Three’s a crowd? Not on the high street. A look at clustering in UK towns and cities.

Settlement geography is a popular topic at GCSE and it invariably requires an understanding of land use. Furthermore, this part of the topic is often the focus of field work investigations. One interesting feature of many high streets in UK towns and cities is clustering whereby shops or services of similar function are found side-by-side or in close proximity to one another. You may be able to illustrate this phenomenon easily in your local area (and if you can take a group out to see it firsthand then even better) but if you are in the classroom Google Street View is a useful tool.

In the link below to Google Street View, you can pick out several mobile phone shops and a few banks within metres of each other on Northgate Street, Gloucester.

Northgate Street clustering

Students should be asking themselves why shops and services might cluster in a small area. What are the advantages? Are there any disadvantages?

Below is a story from the Gloucester Citizen which describes the clustering of barber shops in Barton Street, Gloucester. It also gives an insight into the rich mix of ethnicities in the area which enables the businesses to thrive.

Welcome to barber and hair salon city

However, there has been concern about clustering of certain types of outlet damaging our high streets – namely betting shops. The following story from Radio 4’s Today programme shows how sometimes clustering can be seen as “blighting” town centres. Is clustering “killing the high street?”