Dd101 Tma01

TMA01 Page 1.

How do material things on City Road favour the activities of some groups of people over others?

I was introduced to City Road and found it to be similar to some roads that I’ve experienced when living in Edinburgh in the past 7 years. It is a main road into Cardiff with a mixture of independent shops, restaurants, pubs and cafes with a Tesco and Spar store as the two recognisable elements. (City Road 2009, scene 1)

I looked at the traffic and how it flowed through the streets, mixing with the pedestrians at death junction (City road 2009, scene 2), the people using the street during daytime hours and the people using the street at weekends and evening times.

As with a lot of streets in the UK, there are many different uses at different times of day and City Road was a good example of this. The morning shoppers mixing with the morning rush hour traffic, the people working behind the scenes to keep City road running, the people using the cafes in the afternoon, the mackintosh sports centre being used as a market on Saturdays and the nightlife once evening comes.

I noticed the usage of material things in the morning rush hour, the traffic lights to enable mothers and children to navigate the road safely, the island in the centre of the road enabling pedestrians to cross as the traffic is diverted to a safe distance, the street signs showing where parking is allowed and for how long, bollards to stop traffic from mounting and parking along the pavement and could understand how these items work with people in keeping an order to the street.

The traffic material benefits the road users in keeping traffic flowing, directing them to the lanes they need to be in, when they need to stop, when they need to go etc., however the bollards could be a potential difficulty to wheelchair users or pram pushing mothers however, it is interesting to note that the street furniture is all painted in the same colour, with white bands around...