UK Places Changing

Not everywhere at once

Some UK towns have more people, more jobs and more money than they did forty years ago. Others have fewer of all three, and a few lost the single industry they were built around. This topic is about why. Two things drive almost all of it: where people move, and what kind of work the country does. Get those two, and the changes stop looking like bad luck and start looking like a pattern.

Two kinds of place

The UK's population and its economy are not spread evenly, and the differences reinforce each other.

Which describes a rural area?

Which of these is most characteristic of the economy and population of a UK rural area?

• An ageing population, because young adults leave for work and study elsewhere
• Most people working in the primary sector
• No services of any kind
• No migration into or out of the area

Four kinds of work

The single most useful model in this topic. UK employment has moved along it, roughly left to right, over two centuries:

Match each job to its sector

Plot the trend

This graph shows secondary-sector employment in Northbrook, an invented UK town, in thousands of workers (up) against the decade (across, 1 = 1980, 2 = 1990, 3 = 2000, 4 = 2010). The first three decades are plotted: 8, then 6, then 4. Plot the value you would expect for 2010 if the same trend continued.

Why did manufacturing employment fall?

Select the TWO that help explain the fall in UK secondary-sector employment.

• The same goods could be produced more cheaply in other countries
• Machines and automation replaced many of the jobs that remained
• The UK population fell sharply over the same period
• People stopped wanting manufactured goods

Money and people move too

Two more forces sit behind the sectoral shift, and both appear in the specification by name. Migration works in two directions at once: international migrants arrive mainly in cities, while inside the UK young adults move from rural and post-industrial areas towards work, and some older households move the other way. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is a firm based abroad investing here - an overseas car manufacturer building a UK plant, for instance. It brings jobs, and it leaves the region depending on decisions taken in another country. And the exam instruction that decides your grade: name a place. "Manufacturing declined" earns almost nothing. The same sentence attached to a specific UK town, with what replaced the jobs, earns the question.

Where is the sectoral shift?

Below is a profile of Northbrook, the invented town from the graph. Tap the sentence that shows the sectoral shift.

• Northbrook sits in a valley in northern England.
• It grew around a single steelworks that employed four thousand people.
• The works closed in 1984, and the largest employers today are a hospital, a college and a distribution centre.
• The town has held a market every Saturday since the 1700s.

Order the chain

Put the chain from a global change to a local one into order.

• Improvements in transport and communication make producing goods overseas cheaper
• UK factories close, and secondary-sector employment falls
• Towns built around a single employer lose their main source of work
• Service and knowledge jobs grow instead, mostly in and around cities
• Young adults move from those towns and from rural areas towards the new jobs
• The places left behind have an older age profile and fewer services

Explain three places

Three UK places, each described without being named. Say what is happening in each.

• A village forty minutes from a city. The number of retired residents is rising and the primary school is closing.
• A town whose largest employer was a factory until the 1980s. Today its largest employers are a hospital and a distribution centre.
• An overseas car manufacturer opens a large plant in a UK region with high unemployment.

The shift between sectors

The UK's employment has moved from the _____ sector, through secondary and tertiary, towards a growing _____ sector of research and information work. Manufacturing employment _____ sharply from the 1970s, partly because goods could be made more cheaply overseas and partly because machines replaced workers. _____ direct investment brings jobs from firms based abroad. And in the exam, always tie the shift to a _____ place rather than describing it in the abstract.

Why your UK place grew or declined

Explain why some UK places have grown while others have declined over the last fifty years. Use a real UK place you have studied, not the invented town from this module.

• Name the place, and say what kind of work it depended on
• Explain the sectoral shift that affected it, using the correct sector names
• Say what migration did to its population, and in which direction
• Include either globalisation or foreign direct investment, and say what it changed there