How would you define the boundaries of a town or city in England and Wales in 2016?

Maybe your definition would be based on its population size, geographic extent or where the industry and services are located. This was a question the ONS had to consider when creating a new statistical geography called Towns and Cities.

In reality, the ability to delimit the boundaries of a city or town is difficult!

Major Towns and Cities

The new statistical geography, Towns and Cities has been created based on population size and the extent of the built environment. It contains 112 towns and cities in England and Wales, where the residential and/or workday population > 75,000 people at the 2011 Census. It has been constructed using the existing Built-Up Area boundary set produced by Ordnance Survey in 2011.

This swipe map shows where the towns and cities and built-up areas are different. Just swipe the bar from left to right.

The blue polygons are the towns and cities and the purple polygons are the built-up areas.

🇬🇧 영국 English How would you define the boundaries of a town or city in England and Wales in 2016? Maybe your definition would be based on its population size, geographic extent or where the industry and services are located. This was a question the ONS had to consider when creating a new statistical geography called Towns and Cities. In reality, the ability to delimit the boundaries of a city or town is difficult! Major Towns and Cities The new statistical geography, Towns and Cities has been created based on population size and the extent of the built environment. It contains 112 towns and cities in England and Wales, where the residential and/or workday population > 75,000 people at the 2011 Census. It has been constructed using the existing Built-Up Area boundary set produced by Ordnance Survey in 2011. This swipe map shows where the towns and cities and built-up areas are different. Just swipe the bar from left to right. The blue polygons are the towns and cities and the purple polygons are the built-up areas.

This file contains the digital vector boundaries for the Major Towns and Cities in England and Wales, as at December 2015. Version 2 includes centroid data in the attributes table.The boundaries available are: (BGG) Generalised Grid (50m) - clipped to the coastline (Mean High Water mark).Contains both Ordnance Survey and ONS Intellectual Property Rights.REST URL of ArcGIS for INSPIRE View Service – https://services1.arcgis.com/ESMARspQHYMw9BZ9/arcgis/rest/services/Major_Towns_and_Cities_(Dec_2015)_Boundaries_V2/MapServerREST URL of ArcGIS for INSPIRE Feature DownloadService – https://dservices1.arcgis.com/ESMARspQHYMw9BZ9/arcgis/services/Major_Towns_and_Cities_Dec_2015_Boundaries_V2/WFSServer?service=wfs&request=getcapabilitiesREST URL of Feature Access Service – https://services1.arcgis.com/ESMARspQHYMw9BZ9/arcgis/rest/services/Major_Towns_and_Cities_Dec_2015_Boundaries_V2_2022/FeatureServer

Maybe your definition would be based on its population size, geographic extent or where the industry and services are located. This was a question the ONS had to consider when creating a new statistical geography called Towns and Cities. In reality, the ability to delimit the boundaries of a city or town is difficult! Major Towns and Cities The new statistical geography, Towns and Cities has been created based on population size and the extent of the built environment. It contains 112 towns and cities in England and Wales, where the residential and/or workday population > 75,000 people at the 2011 Census. It has been constructed using the existing Built-Up Area boundary set produced by Ordnance Survey in 2011. This swipe map shows where the towns and cities and built-up areas are different. Just swipe the bar from left to right. The blue polygons are the towns and cities and the purple polygons are the built-up areas.

This file contains names and codes for Major Towns and Cities (TCITY) in England and Wales as at December 2015. (File size - 16KB).

The TCITY statistical geography provides a precise definition of the major towns and cities in England and Wales. The geography has been developed specifically for the production and analysis of statistics, and is based on the Built-Up Areas geography that was created for the release of 2011 Census data.

Field Names - TCITYCD, TCITYNM, FID

Field Types - Text, Text, Number

Field Lengths - 9, 20

FID = The FID, or Feature ID is created by the publication process when the names and codes / lookup products are published to the Open Geography portal. REST URL of Feature Access Service – https://services1.arcgis.com/ESMARspQHYMw9BZ9/arcgis/rest/services/Major_Towns_and_Cities_Dec_2015_Names_and_Codes_in_England_and_Wales_2022/FeatureServer

INDEX VILLARIS: or, An Alphabetical Table of all the cities, market-towns, parishes, villages, and private seats in England and Wales was first published by John Adams in 1680. This dataset consists of a transcription of all 24,000 place-names listed in Index Villaris, together with the the symbols representing Adams's categorisation of each place and modern versions of the place-names and the counties and administrative hundred in which they lie or lay. It also comprises a transcription of the latitude and longitude recorded by Adams, and another set of coordinates generated by the application of a thin plate spline transformation calculated by matching some 2,000 place-names to the accurately-georeferenced CAMPOP Towns dataset.

The dataset is being checked, corrected, and refined to include linkage to other geospatial references such as OpenStreetMap and Wikidata, and will in due course be made available in the Linked Places Format.

The China Post provides postal service-related information, primarily offering Excel files for counties and towns in Chinese and English (Hanyu Pinyin, csv format).

Towns and Cities boundaries built from Built-up Areas.

The Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 prompted the government in London to undertake a survey the following year to establish the number of guest beds and quantity of stabling available across England and Wales for billeting soldiers. This dataset represents an attempt to identify and geolocate all of the place-names noted in that survey.

Transcription was undertaken for CAMPOP by Jacob Field, with funding provided by Leigh Shaw-Taylor and Dan Bogart. Stephen Gadd is responsible for place-name identification and geolocation, matching place-names as far as possible to the Index Villaris, 1680 dataset, GB1900 labels, and OpenStreetMap nodes.

PLEASE NOTE: THIS PRE-RELEASE DOES NOT CONTAIN ANY DATA

1:1,000,000 raster map of Northern Ireland with place names. A raster map is a static image displayed on screen which is suitable as background mapping. 1:1 000,000 Raster is smallest scale OSNI raster product giving an excellent overview of Northern Ireland. Published here for OpenData. By download or use of this dataset you agree to abide by the Open Government Data Licence.Please Note for Open Data NI Users: Esri Rest API is not Broken, it will not open on its own in a Web Browser but can be copied and used in Desktop and Webmaps

A PDF map that shows the counties and unitary authorities in the United Kingdom as at 1 April 2023. (File Size - 583 KB)

The population of the United Kingdom in 2023 was estimated to be approximately 68.3 million in 2023, with almost 9.48 million people living in South East England. London had the next highest population, at over 8.9 million people, followed by the North West England at 7.6 million. With the UK's population generally concentrated in England, most English regions have larger populations than the constituent countries of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, which had populations of 5.5 million, 3.16 million, and 1.92 million respectively. English counties and cities The United Kingdom is a patchwork of various regional units, within England the largest of these are the regions shown here, which show how London, along with the rest of South East England had around 18 million people living there in this year. The next significant regional units in England are the 47 metropolitan and ceremonial counties. After London, the metropolitan counties of the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, and West Yorkshire were the biggest of these counties, due to covering the large urban areas of Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds respectively. Regional divisions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland The smaller countries that comprise the United Kingdom each have different local subdivisions. Within Scotland these are called council areas whereas in Wales the main regional units are called unitary authorities. Scotland's largest Council Area by population is that of Glasgow City at over 622,000, while in Wales, it was the Cardiff Unitary Authority at around 372,000. Northern Ireland, on the other hand, has eleven local government districts, the largest of which is Belfast with a population of around 348,000.

This dataset is not the "Planning Register" as described in The Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2010; which is currently provided via Public Access https://planning.bradford.gov.uk/online-applications/

This dataset contains a current set of Planning Application boundaries held since 1974. The Planning Service is constantly adding and amending boundaries as it discovers missing boundaries and updates incorrect boundaries.

This dataset will be updated every 24hrs.

Georeferenced map of 'Old and New Town of Edinburgh and Leith with the proposed docks' By John Ainslie (1804) as part of the Visualising Urban Geographies project- view other versions of the map at http://geo.nls.uk/urbhist/resources_maps.html. Scanned map. This dataset was first accessioned in the EDINA ShareGeo Open repository on 2011-05-31 and migrated to Edinburgh DataShare on 2017-02-21.

The Town ward dataset includes the ward map; demographic profile; Public Health England local health report; Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) factsheet; Public health data; a ward hex map; and primary and secondary school census data.

Town ward covers a mixed and contrasting area. It includes the retail, commercial and business centre of Halifax, Dean Clough Business Park and the neighbourhood of Boothtown to the north, the mainly residential area of Siddal to the south, the steep escarpment of Beacon Hill to the east and the smaller hilltop communities of Southowram and Bank Top. It also includes Halifax's sporting and historic attractions, including The Shay and the Piece Hall, as well as the town's bus and railway stations.

For schools data at ward level, see Schools data by ward.

In 2023, almost nine million people lived in Greater London, making it the most populated ceremonial county in England. The West Midlands Metropolitan County, which contains the large city of Birmingham, was the second-largest county at 2.98 million inhabitants, followed by Greater Manchester and then West Yorkshire with populations of 2.95 million and 2.4 million, respectively. Kent, Essex, and Hampshire were the three next-largest counties in terms of population, each with around 1.89 million people. A patchwork of regions England is just one of the four countries that compose the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, with England, Scotland and Wales making up Great Britain. England is therefore not to be confused with Great Britain or the United Kingdom as a whole. Within England, the next subdivisions are the nine regions of England, containing various smaller units such as unitary authorities, metropolitan counties and non-metropolitan districts. The counties in this statistic, however, are based on the ceremonial counties of England as defined by the Lieutenancies Act of 1997. Regions of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland Like England, the other countries of the United Kingdom have their own regional subdivisions, although with some different terminology. Scotland’s subdivisions are council areas, while Wales has unitary authorities, and Northern Ireland has local government districts. As of 2022, the most-populated Scottish council area was Glasgow City, with over 622,000 inhabitants. In Wales, Cardiff had the largest population among its unitary authorities, and in Northern Ireland, Belfast was the local government area with the most people living there.

