Talk:List of primary urban areas in England by population

Completely misleading sentence

The sentence which reads "Historically, cities with in England and the United Kingdom as a whole have remained largely undefined,..." is completely misleading, because a definition, known as an enumerative definition does exist: The official website of the Department of Constitutional Affairs provides a list of all cities in England, Scotland, and Wales, and Northern Ireland. This is a clear-cut example of a definition by enumeration. If people would like some professional philosophical references about these kinds of definitions, I can provide that as being within my own area of professional expertise. I have changed the opening to add in this information, but I do not know how to make the paragraph fit in with this correct fact, and so have left the rest the way it was except for adding a fact tag to the claim, quoted above. It cannot be correctly fixed by merely deleting my addition.  DDStretch  (talk) 23:35, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Misleading and incorrect data

As noted within the article, the data is from the State of the English Cities Report maintained by the Department for Communities and Local Government.

However, the the FAQ document on the Department for Communities and Local Government website describing this report and the dataset used says:

As such the 56 PUAs were always intended purely as an analytical device for the State of the Cities Report (SOCR)

Therefore their use in any other situation such as this one is invalid. There may be some merit in reporting figures created for a single report and intended purely for use in that report, but defining these areas as cities is incorrect and misleading. This page, if kept, should be moved therefore to List of Primary Urban Areas in England and the lead section rewritten accordingly. Fingerpuppet 01:08, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Agree, this list is misleading and absurd. I would support deletion or redirection in an AFD, if one were to be proposed... Cheers, DWaterson 01:11, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I've tagged it {{totallydisputed}} to reflect. DWaterson 01:16, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I would also support either deletion or redirection with substantial re-working of the text, for the reasons pointed out above and in my comment, above.  DDStretch  (talk) 01:17, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I would also like to agree with all of the above and would strongly support deletion or redirection with substantial re-editing. Using this data outside of the report when it clearly states the data is purely an analytical device to be used within the report is grossly misleading. The only purpose this serves is to push a POV agenda by a contributor to the Manchester page eager to inflate the official population figures from the ONS which leaves them well down the ranking of UK cities.79.73.163.145 12:15, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

That logic would put London well down the list too. Do we really want to say that the population of London is less than 10,000? In the real world, Greater Manchester includes Salford, just as Greater London includes Westminster, Croydon, Kilburn, Enfield etc. It seems to me that the objections rest on the UK's ceremonial definition of city which is incomprensible to Wikipedia's world-wide audience. The dispute is strongly reminiscent of the Traditional counties of England one and is very WP:Local Point of View. --Concrete Cowboy 17:10, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

No, but the correct place name should be the "City of London", which your edit concealed in giving it a longer link-name. In which case, your point loses some of its force. I think many people would argue that the actual City of London is quite miniscule compared with Greater London (or whatever the preferred term is at the moment.) The guilt-by-association allegation (see Association fallacy) about the Traditional Counties stuff is rather below the belt, in my opinion. But it did give me some pause for thought. The problem is that the claims that are made are not accurate: there is a definition of cities and it is definitely currently used, given the recent official sources I quoted, but the common-sense view may well differ from this definition (and if it does, it needs verifying that it does). In which case, the correct way to proceed would be to use a number of criteria, and state them in a completely neutral point of view way, providing a number of lists.  DDStretch  (talk) 17:24, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Additionally, Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county, and it is not formally a city in itself. The problem is the tangled structure of local government in the UK. Hence my comments about using a variety of different criteria, and avoiding any kind of insult about the editors who adopt differing positions to onself would also help.  DDStretch  (talk) 17:31, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. Greater Manchester does of course include Salford, quite correctly. But Manchester does not. I think even Wikipedia's presumably unknowing world-wide audience might be quite surprised to be told that Salford was being treated as a part of another city, despite them being in different metropolitan boroughs and having distinctive settlement boundaries. I was looking at this list and there are some quite extraordinarily bizarre entries - for example, "Birmingham" at 229k in fact covers more or less the entire West Midlands metropolitan county - including Wolverhampton and (possibly) Coventry which have city status in their own right - not to mention Dudley, Walsall, Sandwell, and Solihull, all of whom would be quite offended to be called "Birmingham". Likewise, Chatham at #32 is extraordinary, given that the figure actually clearly covers the whole of the Medway Towns, of which Gillingham is the largest and not Chatham. DWaterson 19:23, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

