OxfordAQA International A-level Geography (9635): 3.4.1 Changing places – Study Guide

This guide covers section 3.4.1, Changing places, of the OxfordAQA International AS and A-level Geography (9635) specification, Version 3.2. It works through 3.4.1.1 to 3.4.1.5: the nature and importance of places, relationships and connections, meaning and representation, quantitative and qualitative skills, and the two place studies. The specification places Changing places in Unit 4: Human geography 2, a 1 hour 30 minute written exam in which you answer all questions in Section A (40 marks) and Section B (40 marks); Unit 4 is worth 20% of the full International A-level.

Use it with the condensed revision notes and the practice questions. For the whole course, see the OxfordAQA A-level Geography hub and tick off each point on the OxfordAQA A-level Geography checklist.

Coverage table

Syllabus reference	What you must know or be able to do (from the document)	Where assessed
3.4.1.1	The concept of place and its importance in human life; insider and outsider perspectives; near and far places; directly experienced and media-experienced places; endogenous and exogenous factors in place character	Unit 4, Section A
3.4.1.2	How relationships and connections affect continuity and change in places, at scales from local to global: demographic and cultural change, economic change and social inequalities, flows of people, goods, capital and ideas, external forces (government policies, multinational corporations), past and present connections; how your own life and others’ lives are affected by continuity and change	Unit 4, Section A
3.4.1.3	How people perceive and attach meaning to places; how governments, corporations and community groups try to create place-meanings; formal versus informal representations; how past and present development is implicit in present meanings	Unit 4, Section A
3.4.1.4	Quantitative data, including geospatial data, to investigate place; particular weight on qualitative approaches and on critical analysis of media	Unit 4, Section A
3.4.1.5	A local place study and a contrasting, distant place study, each on lived experience past and present and on changing demographic, cultural and economic characteristics	Unit 4, Section A

The specification also says study of this section must use two contrasting places, one of them local. The local place may be a locality, neighbourhood or small community, urban or rural. The contrasting place must differ significantly in economic development, population density, cultural background or political and economic organisation.

3.4.1.1 The nature and importance of places

Space and place. Space is a location without attached meaning. Place is space that people have given meaning to through experience, memory and attachment. Yi-Fu Tuan made this distinction central in Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (1977). He also used the term topophilia, the affective bond between people and place, in Topophilia (1974).

A useful framework comes from John Agnew (Place and Politics, 1987). He saw place as three things together:

• Location – where the place is, and how it links to other places.
• Locale – the material setting for social life: streets, homes, markets, schools.
• Sense of place – the feelings and meanings people attach to it.

The specification does not name these writers; treat them as optional tools.

Why place matters. Places shape identity, belonging, health, opportunity and safety. Losing a familiar place, through demolition, displacement or rapid change, can cause real distress. That is why the specification asks how your own life and the lives of others are affected by continuity and change.

Insider and outsider perspectives. An insider lives in or belongs to a place and knows it through daily routines and memories. An outsider sees it from beyond: a tourist, an investor, a planner or a viewer of a news report. Edward Relph (Place and Placelessness, 1976) described degrees of insideness and outsideness, from “existential insideness” (a place felt as home without thinking about it) to “existential outsideness” (feeling alienated from a place). A person can be an insider in one place and an outsider in the next street.

Categories of place.

• Near and far places. Near places are physically or emotionally close; far places are distant. Distance is not only physical: a relative’s home town abroad may feel nearer than a district across your own city.
• Directly experienced places and places experienced only through the media. Most people form views of far places from film, news, social media and advertising. These views are often partial or stereotyped.

Factors contributing to character.

• Endogenous (internal) factors: location, topography, physical geography, land use, built environment and infrastructure, demographic and economic characteristics.
• Exogenous factors: relationships with other places.

Evaluation. The internal/external split is useful but artificial. A port’s location (endogenous) only matters because of trade routes (exogenous). Doreen Massey’s essay “A global sense of place” (Marxism Today, 1991) argued that places are not bounded and fixed. They are meeting points of flows and relations stretching far beyond them, so each place is unique because of its particular mix of connections. Critics of a purely relational view point out that physical setting and inherited buildings still constrain what a place can become.

