Oldham UDP

Maps showing the development plans for Oldham are readily available for viewing. You can customise them for yourself by selecting appropriate layers. This is a simple but effective use of GIS for your controlled assessment. Just follow this link to interactive maps. The map above shows the outer suburbs of Oldham and the green belt is clearly visible.

Census 2011 Deprivation Maps

Another very useful site for human geogrpahers. Explore your home town and discover the levels of deprivation. These are calculated using a basket of indicators all combined into one figure. The data is based on the latest census information. However, please be very careful about making value judgements based on this evidence. Follow this link to the Guardian web site.

Unemployment Map

A simple but effective GIS to show current trends in unemployment can be found here at the BBC. Look closely and you can see how the details change over time. You can even zoom in to see our home region.

Can you process this data further, maybe to produce a table of employment changes by local areas over the past 5 years? This could even be transformed into a graph.