Gardiner V., Matthews H. The changing geography of the United Kingdom

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Weight

Related to diet and exercise, of course, is whether or not a person is overweight. Here we

are referring not to weight per se, but to weight-for-height. Because of this the same factors

that have led to a changing geography of height will have affected the geography of weight,

the influence of which we are reporting here. The changing geographies of both diet and

exercise are also important factors.

The data in Question box 12 indicates that it is bad for health to be very overweight or

underweight, as people in these categories lose, on average, two years. Those who are

overweight also lose one year, whereas those who are in the ‘normal’ weight range add one

year to their life expectancy. Victoria is underweight (as is usual for her cohort of students),

so she subtracts two years. Gary is overweight (as is usual for his) and subtracts one year.

This is the only question on which Gary has an advantage over Victoria.

Injecting drug use

Question 13: Are you an injecting illegal drug user?

If so subtract eight years.

The habit of injecting illegal drugs (we are primarily referring to heroin here) is harmful

to health in a number of ways. First, there is the direct danger of overdosing (which

may be deliberate or accidental). Second, there are also possible indirect effects on

health, through infection with diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis C. There have only

been a few studies of the death rates of injecting drug users, but these report that this

group have death rates much higher than the general population, with approximately a

2 per cent chance of dying per year (Frischer et al. 1997; Fugelstad et al. 1997). Neither

Gary nor Victoria have used heroin. Because only about 1 per cent of the population

inject illegal drugs their geography and its changes do not have a great effect on the

map of mortality.

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Relationships

Sexual activity

As we have already shown our social relationships affect our lives indirectly, but they also

affect our health in a direct sense. Perhaps surprisingly, few studies have looked at the

health effect of sexual activity. However, there is some evidence that sexual activity is

associated with longevity (Persson 1981; Davey Smith et al. 1997b). From the available

evidence it seems that for men it is the frequency of sex that is important, but for women it

is not merely the frequency but the enjoyment of sex that is important.

Question 14: For men: how often do you have sex? For women:

how often do you enjoy sex?

Alter your life expectancy by adding the following number of years:

Twice a week or more +1

So far Gary and Victoria have led very different and separate lives. However, they do

share some interests, and like many young people they both enjoy attending music festivals

during the summer months. During a hot and sultry day in late June (and perhaps under the

influence of a variety of legal and illegal but not injected drugs) they met at the Glastonbury

festival. They have been visiting each other regularly since, while waiting for their exam

results to be posted. They both add a year to their life expectancy as a result. The geography

of sex is not well known as the British public are particularly reticent to answer questions

on sexual behaviour, and as this was most true in the past we cannot be sure of regional

changes. However, we do know that sexual activity has increased and that the young are

more likely to have sex than the old (although we are unsure as to how much they enjoy it).

Marital status

Question 15: What is your current marital status?

Alter your life expectancy by adding or subtracting the following number of years:

Married/cohabiting/never married +1

Divorced/Widowed/Separated -1

Relationship can cause anguish as well as be pleasurable, however. There is some evidence

that those who experience the stress of divorce, separation or widowhood are at a greater

mortality risk (Ben-Shlomo et al. 1993). Both Gary and Victoria have never married, and

thus add a year to their life expectancy. If, however, they were to marry and subsequently to

separate or divorce (or one of them dies) then this situation would change. The geography

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of both marriage and divorce is well known and is highly correlated with younger people

living in urban areas, although rising unemployment is also known to increase individual

chances of separation.

Conclusion

In this chapter we have both described the polarising geography of mortality by area in

Britain in the 1990s and outlined those factors which are thought to contribute to

determining mortality most strongly. We have also paid attention to how the geography

of these various factors has been changing in recent years. There has been a geographical

‘filtering’ of the population of Britain over the last twenty years which has led to those

with better life chances being less likely than before to live near those with worse chances.

This process is likely to continue in the future and we have tried to indicate how you

personally will contribute to it both through your own social circumstances and behaviour

and in terms of how you affect other people’s chances. Personal behaviour, such as

encouraging someone to smoke, can have an effect, but collective behaviour can be far

more damaging. For instance, university admission systems which favour students from

privileged backgrounds will reinforce the status quo and hence help to build on the social

inequalities in Britain which underlie so much of the geography of health. Gary’s admission

to university is more likely to change his life chances in the future than any other single

socio-structural event.

