Whythawk was contracted to provide data and analysis using our commercial location data project to support the planning policy research team led by Urban Foresight and UCL.
Our solution
Our project was defined by two main research components: a quantitative assessment, and a qualitative review of trends, each to be integrated into a set of policy recommendations.
The quantitative assessment required definitions that may only be revealed during the qualitative analysis. Most simply: what is a quantitative definition of a successful town centre? There are also more than 500 named high streets and town centres officially defined by the GLA.
During the initial development of the quantitative analysis, we used the official high streets definitions and produce a set of historical cluster charts for a subset of high streets / town centres. These will be used as part of input reference material for the qualitative analysis.
Once a refined definition has been quantified, we reran the cluster analysis to see how this changed our understanding.
Outcomes
Our cluster analysis revealed not only the atomisation of the official high street, but also nearby clusters indicating new emergent activity. We provided these data to support the planning policy recommendations arising out of the rest of the research process.
