Mapping Community in Gloucestershire

In October 2012, the CCRI won a project with Gloucestershire County Council representing Leadership Gloucester. The project aimed to establish a baseline for the assessment of community boundaries in Gloucestershire, to enable service providers to take into account such ‘natural communities’ in the delivery of their services. The research was conducted by:

  1. reviewing previous and current work in Gloucestershire and elsewhere which could contribute to this aim;
  2. mapping existing boundaries used by local government and other service providers in Gloucestershire;
  3. carrying out a more detailed study of two contrasting communities within Gloucestershire to assess the extent to which local people identify with the boundaries assigned to them and the availability of social capital to protect/provide services within those boundaries.

The project will ran for five months, and completed at the end of February 2013. Dr Carol Kambites was the project leader, and was assisted by Rob Berry, Sally Curzon, Janet Dwyer, (all CCRI), and James Derounian (Department of Natural and Social Sciences, University of Gloucestershire).