You may think it unrealistic given their very different backgrounds that Gary and

Victoria should cross paths, let alone hit it off. You are right, it would be unusual, and it is

partly the rigidity and predictability of the class system in Britain which makes it possible

to produce estimates of people’s life expectancies given the answers to just fifteen questions

and knowing their age and sex. However, the polarisation of life chances in general in

Britain means that there are fewer people who are average and more people in Gary and

Victoria’s positions than before.

Having answered all the questions Gary’s life expectancy, at 57, was thirty-six

years less than Victoria’s at 93, but what were the most important factors in determining

this difference? Nine years of the difference was due to their differing social class

backgrounds and seven years was due to their differing ages, sexes and heights. There

is little therefore either of them could do about roughly half of the gap between them.

However, smoking alone accounted for seven of the years of difference, and drinking,

diet, exercise and weight for a further eight years. Being unemployed and living in a

northern region in privately rented accommodation accounted for the final five years of

difference.

Gary and Victoria are towards the extremes of the distribution of life expectancies in

Britain today, but it is extreme groups like this which will determine the most prominent

features of tomorrow’s map of mortality and extreme groups which are growing in size.

Gary and Victoria went to university in 1997 and graduate in the year 2000. People in

Gary’s situation will on average die in the year 2033, whereas Victoria will live until 2062.

Even if she does stay with Gary she is likely to spend almost as much of her life after he has

died as she spends with him.

This chapter has covered some of the factors by which life expectancy has been

found to vary. Others which could also have been included, had the data been available,

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include dangerous activities, such as riding a motorbike or rock climbing; dangerous jobs

such as deep-sea diving; family medical history; unprotected sex; mental state/depression;

breast feeding and birth weight. However, we hope we have included enough to illustrate

both how variable socially and geographically life chances are, how they are changing,

and how this variability will have an impact on the human geography of Britain for many

years to come.

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Shaw, M. (1998a) A Place Apart: the Spatial Polarisation of Mortality in Brighton, Bristol: University

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Further reading

Textbooks on geographical and sociological aspects of health include S.Curtis, and A.Taket

(1996) Health and Societies: Changing Perspectives (London: Arnold); K.Jones and G.Moon

(1987) Health, Disease and Society: an Introduction to Medical Geography (London:

Routledge); G.Moon and R. Gillespie (1995) Society and Health: an Introduction to Social

Science for Health Professionals (London: Routledge); S.Nettleton (1995) The Sociology

of Health and Illness (Cambridge: Polity Press); and S. Platt (ed.) (1993) Locating Health:

Sociological and Historical Explorations (London: Avebury).

Empirical work on health and society can be found in D.Dorling (1995) A New Social

Atlas of Britain (Chichester: Wiley); D.Dorling (1997) Death in Britain: How Local Mortality

Rates Have Changed 1950–1990 (York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation); D.Gordon and

C.Pantazis (1995) Breadline Britain in the 1990s (London: Ashgate); and M.Shaw, D.Dorling,

D.Gordon and G.Davey Smith (1999) The Widening Gap (Bristol: Policy Press).

For a more in-depth, and fascinating, discussion of possible explanations for

inequalities in health see R.Wilkinson (1996) Unhealthy Societies: the Afflictions of Inequality

(London: Routledge).

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Chapter 13

Leisure and consumption

David Crouch

Introduction

In this chapter the key changes in the geography of leisure are introduced and outlined. In the

last decade or so there have been significant changes in terms of the location of key types of

leisure which have had dramatic impacts on city and country alike. These changes have been

both physical and visual affecting the fabric and land-use of cities and countryside. Certain

kinds of leisure that two decades ago were in one kind of location in the UK now occupy very

different locations. In addition there have been important changes in the ‘symbolic landscape’ of

city and country. For example, the countryside has hitherto been regarded as a place of peace and

quiet, a location for gentle leisure activity that is also small scale. Recent developments have

reshaped the countryside in very significant ways, changing what we imagine the countryside to

be. There have also been changes in the symbolism of cities, most notably in the revamping of

many inner-city districts in response to new investment and demand for dance and music clubs,

with zones of decline being transformed into symbols of new youth culture.

This review of changes in the geography of leisure in the UK makes particular reference

to the process called consumption, which will be more fully explained in a later section (pp.

