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.

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.

Important Note: This item is in mature support as of July 2021. A new version of this item is available for your use. Esri recommends updating your maps and apps to use the new version.This map is designed to be used as a general reference map for informational and educational purposes as well as a basemap by GIS professionals and other users for creating web maps and web mapping applications.The map was developed by National Geographic and Esri and reflects the distinctive National Geographic cartographic style in a multi-scale reference map of the world. The map was authored using data from a variety of leading data providers, including Garmin, HERE, UNEP-WCMC, NASA, ESA, USGS, and others.This reference map includes administrative boundaries, cities, protected areas, highways, roads, railways, water features, buildings and landmarks, overlaid on shaded relief and land cover imagery for added context. The map includes global coverage down to ~1:144k scale and more detailed coverage for North America down to ~1:9k scale.Map Note: Although small-scale boundaries, place names and map notes were provided and edited by National Geographic, boundaries and names shown do not necessarily reflect the map policy of the National Geographic Society, particularly at larger scales where content has not been thoroughly reviewed or edited by National Geographic.Data Notes: The credits below include a list of data providers used to develop the map. Below are a few additional notes:Reference Data: National Geographic, Esri, Garmin, HERE, iPC, NRCAN, METILand Cover Imagery: NASA Blue Marble, ESA GlobCover 2009 (Copyright notice: © ESA 2010 and UCLouvain)Protected Areas: IUCN and UNEP-WCMC (2011), The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) Annual Release. Cambridge, UK: UNEP-WCMC. Available at:www.protectedplanet.net.Ocean Data: GEBCO, NOAA

Registered charity 1126727; registered company limited by guarantee 6611408 (England and Wales)

Great Britain's (England, Scotland, Wales) cities (e.g. London, Birmingham, Edinburgh) named and represented as point features with an indicative bounding box. This data is often used for geocoding, service delivery and statistical analysis. OS Cities Data is available in a number of Ordnance Survey (OS) products: OS Open Names (bounding box and point geometry), OS Names API, MasterMap Topography Layer (point geometry), Vector Map Local (point geometry) and Vector Map District (point geometry). Small-scale cartographic representations are also available in OS cartographic products. All data is collected by Ordnance Survey as part of their role as the National Mapping Agency of Great Britain.

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

Northeastern United States Town Boundary data are intended for geographic display of state, county and town (municipal) boundaries at statewide and regional levels. Use it to map and label towns on a map. These data are derived from Northeastern United States Political Boundary Master layer. This information should be displayed and analyzed at scales appropriate for 1:24,000-scale data. The State of Connecticut, Department of Environmental Protection (CTDEP) assembled this regional data layer using data from other states in order to create a single, seamless representation of political boundaries within the vicinity of Connecticut that could be easily incorporated into mapping applications as background information. More accurate and up-to-date information may be available from individual State government Geographic Information System (GIS) offices. Not intended for maps printed at map scales greater or more detailed than 1:24,000 scale (1 inch = 2,000 feet.)

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.

In 2016, it was estimated that Birmingham had the largest Muslim population of any local authority in England and Wales at approximately 280 thousand people. Newham and Tower Hamlets, both boroughs of London, had the second and third-largest Muslim populations at 135 and 128 thousand respectively.

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 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.

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.

The HTML links signpost to other datasets, please select the Visit button https://files.datapress.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/20170922114200/view-button.jpg" alt=""> to go to the relevant dataset

This is an Historic dataset of the Hastings Local Plan 2004 planning constraints. The Hastings Local Plan 2004 has been superseded in its entirety by the Hastings Local Plan made up of The Hastings Planning Strategy and Development Management Plan. This dataset is a digitised version of the Hastings Local Plan 2004 Policies Map (Polygon Data). The data is a snapshot of the constraints when they were created in 2004 and things have changed since then. It includes Green Constraints that have national and international designations including Ancient Woodland, Sites of Special Scientific Interest, SAC and AONB and these are no longer correct and should not be relied upon, this data should be obtained direct from Natural England. Upon accessing this Licenced Data you will be deemed to have accepted the terms of the Public Sector End User Licence - INSPIRE (http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-and-government/public-sector/mapping-agreements/inspire-licence.html)

London had the highest unemployment rate among regions of the United Kingdom in the fourth quarter of 2024 at 6.1 percent, while for the UK as a whole, the unemployment rate was 4.4 percent. Four 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 two 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 5.1 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 57,338 British pounds, far higher than the UK average of 33,593 pounds, and significantly larger than North East England, the region with the lowest GDP per head at 24,172 pounds.

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.

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

Survey name: Mogerhanger A1(M) Improvements (Map 4) Post 1988 Agricultural Land Classification (ALC) site survey data – scanned original paper maps and survey reports for individual sites surveyed in detail between 1989 and 1999 by the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food. Where Grade 3 is mapped this includes the subdivision of Grade 3 into subgrades 3a and 3b. Surveys use the current grading methodology as described in "Agricultural Land Classification of England and Wales," a link for which is provided with the data. Individual sites have been mapped at varying scales and level of detail from 1:5,000 to 1:50,000 (typically 1:10,000). Unedited sample point soils data and soil pit descriptions are also available for some surveys. Attribution statement: © Natural England copyright. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right [year]. Attribution statement: Attribution statement: © Natural England copyright. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right [year].

Hastings Local Plan - The Hastings Planning Strategy 2011-2028 AND Development Management Plan planning constraints including Protected Green and Open Spaces and Development Sites. This Polygon dataset is a digitised version of the Hastings Development Management Plan Policies Map (incorporating The Hastings Planning Strategy). The data is a snapshot of the constraints when they were created for the adoption of the Development Management Plan in September 2015, things may have changed since then.

This data includes policies that are based on national and international designations including Ancient Woodland, Sites of Special Scientific Interest, SAC and AONB. These policies may no longer reflect the most current designations. The most current designations should be obtained direct from Natural England. It includes a policy based on the Archaeological Notification Areas (ANA) from the East Sussex Historic Environment Record. This policy may no longer reflect the most current ANAs. It includes policies that are based on the Scheduled Monument and Registered Historic Parks & Gardens designations from Historic England. These policies may no longer reflect the most current designations. The most current designations should be obtained direct from Historic England. It includes the cycles routes included in the Hastings Walking & Cycling Strategy 2014.

Upon accessing this Licenced Data you will be deemed to have accepted the terms of the Public Sector End User Licence - INSPIRE (http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-and-government/public-sector/mapping-agreements/inspire-licence.html).