My comment was made in good faith (I'm sure you can find the relevant WP), not an insult. What I was driving at in the comparison with the Trad Counties dispute is this (no insult intended, but if the cap fits etc): holding to the traditional boundaries of a city (or town) defies modern reality and the CSO has essentially abandoned it. For details, see the "remarks" sheet of Key Statistics for Urban Areas. The PUAs reflect the reality on the ground and it is wrong to get bogged down in historical conventions. Conversely, DWaterson is certainly right to point to the axample of Chatham as clearly wrong. Would it be more acceptable to change the first two entries to become "Greater London" and "Greater Manchester"? But then, is there a "Greater Birmingham" that includes Wolverhampton (also a city in its own right) - perhaps the politicians were saving their necks by calling it West Midlands. --Concrete Cowboy 17:24, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Would changing the article name to "List of largest urban areas in England by population" be an acceptable compromise? I can see that the principle of the article has merit but it really does need work. --Concrete Cowboy 17:24, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

No, I don't think so. Primary Urban Areas are not the same thing as Urban Areas, and we already have the list of Urban Areas at List of conurbations in the United Kingdom. The remarks sheet that you mention refer to Urban Areas (and Urban Sub-Areas, List of largest urban sub-divisions in England by population - which is really the individual towns and cities), not Primary Urban Areas. PUAs are simply an invention for one report, and not meant to be used outside that report.

To show how PUAs differ from Urban Areas, compare Greater Manchester Urban Area, which is the entire conurbation, with the PUAs in the area, which are seemingly randomly split into "Manchester", "Bolton" and "Rochdale". Additionally, PUAs follow local authority boundaries, not the edges of the urban areas themselves - so, for example, the part of the built-up area of Wolverhampton (the Urban Sub-Area) administered by South Staffordshire District Council is excluded from the "Birmingham" PUA, but is part of the West Midlands Urban Area.

On another of your points, there is no "Greater Birmingham" - even the city/region proposals ended up with "Birmingham, Coventry and the Black Country".

If the article must be kept, then it should move to List of Primary Urban Areas in England. Fingerpuppet 17:58, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Agree with Fingerpuppet; if we are to keep the article, then that is the only appropriate title, even if it is very specific. DWaterson 20:56, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I also agree with Fingerpuppet about this. The problem I had with the article as it was written is that identifying cities are clearly defined in one sense, but their boundaries are not. It is the boundaries of them that makes population estimates almost impossible to get or agree upon. Hence changes are needed. This doesn't, however, make "cities" obsolete, merely not useful for certain purposes, of which population estimating is one. It also doesn't make me any kind of historic counties person for pointing out that cities may still be definable.  DDStretch  (talk) 21:10, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I'm convinced. I support the view now that this article should be deleted as not being useful - indeed it is completely confusing. (Well, it confused me so that proves it! <grin>). --Concrete Cowboy 16:51, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

misleading

I think this page is very misleading as it's got cities and urban areas combined for example Liverpool is shown as having approx 840,000 when in reality its population proper is half of this...if you are including Liverpool (amongst others) with its population being 840,000 (or whatever it is) then I think all the cities listed should be shown with their urban areas combined...or vice versa —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lozzaboy (talk • contribs)

In other places...

Contributors to this page may also be interested in this requested move: Talk:List of largest urban sub-divisions in England by population#Requested move DWaterson 23:48, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Notes column

I note the addition of the extra Notes column - a very valuable addition, I think. However, some of the items in there are incorrect, but I can't think of a good way to express them. The issue that I have is that, for example, in the Rochdale notes it states "All towns in the Greater Manchester Urban Area split into three PUA's, Manchester, Bolton and Rochdale". This isn't true - as there are areas within the Greater Manchester Urban Area that are not part of any of the PUAs - for example, Wilmslow and Whitworth.

Equally, there are areas that are outside the GMUA (but within the GM County) that are included within the PUAs. This is due to the PUAs being only very approximately related to the Urban Area. PUAs are simply agglomerations of local authority areas.

Can someone think of a way of keeping the valuable extra information whilst not losing out on accuracy? Fingerpuppet 12:47, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

One solution may be to say "MOST" towns in the Greater Manchester Urban Area split into three PUA's", unless more research is carried out to discover which towns in the Greater Manchester Urban Area go into which Local Authority Areas, and from that identify in which PUA they have been placed. --Statsfan 13:11, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

How about simply placing the local authority names within, given that PUAs are agglomerations of those, and depending on exactly where the local authority boundary lies, parts of certain towns might be within, whilst others will be outside. Obvious starting points for towns/cities where this occurs would probably be Stoke-on-Trent, Reading and Wolverhampton. Fingerpuppet 16:53, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Be my guest Fingerpuppet. I presume you have Appendix 2 of Volume 2 of the report. The only problem will be many Local Authority Areas contain several towns which may not get highlighted e.g Kirklees and Sandwell. --Statsfan 20:30, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Suggested move of article

