Uploaded on 2016-09-28 by David Gillis

This is an image of the downtown of my city taken at an intersection. This photo was taken around noon on a weekday. As you can tell even though there are cars parked on either sides of the street, it really isn't all that busy. One of the goals of the city for many years has been to try and revitalize the downtown and it is still a work in progress. They do hold monthly events downtown where many businesses have promotions or sales on the same day on the first Friday of the month but other than that there really isn't a need to go there if you don't have to. The street has a few cafes, bars, thrift stores a library and a post office. More recently they have built an art gallery down there. The roads and traffic lights are in fairly good condition but parking is sometimes limited and if the area were to become more popular this could be an issue. There are a few examples of invisible information that can be extracted from this picture. One is that it isn't very busy. This could be because of the types of businesses that are located down there. They really aren't essential to a person's needs and similar services can be found elsewhere often for better value. Unless you're the type of person who is really into supporting local businesses there isn't much of a draw to utilize the area much. This sort of leads into my second example of invisible information which is the types of businesses located here, their employees and their customers. This city, probably like many others, has a population in which many people are either retiring or close to retirement age. The businesses downtown are mostly geared towards and utilized by this population, which makes sense because they are the majority. There are a few exceptions of course but there isn't much of a draw for younger generations to go downtown besides at night time to visit a bar or pub there. There aren't a lot of younger people that work in this area of the city either. The location of the downtown is kind of an issue as well as the housing in this area is older and it is seen as a poorer and more unsafe area to live. New people arriving to Sarnia often opt to live on the other side of the city in newer built houses and where there are more schools. Since fewer younger people are not living or working downtown there is less and less need for them to go there. Going forward it would be beneficial to the revitalization of this area to attract more diverse companies to set up there and entice people to live, work and shop in this area.