It's often worth looking at the adjacent census images to those for your family, you can see the occupations of the residents and from that you can get a snapshot of the area, large or small families, affluent jobs or manual workers, several families within a building or an area with what appears to be better less cramped housing.
The district descriptions can be useful too, each census image belongs to a district and via Ancestry you can click on the description of the districts, this will list the streets and often mentions a factory or church that is either within or on the boundary of the district.
Local history societies and local interest websites can also build a picture of the area and give some clues about where you may find additional sources of information and images, the library in the area, local newspaper and the archives may also have "images of yesterday" available, or point you to a then and now type book that can be useful too.
Glen
