simply a place of patriotism, but a place of composite cultural ideas, activities and histories.
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