I propose that this article should be moved to the far less ambiguous List of Primary Urban Areas in England by population, given that this isn't a list of cities, but a statistical way of looking at conurbations; that several large and/or important cities are missing from the list (being part of PUAs named after other towns or cities), and many of the PUAs are named after towns that do not hold City Status. Fingerpuppet 14:22, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

• Support. DWaterson 22:45, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support. Statsfan 04:57, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support. --John Maynard Friedman 12:12, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Conurbations

This article is about Conurbations and Should be merged with List of Conurbations in the United Kingdom though this lists a lot mre conurbationsBlackwave...... (talk) 15:31, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

It isn't about conurbations, but approximations to conurbations used in the State of the Cities report. PUAs and UAs are not the same thing. UAs are bounded by the physical built-up areas, whilst PUAs are agglomerations of local authorities. Fingerpuppet (talk) 20:43, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose, per Fingerpuppet and previous discussion of this article. DWaterson (talk) 12:20, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose, for all the reasons expressed by DWaterson and Fingerpuppet (including the previous discussions around this topic)!  DDStretch  (talk) 22:35, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Rethink

I've been thinking about List of conurbations in the United Kingdom, which is a really bad article, and whilst I disagree with Blackwave's reasoning above, I think maybe these articles should be merged - but the otherway round, i.e. List of conurbations in the United Kingdom should be merged in here, rather than this article merged to List of conurbations in the United Kingdom. Basically, the contents of List of conurbations in the United Kingdom is about PUAs, rather than this article being about conurbations. Thoughts? DWaterson (talk) 21:00, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I would disagree strongly. The contents of the conurbations list is NOT about PUAs, but about well, conurbations. PUAs are merely approximations to conurbations based upon local authority units rather than being defined by the built-up area itself which is the case for Urban Areas.

Take for example, the Greater Manchester Urban Area - it is roughly approximated by the Manchester PUA, the Bolton PUA and the Rochdale PUA all added together. The three PUAs combined do not include those areas of the GMUA in Lancashire and Cheshire (such as Wilmslow, but do contain rural areas that is outside the GMUA. Equally, the Birmingham PUA contains rural areas of the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull and does not contain those areas of the West Midlands conurbation that lie outside the West Midlands county, such as parts of the Wolverhampton Urban Sub-division or Coleshill. Fingerpuppet (talk) 22:35, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Conflict of statistics

This article states Leeds' primary urban area population of 443,000 there abouts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeds However this article on the primary urban areas list its population at 596,000. This is correct, but the Leeds article is not.

Including Watford, Dartford, Broxbourne etc is the population figures for Greater London is incredibly misleading. This is taking in much of the main urban areas of the home counties to increase London's population quite significantly. This is incredibly misleading- no definition of London includes these areas. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.173.15.50 (talk) 13:23, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

No it is not. If the only reliable source, the Office of National Statistics, says that they are part of the London Urban Area then they are. To change this in favour of your own interpetation is contrary to WP:SYN, WP:OR and WP:RS. And WP:POV of course. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:26, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

The population of Manchester is Greater Manchester, not the primary urban area too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.212.254.252 (talk) 09:52, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

No, PUAs are not the same thing as Urban Areas, or Urban sub-divisions (or settlements). These are purely statistical items for the State of the English Cities report. The figures in this article are correct for PUAs. Fingerpuppet (talk) 08:15, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Obsolescent article

It seems highly likely to me that the 'English Cities' report will not be updated with the data the 2011 census. If I'm right, this article will have to be deleted since it will be unacceptably out of date. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:26, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Well I was theoretically correct but wrong. There was a 2011 update, but not one based on the 2011 census. See Updating the evidence base on English cities - final report. An interesting aspect of it is the way it is happy to combine settlements separated by miles of (relatively) open countryside - e.g., Milton Keynes and Aylesbury, Northampton and Wellingborough, Reading and Bracknell. Cert 18 for those fans of ceremonial cities who are of nervous disposition. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:56, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Clarification

There seems to be a lot given in this article to explain what a Primary Urban Area isn't. It'd be nice if the focus was more on what it is, and that appears to only get one sentence. We know that this isn't a definition of a locality/settlement, local government district, or urbanized/built-up area. Perhaps, that should come at the end of the introduction. If I understand what we're measuring with this page, it's contiguous urbanized electoral wards of a certain population threshold. Could we cut down on some of the wordiness of the article and feature this definition right out in front so as to clearly distinguish this from other "city" ranking pages for the United Kingdom? --Criticalthinker (talk) 07:30, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunately it isn't contiguous urbanisation either, or at least not exclusively. At its most simple, it is whatever the government says it is! As noted above, it includes places separated by miles of countryside - but also conglomerations like the West Midlands (which it calls Birmingham, to the outrage of Wolverhampton and Dudley). If we could say it is 'a list of contiguous Urban Areas [as defined by the ONS] with more than 250,000 population', that would be oh so convenient. But we can't, because the government didn't define it like that. It was only ever a planning mechanism, to do a 'compare and contrast' between places. I really don't think it worth while expending a lot of energy on this: we only need the article so that we can provide a definition to people who come across the term elsewhere. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:22, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Correction: we have an article called Primary Urban Area which provides the definition needed. This article is dead in the water - nothing links to it. It narrowly escaped a deletion proposal. 'Leave it alone, it's only scenery'. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:33, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

