Exploring our City

On Star Wars Day May 4th, the Year 12 IB Geography class went on a field trip to Manama to investigate the question ‘To what extent does the Central Business District of Manama conform to the Core and Frame Concept’, as part of our Internal Assessment. The Core and Frame Concept is a generalised model which states that the CBD of a city has an inner ‘core’ and an outer ‘frame’ as well as a ‘zone of discard & assimilation’ and links to the Urban Environments section of our course. The first step in answering this question was to go to Manama’s CBD and collect data. We conducted a transect from the Financial Harbour through to the inner heart of Manama Souq, completing noting observations and measurements on data sheets that we had designed prior to the trip. In the Core and Frame Concept, the inner core is characterised by high rise buildings, a high concentration of commercial offices and chain stores and high levels of traffic congestion, whereas the peripheral frame typically features local businesses, social services and residential areas. During the field trip, we collected primary data on environmental quality, building height, land use and other aspects of our surroundings, through both quantitative and qualitative methods. We first walked from one end of the Souq to the other along Bab Al Bahrain Avenue, diverging off the transect at times to record information. Next, we went to the Financial Harbour, and thanks to Mr Hobday were lucky enough to go up one of the Harbour Towers and get an aerial perspective of the area we were assessing. I thought that it was particularly interesting to see how such large differences exist in the relatively small capital. The next phase of the Internal Assessment is to collate, interpret and analyse this data in our written assessment to conclude whether or not the CBD of Manama does have features which correspond to the Core and Frame Model. ~ Faye Weaver, 12B