Worked paragraph (knowledge, application, analysis, evaluation). The character of a place is the product of endogenous and exogenous factors working together [knowledge]. In the Walled City of Lahore, the dense lanes and Mughal-era buildings are endogenous factors, but the area’s role as a wholesale trading hub depends on links to the rest of the city and beyond [application]. The built environment therefore shapes how flows arrive, while the flows decide how the built environment is used [analysis]. This suggests the endogenous/exogenous distinction is best treated as a starting point, since neither set of factors explains the place on its own [evaluation].

3.4.1.2 Relationships and connections

The specification asks how relationships and connections change people and place, with a focus on five areas. Work through each using your two place studies, and other places where needed.

1. Changing demographic and cultural characteristics. Migration, ageing, birth rates and household change alter who lives in a place, and with them shops, worship, food and language. Newham, the London borough containing Stratford, had 351,030 residents at the 2021 census. Its largest groups were Bangladeshi (15.9%), White British (14.8%), White Other (14.6%), African (11.6%) and Indian (11%).

2. Economic change and social inequalities. Deindustrialisation, the rise of services, regeneration and gentrification change jobs and wealth. Change rarely benefits everyone equally. A 2017 report found that 36% of employees in Newham were in low-paid work, the highest share of any London borough.

3. Flows of people, goods, capital and ideas, at all scales. Commuters, migrants, tourists, investment, remittances, trade goods and cultural ideas all pass through places and reshape them.

4. External forces. Government policies and the decisions of multinational corporations (MNCs) operate from beyond the place. Examples: a national government designating a regeneration zone; a retailer choosing a site for a large shopping centre; a firm closing a factory.

5. Past and present connections. Historic trade, empire, railways and migration chains embed places in regional, national and global systems. These links leave a legacy in buildings, street names, communities and economies.

Key terms. Continuity: features that persist through change. Gentrification: arrival of higher-income residents and businesses, often raising costs and displacing existing residents. Regeneration: deliberate improvement of a declining area. Globalisation: growing interconnection through flows (covered in depth in the globalisation revision notes).

Worked paragraph. External forces can transform a place quickly [knowledge]. In Stratford, the decision to hold the 2012 Olympic Games in east London brought state-led investment in a 560-acre park, and Westfield Stratford City opened in September 2011 next to the site [application]. These decisions came from national government, the Mayor of London and a property company rather than residents, so the direction of change was set from outside [analysis]. However, Stratford had been shaped by external forces before, notably the railway works established there in 1847, so the Olympics continued a long pattern rather than starting one [evaluation].

3.4.1.3 Meaning and representation

Perception and attachment. People perceive the same place differently depending on age, gender, ethnicity, religion, class, length of residence and ability. A market street may mean livelihood to a trader, nostalgia to an older resident and danger to a parent. Everyday place meanings are bound up with these identities.

External agencies creating place-meanings. Governments, corporate bodies and community or local groups try to shape what a place means, and so shape how people act there.

• Governments rename, brand and conserve places to attract visitors and investment.
• Corporations brand developments and market them to particular customers.
• Community groups contest official meanings. In Newham, a housing campaign was formed in 2013 by young mothers in a Stratford hostel after they were served eviction notices. In September 2014 its members occupied empty flats on the Carpenters Estate in Stratford, presenting the area as a place of housing need rather than of Olympic success.

Formal and informal representations. Formal representations include census data, official maps and statistics. Informal ones include advertising copy, tourist material, film, photography, art, story and song. The specification notes these often give contrasting images. A census table may show a ward as deprived; a song by a local artist may present it as close-knit and proud.

Past development in present meanings. History is written into place. Colonial-era buildings, partition, industrial ruins and old railway lines remain in the landscape and in memory, and so they influence how people value and use places today.

Evaluation. Representations are never neutral. Each has an author, an audience and a purpose. Statistics look objective but depend on chosen categories and boundaries. Personal accounts are rich but may not be typical.

Worked paragraph. Official bodies often try to fix a single meaning on a place [knowledge]. The Walled City of Lahore Authority, set up in 2012, promotes the old city as a heritage destination, and its restoration of the Shahi Hammam with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture received a UNESCO Award of Merit in 2016 [application]. This presents the area as a site of Mughal heritage, which may attract tourists and funding [analysis]. Yet for traders and residents the same lanes mean work, family and congestion, so the official meaning is only one of several, and it may sit uneasily with everyday use [evaluation].

