Every single one of us has a completely different lived experience of the places that we interact with. Factors such as our age, economic wealth, gender, religion and place of birth determine our lived experience. These factors are called ‘positionality factors’.
Our lived experience can be measured using qualitative data such as interviews, news articles and photos. One issue with these sources of information is they are subjective and open to interpretation.
You can also measure the lived experience of people in a place using quantitative data – factual statistics, typically from sources such as the National Census. This data is objective in nature and many inferences about a location can be made.
The Halifax Building Society commission a report into the quality of life and ‘lived experience’ of people in the UK every year, publishing a list of the 50 best places to live. The article below explores how the decisions have been made for the 2018 list…
Questions to consider…
- Think of a place you enjoy spending time in. Would you opinion of that place differ if you were 40 years older? How about if you were a member of the opposite sex?
- Find where Orkney is on an atlas map. Using only this map, could you explain why someone living on Orkney may not feel like it is the best place to live in the UK?
- Find any image of Orkney. Does this image back up the idea that Orkney is the best place to live in the UK?
- The district of Wycombe ranked 46th in the list. Would you agree with the ranking? Why?