Thursday 18 November 2010
how sustainable is my community?
The community that I currently live in is Kempston North in Bedfordshire. It has a population of over 5600 people with 3007 people per square kilometer. The area features a park, a lower school, a local swimming pool and a Sainsbury's shop.
Kempston North is only a small part of the whole town that I live in but I have been around some areas on Kempston South where the majority of the suburbs are. However I have only Lived in Kempston for just under 2 years after living in Queen's Park in Bedford for around 12 years.
In my view I feel that Kempston is a fairly sustainable community as it is ethnically diverse and has a slightly lower than average crime rate compared to the Bedford Borough area, and also a fairly decent life expectancy of 80 years. However, around 20% of the Kempston North area is Deprived, and having 13% of the population on out-of-work benefits, which is slightly higher than the Bedford Borough area. for schoolchildren in year 6 the percentage of obese children is fairly high at around 18% of the total population of year 6 children.
In conclusion I can agree that Kempston, in General, is averagely sustainable since it has all the mod cons for a sustainable community such as schools, hospitals and shops, however, like the rest of the UK, it suffers from child obesity, urban deprivation and unemployment.
below is the website where i got this information from:
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bedford.gov.uk%2Fcouncil_and_democracy%2Fstatistics_and_census%2Fidoc.ashx%3Fdocid%3D8c8af03d-8d1c-4833-bedf-ecedbbddb84c%26version%3D-1&rct=j&q=kempston%20age%20structure&ei=I6zlTOaLIIaxhQexqICuCQ&usg=AFQjCNFzC1r7T6Tc2vVCCFTTyAYqS1G94g&sig2=Lz10w7wcfyAXZEslcIjxEg&cad=rja
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Hi Matt,
ReplyDeleteI think what you have said is very good, it shows you've done your research and I like the fact that you have bought diversity and child obesity into your blog. I would not have ever considered these two factors in determining how sustainable a community is before now. I also like the fact that you have compared your current community to your previous one as it gives the reader some clarity on what is perhaps acceptable when assessing the sustainability of two different communities.
Firstly I must say, this has been a very informative blog and I've enjoyed reading it. I would however like to enquire as to how you personally would go about improving the sustainability of your area? Are there any ideas you have that have not yet been incorporated?
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ethan Robinson