A primary urban area (PUA) is an area defined by the Department for Communities and Local Government in the United Kingdom as a statistical tool for analysing the major cities of England, originating as part of their State of the English Cities report and database. The concept of a primary urban area has also been redefined by the Centre for Cities with the University of Newcastle. [1]
The concept of a primary urban area was created in an attempt to enable economic and social comparisons between cities using definitions less arbitrary than the administrative boundaries of local authorities, but avoiding one problem of using the urban areas defined by the Office for National Statistics - that sprawling conurbations such as the West Yorkshire Urban Area, containing multiple distinct settlements with large degrees of physical and social independence, but that happen to touch, end up being treated as if they were a single city. [2]
To enable this, primary urban areas are defined as being based on areas of continuous built-up land containing urban structures that are within 50 metres of each other, [3] while urban areas only require that urban land uses should be less than 200 metres apart. [4]
In addition, to qualify as a primary urban area a built-up area must have a population in excess of 125,000. On this basis England had 56 primary urban areas in 2007.
As primary urban areas were created to allow statistical comparisons, and the majority of statistics are produced based on administrative or electoral geographies, primary urban areas are approximated to local authority and ward level, or to an additional measure called a tract – similar in size to a ward but designed to be subject to fewer revisions over time. It is for these approximate areas that statistics are available. Wards and tracts, being smaller, allow a greater degree of precision in comparing PUAs, but using local authority-based definitions allow PUA comparisons to be made using the wider range of statistics available at this level. [5]
Primary urban areas are designed purely as a tool of statistical analysis and aren't intended to form definitive measures of cities for policy purposes. [2] They are named after the largest settlement within them.
The primary urban area model may be somewhat as flawed in the case of contiguous urban areas that contain multiple distinct settlements that have agglomerated, because it treats them as a single city. A good example of this is the Birmingham PUA, which includes Wolverhampton as well as Birmingham. Wolverhampton is regarded by some measures as independent of Birmingham and a city-region of its own. [6] Whilst Birmingham dominates the south and east of the West Midlands urban area, and Wolverhampton dominates the north and west, the area of conurbation between the two cities (the Black Country) displays a complex pattern of interdependence both within the area and to the two cities, making statistical separation of the area rather difficult. [6] The PUA model and its Eurostat equivalent differ in their treatment of Wolverhampton: the former aggregates it with Birmingham, whereas the latter gives it its own larger urban zone. [7] [8] [9]
When primary urban areas are approximated to local authority areas rather than wards they can also contain rural areas or have parts of the urban area excluded from the relevant PUA. The Leeds PUA is an example of the former, where the City of Leeds local authority area that is contained within the PUA includes a wide rural area in addition to the urban cores; whilst the Manchester PUA does not contain Wilmslow which is a part of the Greater Manchester Urban Area but outside the local authorities that make up the approximated PUA.
Another issue with the PUA model is what constitutes a contiguous urban area. The original Greater Manchester PUA for example did not include the contiguous urban boroughs of Wigan, Bolton and Rochdale, all of which are linked strongly with the core city region – for example by transport (via Transport for Greater Manchester), shopping/leisure e.g. Trafford Centre, various sporting events, administrative history (Greater Manchester County Council and nightlife.
Liverpool's PUA is far smaller than the City Region and Metropolitan Area, because of the River Mersey cutting through the middle of the city. This is controversial as Birkenhead (also a part of Merseyside) is categorised as a separate primary urban area from Liverpool despite its proximity and connections to Liverpool on the opposite side of the river. This differs from the Liverpool Metropolitan Area, which includes Wirral and extends into Cheshire.
These were the PUAs identified by the study: [2]
In late 2015, the Centre for Cities, supported by the University of Newcastle's Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (who formulated the original definition), updated the list of PUAs. [10] The major changes were to (a) use the day-time population of the city as a better indicator of its significance than the number of its residents –the City of London is an extreme example of this phenomenon; (b) raise the threshold for inclusion to 135,000; (c) reduce the weighting of "travel to work area". [11] They added Basildon, Exeter and Slough to the list and removed Grimsby and Hastings. Bolton and Rochdale were absorbed into Manchester. The following PUAs were defined by the study: [12]
West Midlands is a ceremonial county in the larger West Midlands region of England. A landlocked county, it is bordered by Staffordshire to the north and west, Worcestershire to the southwest, and is surrounded by Warwickshire to the east and southeast. The largest settlement is the city of Birmingham.
A metropolitan area or metro is a region consisting of a densely populated urban agglomeration and its surrounding territories sharing industries, commercial areas, transport network, infrastructures and housing. A metropolitan area usually comprises multiple principal cities, jurisdictions and municipalities: neighborhoods, townships, boroughs, cities, towns, exurbs, suburbs, counties, districts and even states and nations in areas like the eurodistricts. As social, economic and political institutions have changed, metropolitan areas have become key economic and political regions.
Metropolitan counties are a subdivision of England which were originally used for local government. There are six metropolitan counties: Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands and West Yorkshire.