268–71). Here, suffice it to say, leisure has become much more commercialised during

recent years and this has led to new patterns and locations of leisure development and

activity. The attraction of UK leisure sites in terms of global tourism is an important influence

on the kinds of places and sites that have been developed. Tourism and leisure overlap as

activities and many attractions are valued for both.

This chapter consists of three main sections. The first identifies key aspects of the

geography of leisure and considers the shape and scale of change. The next interprets this

new geography through the lens of consumption, with particular reference to the

commercialisation of leisure in recent years. Last, I consider an alternative interpretation of

leisure which offers an enlarged focus to more traditional perspectives.

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A new geography of leisure in the UK

The new geography of leisure in the UK may be investigated under the following key

headings:

¿ a cluster of developments that may be labelled ‘themed places’;

¿ the revamping of shopping streets as shopping malls;

¿ new sports stadiums;

¿ the extension of intensive, ‘city-type’ leisure developments in the countryside;

¿ a new geography of heritage leisure;

¿ city-centre cultural revival;

¿ surprising microgeographies of virtual leisure.

Themed places

Theme parks have become a symbol of a new wave of leisure places. Especially designed

and built with leisure in mind these provide a ‘complete’ experience in terms of facilities

for all ages and a particular storyline to the whole site. The geography of theme parks

can be summarised by considering the three kinds of places where these have been

developed: city fringes, holiday areas and historic estates (Urry 1995; Harrison 1991).

A number of theme parks are sited on the fringes of cities and their urban motorway

peripheries, exemplified by Chessington World of Adventures and Thorpe Park, in the

south and west of London and just off the orbital M25 motorway. Other theme parks

have been located in traditional holiday areas, sometimes as part of the revamping of

these areas as the more traditional sites such as piers and sea fronts became less popular,

as in the example of Pleasurewood Hills in East Anglia. In the south-west of England

there are several theme parks, including Flambards, which capitalises on the TV series

of that name and is located without any particular local reason other than to capture the

market of people in the area on holiday. Another type of theme park location is that

attached to a historic landed estate, which is the case of Alton Towers in Staffordshire

(although the house has been demolished). These theme parks have a landscape that

combines children’s stories with history and fantasy. Sometimes they draw upon local

landscape features. This is especially the case of Center Parcs. These are larger than

theme parks and provide ‘complete’ holiday places, including residential facilities. In

general these are located in attractive countryside but where they can be hidden from

‘spoiling the view’, although all are imaginatively designed (WWFN/Tourism Concern

1993). The first two Centre Parcs were built in Thetford Forest, Norfolk and in Sherwood

Forest, Nottinghamshire during the 1980s. Further parks of this kind have been developed

at Lockinge Forest in Kent, near Bath and in the southern approach to the Lake District

(see Figure 13.1).

Shopping leisure

Two decades ago it would have seemed absurd to write of shopping as leisure except in the

case of very specific holiday-buying or window-shopping for a very special purchase, but

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FIGURE 13.1 Theme parks, Center Parcs and music festivals (examples cited in the text)

DAVID CROUCH

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shopping has profoundly changed. Stimulated by the financial success of the ‘mall’ in

most American cities and small towns, there has been considerable development of indoor-

style shopping places in the UK. These tend to provide more comfortable shopping areas,

with a strong emphasis on attractive design dovetailed to market research evidence of

what provides a good ambience in which to buy goods. Frequently these malls have

associated facilities such as cafés, restaurants and children’s play areas (Shields 1992).

Like theme parks, these take on a different character in different places, and many are

designed on one single idea or theme. Many shopping malls have been developed in the

run-down areas of older cities in response to the loss of local manufacturing buildings

and as part of revitalisation programmes, often with government financial support. The

example of Sheffield’s Don Valley is a good one. Like the earlier Gateshead Metro Centre

it combines a range of stylised buildings with associated facilities and indoor space. Both

are also policed for shoppers’ safety. In the 1990s most large cities have their shopping

mall. Another major location for these leisure-oriented malls is on the edge of major

cities. Here car accessibility is important as these malls are large scale and depend upon

large numbers of customers and mass shopping. The first mall around London was at

Brent Cross, once near the end of the M1, now at a junction with the newer M25. Others

have followed in similar locations around London. These centres are the result also of the

relocation of shopping from more congested suburban areas of the city, and have capitalised

on the growing attraction of shopping in contemporary cultural life (Chaney 1996; Miller

and Jackson 1998). More numerous are the supermarkets of the ‘big five’, many of which

have been relocated from city and suburb to urban fringes, for reasons mirroring the main

malls. Shopping malls have accrued alongside them a number of other leisure-related

buildings, often indoor, such as superbowls (Figure 13.2). A very different, more temporary

geography of leisure is the weekend car-boot sale, where people get together to buy and

sell in fields, school playgrounds and behind pubs (Gregson Crewe 1994).