3.4.1.4 Quantitative and qualitative skills

The specification says you must use quantitative data, including geospatial data, to investigate and present place characteristics. It gives particular weight to qualitative approaches and to analysing critically the impacts of different media on place meanings.

Quantitative	Qualitative
Census data (population, age, ethnicity, occupation)	Interviews and oral histories
Deprivation indices mapped by small area	Photographs, old and new
Geo-located social media posts, house prices	Film, song, poetry, art
GIS layers (land use, transport, flood risk)	Newspaper, advertising and tourist text

Critical points. Census data are reliable and comparable over time, but categories change between censuses and small areas can hide variation. Interviews capture lived experience but depend on who you ask. Media sources show how places are represented, which is itself evidence, but not of how places “really” are. The best answers say what a source can and cannot show. For enquiry design and data handling, see the physical geography revision notes and your Unit 5 work.

3.4.1.5 Place studies

You need two studies:

1. Local place study: the developing character of a place local to your home or school.
2. Contrasting place study: a contrasting and distant place.

Both must focus on people’s lived experience of the place in the past and at present, and on changing demographic, cultural and economic characteristics. Sources must include qualitative and quantitative data showing the place in the past and present. Your teacher will confirm which places your centre uses. The two outlines below show the kind of detail you need; your local study must be your own locality.

Illustrative study: the Walled City of Lahore, Pakistan

• Setting. Old city of about 256 hectares with a population of about 200,000. Its historic gates include Delhi, Bhati, Lohari, Kashmiri, Roshnai and Shairanwala.
• Past. Mughal-era buildings include the Wazir Khan Mosque (1634 to 1641) and the Shahi Hammam (1635). Lahore Fort was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981. Partition in 1947 brought mass migration in both directions across the new border: most Hindu and Sikh residents left for India, and Muslim refugees from India settled in the city. Displacement and loss affected all communities.
• Change. Before restoration, the Shahi Hammam had been used as a school, dispensary and municipal office, with shops built into its façades, showing how commerce displaced older uses.
• External agencies. The Walled City of Lahore Authority (2012) runs conservation and tourism. The Shahi Guzargah (Royal Trail) pilot conservation project ran from 2012 to 2015 with support from the governments of Norway and the United States.
• Lived experience. Gather interviews on how trading, congestion and heritage tourism affect daily life.

Illustrative study: Stratford, east London, UK

• Setting. In the London Borough of Newham, about six miles (ten kilometres) north-east of Charing Cross.
• Past. Victorian industry grew on the marshes; the Eastern Counties Railway moved its works to Stratford in 1847, and the Great Eastern Railway ran them from 1862.
• Change. The 2012 Olympics drove regeneration. The London Legacy Development Corporation, a mayoral development corporation, was set up in 2012. Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park opened permanently in 2014. The former athletes’ village became East Village, with 2,818 homes, of which 1,379 are affordable. UCL and London College of Fashion opened campuses on the park in 2023.
• Contrast with Lahore. Higher-income country, much lower population density than the Walled City, ethnically very mixed population.
• Lived experience. Long-standing residents may welcome transport and jobs while reporting rising rents; the 2013 young mothers’ housing campaign shows contested meaning.

Common errors

• Writing about “space” when the question asks about “place”, with no reference to meaning or experience.
• Treating the local study as optional or choosing a whole city as “local”. The specification asks for a locality, neighbourhood or small community.
• Describing a place’s history without linking it to present meanings or to lived experience.
• Listing data sources without saying what each can and cannot show.
• Naming “the government” or “a company” with no named policy, body, date or place.
• Presenting a tourist brochure as evidence of what a place is really like.
• Forgetting your own life: the specification asks how continuity and change affect students as well as others.

Where to go next

Check your recall with the revision notes, then try the practice questions. For exam technique across all units, read the OxfordAQA A-level Geography exam preparation guide. Flows and global connections link back to global systems and governance.

Official syllabus

OxfordAQA International AS and A-level Geography (9635) specification, Version 3.2, section 3.4.1 Changing places (3.4.1.1 to 3.4.1.5), assessed in Unit 4: Human geography 2.