Plaistow

Staying in Plaistow, East End of London makes me think harder.

Bernie came to Forest Hill to collect me. He drove from south to east, crossed the river Thames through the underwater tunnel, and talked about the area we were reaching. He said this is one of the roughest area in London, and people here are most pressured. Indeed I felt it when I walked out at night trying to fetch some food to fill my empty stomach. And I walked in a way as wary as everyone else!

Thought about Knowle West in Bristol. Are they different?
I think yes.

From the statistics of 2001, Knowle West has a population around 10881. This number may vary now. And the population consists of ethnic groups with white as the main group (94.3%); the mixed (including Asian, Black, Chinese or other) only composed with 5.7% of it. That's also the impression I got when I visited the community.

However,
For Plaistow, there isn't a number of its population on Wikipedia yet. But I searched for the London Borough it belongs to, which is Newham, for its 2008 estimation, the whole population in the borough is 249500, and the density is 6,890 /km2 (17,845 /sq mi). As for the composition of the ethnicities, the 2005 estimation shows white British is 32.6%; White Irish is 1.1%, and other White is 5.4%. Then they have mixed blood and Asians and Blacks. Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi are the biggest ethnic groups, with a population distribution of 12.1%, 8.7%, 9.0% respectively. Black African has a prominent appearance too: 12.7%. Other Black is 1.1%. Chinese and other as well as the mixed blood are relatively few, 1.4%, 2.4% and 3.7% respectively.

What does that mean?
Here you saw more Indian, Pakistani and Bangladishi as well as Black people rather than white British, contrast to the sterotype impression of Britain.

In Knowle West, social problems seemed come from labor class suffering the deprivation under economic depression and insufficient social welfare support. While in Plaistow (or Newham), the problems may rise from similar deprivation but aggravated by the prejudice towards colored people.

In such a community with big migrant population, I wonder, sometimes the migrants are the vitims instead of the trouble-makers in the society as many people thought about. They are the easy target for blaming on all kinds of crimes and the smaller incidents will be exposed with a manifiying glass. In turn, the notoriety brings even more difficulties to earn better social support in such conditions. If possible, comparing the types of crime from these two areas might show some interesting discoveries and diferent patterns too.

What can be done to help a community becoming sustainable in terms of the ecological concerns prescribed in the objectives of my research in this trip?

According to the report on Nov. 22, 2005 in Times cited by Wikipedia,
Newham is a challenging borough in a number of ways and currently has the second lowest recycling rate in the United Kingdom, which I strongly agreed with my own experience.

Maybe Knowle West is a good example to look at.



(will cont. on next)


sources from:
Knowle West: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowle_West,_Bristol
London Borough of Newham: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Borough_of_Newham#cite_note-3