Has the development of Wembley improved the area?
On our recent AQA human geography field trip to Wembley, we investigated whether the urbanisation in Wembley has positively or negatively impacted the area. Wembley has gone through lots of significant changes throughout recent years, including the construction of Wembley stadium, the demolition of the iconic twin towers, new housing developments, and much more accessible transport links. And we were aiming to assess whether these changes have benefited the community and environment.
Since the early 2000s, Wembley has seen a lot of regeneration to improve the area. It used to be known for old factories and poor-quality housing, but new plans were made to change that. Important developments include Wembley Stadium, the London Designer Outlet, and new high-rise flats. These changes were made to create jobs, bring in more visitors, and improve living conditions for local people.
On our field trip to Wembley, we used a range of human geography fieldwork methods to find out if regeneration has improved the area. We carried out environmental quality surveys to assess how clean, attractive, and safe different locations were. We also did questionnaires with residents and visitors to gather their opinions about the changes. These methods gave us both quantitative data (numbers and scores) and qualitative data (opinions and descriptions), which helped us understand how successful the regeneration has been.
Our findings suggested that development has brought mostly positive changes. As the areas that were closer to Wembley stadium were cleaner and more developed with more housing and job opportunities in those areas, however areas further away from Wembley stadium were dirty, unsafe, and undeveloped. When we questioned the locals, the wider majority reported that Wembley is diverse, vibrant, and attractive while the minority said that it was dirty, boring, unsafe, and lots of traffic.
Overall, our fieldwork showed that the regeneration of Wembley has had a mostly positive impact, especially in areas close to key developments like Wembley Stadium. These areas were cleaner, safer, and had better housing and job opportunities. However, areas further away from the stadium have not seen the same level of improvement and were often less clean and more run-down. Most of the people we surveyed had a positive view of the changes, describing Wembley as diverse and vibrant, although some still had concerns about traffic, safety, and cleanliness. This suggests that while regeneration has helped Wembley in many ways, the benefits have not been felt equally across the whole area.
Sidrah H Year 11