The 2020 TIGER/Line Shapefiles contain current geographic extent and boundaries of both legal and statistical entities (which have no governmental standing) for the United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Island areas. This vintage includes boundaries of governmental units that match the data from the surveys that use 2020 geography (e.g., 2020 Population Estimates and the 2020 American Community Survey). In addition to geographic boundaries, the 2020 TIGER/Line Shapefiles also include geographic feature shapefiles and relationship files. Feature shapefiles represent the point, line and polygon features in the MTDB (e.g., roads and rivers). Relationship files contain additional attribute information users can join to the shapefiles. Both the feature shapefiles and relationship files reflect updates made in the database through September 2020. To see how the geographic entities, relate to one another, please see our geographic hierarchy diagrams here.Census Urbanized Areashttps://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2020/UACCensus Urban/Rural Census Block Shapefileshttps://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/shapefiles/index.php2020 TIGER/Line and Redistricting shapefiles:https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/tiger-line-file.2020.htmlTechnical documentation:https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/maps-data/data/tiger/tgrshp2020/TGRSHP2020_TechDoc.pdfTIGERweb REST Services:https://tigerweb.geo.census.gov/tigerwebmain/TIGERweb_restmapservice.htmlTIGERweb WMS Services:https://tigerweb.geo.census.gov/tigerwebmain/TIGERweb_wms.htmlThe legal entities included in these shapefiles are:American Indian Off-Reservation Trust LandsAmerican Indian Reservations – FederalAmerican Indian Reservations – StateAmerican Indian Tribal Subdivisions (within legal American Indian areas)Alaska Native Regional CorporationsCongressional Districts – 116th CongressConsolidated CitiesCounties and Equivalent Entities (except census areas in Alaska)Estates (US Virgin Islands only)Hawaiian Home LandsIncorporated PlacesMinor Civil DivisionsSchool Districts – ElementarySchool Districts – SecondarySchool Districts – UnifiedStates and Equivalent EntitiesState Legislative Districts – UpperState Legislative Districts – LowerSubminor Civil Divisions (Subbarrios in Puerto Rico)The statistical entities included in these shapefiles are:Alaska Native Village Statistical AreasAmerican Indian/Alaska Native Statistical AreasAmerican Indian Tribal Subdivisions (within Oklahoma Tribal Statistical Areas)Block Groups3-5Census AreasCensus BlocksCensus County Divisions (Census Subareas in Alaska)Unorganized Territories (statistical county subdivisions)Census Designated Places (CDPs)Census TractsCombined New England City and Town AreasCombined Statistical AreasMetropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas and related statistical areasMetropolitan DivisionsNew England City and Town AreasNew England City and Town Area DivisionsOklahoma Tribal Statistical AreasPublic Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs)State Designated Tribal Statistical AreasTribal Designated Statistical AreasUrban AreasZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs)Shapefiles - Features:Address Range-FeatureAll Lines (called Edges)All RoadsArea HydrographyArea LandmarkCoastlineLinear HydrographyMilitary InstallationPoint LandmarkPrimary RoadsPrimary and Secondary RoadsTopological Faces (polygons with all geocodes)Relationship Files:Address Range-Feature NameAddress RangesFeature NamesTopological Faces – Area LandmarkTopological Faces – Area HydrographyTopological Faces – Military Installations

This is a restricted dataset and this download is available to NIMA users only.

OSNI 250k contains a tabulated list of 330 main cities, towns and villages of Northern Ireland appearing on the 1:250,000 map. Irish grid references are incorporated in the table to allow the spatial location of the settlements to be plotted. The data has been captured by extracting all textual levels for the main cities, towns and villages of Northern Ireland appearing on the 1:250,000 map. OSNI 50k Gazetteer contains a list of all main text appearing on OSNI 1:50 000 scale Discoverer Map Series. Includes names of cities, towns, villages, water features, mountains, hills and forests of Northern Ireland. Irish Grid references are incorporated.

Users outside of the Spatial NI Portal please use Resource Locator 2.

London had the highest unemployment rate among regions of the United Kingdom in the first quarter of 2025 at ****percent, while for the UK as a whole, the unemployment rate was ****percent. Three other regions also had an unemployment rate higher than the national average, while Northern Ireland had the lowest unemployment rate in this time period, at ****percent. Labor market recovery after COVID-19 After reaching historically low levels of unemployment in 2019, there was a noticeable spike in the UK unemployment rate in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. After peaking at ****percent in late 2020, the unemployment rate declined throughout 2021 and 2022. High levels of job vacancies, resignations, and staff shortages in 2022, were all indicative of a very tight labor market that year, but all these measures have started to point in the direction of a slightly looser labor market. UK's regional economic divide While the North of England has some of the country’s largest cities, the sheer size and economic power of London is much larger than the UK's other urban agglomerations. Partly, due to the size of London, the United Kingdom is one of Europe’s most centralized counties, and there is a clear divide between the economic prospects of north and south England. In 2022, for example, the gross domestic product per head in London was ****** British pounds, far higher than the UK average of *******pounds, and significantly larger than North East England, the region with the lowest GDP per head at *******pounds.

A PDF map that shows the local authority districts, counties and unitary authorities in the United Kingdom as at April 2023. The map has been created to show the United Kingdom from country level down to local authority district level. (File Size - 1,909 KB)