Cobham exogenous

• People, culture and celebrities

  • population increase of 7% since 1991 with a large number of economically active residents, most commute to london
  • celebrities and footballers - ‘Beverly hill of Britain’ - vulgar and ostentatious displays of money
  • due to transport improvements - 59% of residents travel to work by car, 18% by public transport - meaning cobham is a ghost town during the day
  • celebrities: peter crouch, john Lennon, Andy Murray
• capital ‘wealth’

  • Chelsea FC moved their training ground to Stoke D’Abernon in 2005
  • TNCs such as Starbucks, waitrose, costa have replaced independent stores - Clone town
  • housing developers are placing huge pressure on locals to sell their land to build and develop more houses.
  • the Elmbridge council removed green belt status from 2 large areas in cobham to build 1000 new homes on each site
  • cobham services has planned to extend their site and create 79 additional HGV spaces on green belt land
• Infrastructure

  • M25/A3 expansion - improvements to the roundabout and debated widening of the A3 to 4 lanes will increase capacity. this could increase number of people driving through cobham (noise, congestion, pollution) and bring more commuting residents to the area
  • train stations - Cobham and Oxshott are 35 mins to Waterloo
• other factors

  • increase in population and wealth has resulted in change of architecture from Victorian and Georgian housing to neo-classical and ultra modern mansions
  • 44% of housing is worth over £1m
  • old houses destroyed to make way for tasteless new houses
  • cobham high street now has 3 estate agents, designer dress shops, beauty salons, older residents remember the high-street with its own butcher, greengrocer etc
  • cobham price - concept that because somethings in cobham its more expensive
  • cobham bubble - cobham is immune to events outside of Cobham, e.g. poverty, crime, violence etc