New sports stadiums

A similar large-scale relocation of leisure has occurred in sport spectatorship. This is

particularly the case in the more mass-spectator sports like football. This sport has been

influenced by its increasing display on television which has increased rather than decreased

the number of people wanting to attend a match (Bale 1995). In order to increase their

ground capacities, a number of Premier League teams have sold their old sites, mostly

located in the middle of a city or town where they were first established often a century

ago, and developed larger, new sites with very stylish designs on the edges of cities.

These developments, like the new out-of-town shopping malls and theme parks, have

often attracted new developments nearby, a further example of the construction of larger

centres of leisure.

Leisure and the countryside

Increasingly, intensive leisure sites have been developed outside the city altogether

and, in consequence, the countryside has become dramatically changed in many different

ways. This results from the commercialisation of countryside leisure. The range of

active sports participated across rural areas includes angling (still the most popular),

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cycling, archery, golf, motor cycling, mountaineering, orienteering, polo, shooting and

walking, four-wheel driving and many others (Clark et al. 1994). Many of these activities

tend to be located in the zones within about fifty miles of an urban area where they are

able to draw weekend and Sunday afternoon visitors, which includes green belts and

other urban fringes, including Community Forests. Some of these activities are located

away from urban areas but most are still accessible by the main motorway network.

These sites located in ‘deep country’ and around the coasts depend upon particular

physical attractions such as surface water, higher ground, flat land, deep ravines and

river valleys.

Some pursuits have developed a more specialist geography. Golf has expanded beyond

its traditional sites to the perimeters of many cities and towns. It also occupies an increasingly

dispersed geography, as many people are now more prepared to travel and prefer a more

rural location for the game (Cloke 1993; Crouch 1992, 1997).

Pop festivals and raves signify a new temporary rural geography of leisure. Here

warehouses and large barns outside the city or large fields and abandoned aerodromes

have spawned a nationwide diary of music festivals: Phoenix, Glastonbury, Reading,

Chelmsford and Leeds V98, (Figures 13.1, 13.2). The environment has become a much

more significant part of the geography of leisure, although this is often an adjusted,

managed ‘nature’ (Urry 1995). This has been a powerful influence on the emergence of

new kinds of places to see ‘nature’: butterfly farms, country zoos, wildlife parks and

farm leisure centres. Many of these ‘nature’ sites are located in more frequented ‘tourist’

areas. Farms have acquired an increasing leisure role too, and farms like these are located

especially in holiday districts such as the south-west of England, but also more scattered

in locally popular areas. Skiing is another outdoor sport which is growing in popularity.

Ironically skiing is also a cause for environmental concern as a result of the damage

caused by the overuse of sites and associated development. This activity is especially

limited by physical conditions, although the enthusiasm for skiing has produced a number

of urban and suburban edge artificial ski slopes, for example the Beckton Alps in

London’s East End. Holiday homes and caravan parks continue to be popular options

for many people. Their geography is guided as much by available land as anything else

(Clark et al. 1994).

A new geography of heritage leisure

The geography of leisure has been changed significantly as a result of the development of

‘heritage leisure’. The attraction of visiting heritage sites has been fuelled by the increasing

interest in history. Many sites are surrounded by myth or memory. These sites are located in

cities, towns and in rural areas. Many have been developed (invented) to capitalise on tourist

potential, and some have been renovated by leisure enthusiasts, exemplified in the revival

of old railway lines. Story-telling about domestic and working lives by previous generations

has stimulated industrial heritage sites, exemplified in Ironbridge and also the Rhondda

coal-mine themed site in South Wales. There are key heritage sites, the most well known

including Stonehenge and Hadrian’s Wall. These two in particular are examples of World

Heritage Sites—that is, places of international heritage importance—and their visitors are

drawn from across the world. Special investment is directed to places like these to make