A conurbation is a region comprising a number of metropolises, cities, large towns, and other urban areas which through population growth and physical expansion, have merged to form one continuous urban or industrially developed area. In most cases, a conurbation is a polycentric urbanised area in which transportation has developed to link areas. They create a single urban labour market or travel to work area.
The West Midlands conurbation is the large conurbation in the West Midlands region of England. The area consists of two cities and numerous towns: to the east, the city of Birmingham, along with adjacent towns of Solihull and Sutton Coldfield; and to the west, an area called the Black Country, which includes the city of Wolverhampton as well as the nearby towns of Dudley, Walsall, Sandwell, Stourbridge and Halesowen.
The London metropolitan area is the metropolitan area of London, England. It has several definitions, including the London Travel to Work Area, and usually consists of the London urban area, settlements that share London's infrastructure, and places from which it is practicable to commute to work in London. It is also known as the London commuter belt, or Southeast metropolitan area.
The West Midlands region straddles the historic borders between the counties of Warwickshire, Staffordshire in the north, and Worcestershire in the south.
Greater Glasgow is an urban settlement in Scotland consisting of all localities which are physically attached to the city of Glasgow, forming with it a single contiguous urban area. It does not relate to municipal government boundaries, and its territorial extent is defined by the General Register Office for Scotland, which determines settlements in Scotland for census and statistical purposes. Greater Glasgow had a population of 1,199,629 at the time of the 2001 UK Census making it the largest urban area in Scotland and the fifth-largest in the United Kingdom. However, the population estimate for the Greater Glasgow 'settlement' in mid-2016 was 985,290—the reduced figure explained by the removal of the Motherwell & Wishaw (124,790), Coatbridge & Airdrie (91,020), and Hamilton (83,730) settlement areas east of the city due to small gaps between the populated postcodes. The 'new towns' of Cumbernauld and East Kilbride (75,120) were never included in these figures despite their close ties to Glasgow due to having a clear geographical separation from the city. In the 2020 figures, the Greater Glasgow population had risen to just over 1 million.
The city of Birmingham, in England, is an important manufacturing and engineering centre, employing over 100,000 people in the industry and contributing billions of pounds to the national economy. During 2013, the West Midlands region as a whole created UK exports in goods worth £19.6 billion, around 8.73% of the national total, however, exports fell by 14.5% compared to 2012 and there is a trade deficit of £5.6 billion. Output was forecast to grow from 2007 to 2012, but the city's economy flat-lined in from 2007 to 2009, following the economic crisis which affected the economies of countries around the world.
A city proper is the geographical area contained within city limits. The term proper is not exclusive to cities; it can describe the geographical area within the boundaries of any given locality. The United Nations defines the term as "the single political jurisdiction which contains the historical city centre."
Wardle is a village near Littleborough within the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale, in Greater Manchester, England. It lies amongst the foothills of the South Pennines, 1.8 miles (2.9 km) east-southeast of Whitworth, 2.5 miles (4 km) north-northwest of Rochdale and 12 miles (19 km) north-northeast of the city of Manchester.
The Greater Manchester Built-up Area is an area of land defined by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), consisting of the large conurbation that encompasses the urban element of the city of Manchester and the metropolitan area that forms much of Greater Manchester in North West England. According to the United Kingdom Census 2011, the Greater Manchester Built-up Area has a population of 2,553,379 making it the second most populous conurbation in the United Kingdom after the Greater London Built-up Area. This was an increase of 14% from the population recorded at the United Kingdom Census 2001 of 2,240,230, when it was known as the Greater Manchester Urban Area.
Greater Bristol is a term used for the conurbation which contains and surrounds the city of Bristol in the South West of England. There is no official "Greater Bristol" authority, but the term is sometimes used by local, regional and national authorities, and others as a synonym for either the "Bristol Urban Area" or a wider area of the former County of Avon, and by some, TfGB, to refer to the Province of Bristol as defined by C. B. Fawcett (1919) or Derek Senior (1969).
The Liverpool Built-up Area is a term used by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to denote the urban area around Liverpool in England, to the east of the River Mersey. The contiguous built-up area extends beyond the area administered by Liverpool City Council into adjoining local authority areas, particularly parts of Sefton and Knowsley. As defined by ONS, the area extends as far east as St Helens, Haydock, and Ashton-in-Makerfield in Greater Manchester.
The second city of the United Kingdom is usually recognised as Birmingham. The title is not an official one and its reckoning is subjective and cultural: the UK has a primate city structure where London significantly surpasses other cities in size and importance and all other cities have much more in common with one another than with the capital.
A travel to work area or TTWA is a statistical tool used by UK Government agencies and local authorities, especially by the Department for Work and Pensions and Jobcentres, to indicate an area where the population would generally commute to a larger town, city or conurbation for the purposes of employment.
A metropolitan area is generally defined as consisting of an urban area, conurbation or agglomeration, together with the surrounding area to which it is closely economically and socially integrated through commuting.