Drawing on What You Have Learned from the Making Social Lives Dvd and Learning Companion 1, Describe Some Inequalities on City Road.

TMA 01.

Drawing on what you have learned from the Making Social Lives DVD and Learning Companion 1, describe some inequalities on City Road.

City Road in Cardiff is like many other streets, but at the same time, with its own unique qualities. In this essay I am going to be describing some of the inequalities that I have observed on City Road. The term inequality, in relation to the social sciences, is defined as the unequal distribution of valued social resources within a society, or sometimes between societies. Examples of such resources could include access to cultural facilities or education, time, money, and many more.
The inequalities that I will be describing are; the competition for use of the road between pedestrians and motorists (Blakely et al, 2009, p.21), the use of City Road at Night, and the Mackintosh Centre, which is a Sports Centre.
Being such a busy street there is a constant flow of traffic from people accessing the street and from others who use the road as a route to get to other places. Also, with all the shops, restaurants and services etc in the street itself, there is no shortage of pedestrians. This means that with so many cars and people in the same place at the same time, there is a constant battle between the two for the use of space. When you look at the design of City Road, it seems apparent that it favors the pedestrians over the motorists.
Apart from the obvious features such as traffic lights and June Rogers, the lollipop lady, there are also strategically place bollards and red tarmac around the island crossings. The purpose of these is to either stop motorists parking, or driving, in certain areas. For example, if motorists park on the pavements it makes it difficult for pedestrians to access the street, especially parents with pushchairs and prams and wheelchair users (Material Lives, 2009, scene 1). With these measures in place, it creates an inequality between motorists and pedestrians, with the pedestrians being...