Location, location, location

What’s on where you live! Finding activities nearby is the key offer of most positive activity websites. But working with geographical locations isn’t as simple as it may seem – as we’re currently exploring on the blog.

In addition to the challenge of knowing which geographical area an activity falls into – there is the challenge of young people living within multiple geographies

When we were planning the development of a Social Network Site application for Plings (more news on that soon) we used a user-centred design process which involved splitting into groups and coming up with imagined profiles (‘characters’) of young people who might engage with Plings. As it turned out – two of the three young people we imagined lived across multiple areas.

In one case, we were thinking about young people who live between two homes – perhaps because their parents have separated. Weekdays and weekends may be lived in entirely different areas of the country, or at least across local authority borders.

In the second case, we reflected upon young people who may live in one town – but hang out in another. Catching the train from Nuneaton into Leicester every weekend perhaps, in order to find something to do; or a young person who lives in Liphook, but attends school in Havant, and so spends most weekend in Petersfield, roughly mid-way between, in order to meet up with friends.

The more we’ve thought about cases like this – the more have come up – from the 16 year old who lives in one town, but works in another, to the 18 year old heading away to University, but still wanting to find things to do during the University holiday both at home and in their University town.

When you consider cases like this, the proposition ‘Find activities near where you live’ turns out not to be quite the right one. And if all the data is fragmented by local authority boundaries it gets tricky to provide young people with a clear view of all the possible positive activities open to them across the multiple, and far from neat, geographies they live within.

If you’re involved in a positive activities information service – what geographical questions do you ask those seeking information?

Dividing it up…

I spent a bit of time recently looking at some of the various geographic boundaries that come into play when thinking about a place to go.  As a starter, I picked Gatley Young People’s Centre and found three aspects:

1 – Address Geography

Gatley Young People's Centre

Gatley YP Centre is found at:

Church Road
Cheadle
Cheshire
SK8 4NQ

So – the address tells me three things about where this venue is:

1. I presume that this is in a place called Gatley
2. Which is within a town called Cheadle
3. Which is in a county called Cheshire

Gatley YP Centre - local authorities and wards

1. The ward known as Cheadle and Gatley
2. The local authority known as Stockport
3. The Metropolitan Sub Region known as Greater Manchester

Therefore, we have a mismatch between what the Post Office tell us, and what the official administrative geography tells us.

3 – Postcode Geography

Gately YP Centre - administrative + postcode boundaries

I might be splitting hairs (I do like maps!) but I then pulled up the postal boundaries to get a fuller picture of where this venue sat.  This would include:

When is a 00 not a 00??

We have been trying to fathom out the coding system for the Counties and Metropoliatan districts recently – riveting stuff indeed!

As you will no doubt have spotted our listings on the Places channel situates Manchester in Lancashire, and parts of London in Middlesex, etc – which is not how our land is organised and administered!

The problem lies in the coding system we have for the metro areas. All of them begin with a 00 – which means it is difficult to automatically piece places together. Anyway, with some luck, and clever spreadsheets, we are near a solution – to put our geography back in 2007 rather than 1974!