I looked at the article and am even more confused. It seems to say that there areas are basically contiguous (not miles of countryside, rather 50 meter seperations at most). It still seems to me that there are defined as a collection of "localities/settlements" generally thought of as historic, single-entity "cities." So, it's a kind of statistical measurement between "locality/settlement" and "urban area." Even if I'm wrong about this, I would like the definition on this page to be made more clear. --Criticalthinker (talk) 00:59, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Oh, goodness. And, even more to add to the confusion, it looks like the Leeds PUA is constiguous with the City of Leeds local government district, which can't be right. I thought the whole point of the PUA was to given a more realistic feeling of a "city's" size than arbitrary local government districts definitions. --Criticalthinker (talk) 01:06, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Delete this obsolete article -or rename to show it is historical, relating to 2001

This article is irritating misinformation. The reader should either be advised via the title that it relates to 2001 or it should be deleted. JRPG (talk) 15:12, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

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Proposal to move this article to "List of primary urban areas in England by population (2001 data)"

I suggest that the title of this article needs to be clarified to make it clear that it is not current. It is liable to have well-meaning people "correct" it when the 2021 Census figures come out. Although it doesn't seem to get the same level of activity as ESPON metropolitan areas in the United Kingdom (where the "EPSON" prefix has helped a bit but not totally), I suspect that this is coincidental. So I propose to suffix "(2001 data)" to the name unless anyone has strong reservations?

Pinging @Dr Greg and Koncorde:, who have an interest in this topic, I believe. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:13, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

If this was a one and done analysis, then it could just be renamed something akin to "2001 ONS Survey of Primary Urban Areas" (or words to that effect). It's obviously quite a bit more than just a "List" in any case.

Is the PUA a dead concept for the ONS? Koncorde (talk) 16:26, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree it's a good idea to include "2001" in the title; I don't have any strong feelings on exactly how to do it. For what it's worth, list articles are supposed to have a few paragraphs of introduction to provide some context, so I'm happy for it to be called "List of...". -- Dr Greg  talk  17:18, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

It was more in reference to the controversial aspects of the "city" bit. Most lists might have a pre-amble, but this is a little bit more than that. Koncorde (talk) 21:46, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

@Koncorde: For the ONS probably but, given that they changed UA (2001) to BUA (2011), maybe we had best wait and see what terms they use for 2021. But the Centre for Cities is still using that phrase (and abbreviating it to "city", cue outrage from the Colonel Blimps).

I realise that Abcdefg (hijk) is a Wikipedia disambiguation convention and there may well never be anything to disambiguate from, but I think it works better than "List of primary urban areas in England by population in 2001". --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:54, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

For me, the "2001 data" suggests there is other data. Articles like List of United States urban areas simply title the list itself with the relevant date in the header.

Centre For Cities isn't our problem, they're pretty niche, and according to their webpage Please note that since 25 January 2016, Centre for Cities has been using a new PUA definition, following a review undertaken with CURDS, University of Newcastle. so there is no guarantee there is any relevance with this dataset. Koncorde (talk) 21:46, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

I wouldn't describe the Centre for Cities as 'pretty niche' and their "primary urban area" studies get reported fairly regularly. I don't know for sure but I strongly suspect that the 2001 analysis is theirs, adopted by the Government of the day. (It was a HMG selection, not ONS).

So I think that you may have provided the solution. We can keep the article name as is, but just add a section header for 2001 as per the US article. Then add a new section giving the CfC/UoN definition for 2016 onwards. Would that work? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:06, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

CFC/UoN are irrelevant. May be worth mentioning its ongoing use in the lede, but any attenpt to tie the two versions together is a WP:SYNTH / OR issue because of whatever CURDS has done. If there needs to be a mention related to CFC it should be on their page - but the list doesn't require regenerating.

And, yes, CFC are niche. I am not sure you can get much more niche than a policy think tank talking about one subject. Koncorde (talk) 16:17, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes, CFC/UoN are irrelevant to the article as currently framed and it would certainly be synth to try to shoe-horn them in without other changes. But the article is "Primary urban areas in England", not "Department for Communities and Local Government's PUAs in England in 2007". So I don't see any reason not to restructure it to (a) generalise the lead; (b) make much of the existing text into a section about the 2007 definition, then (c) add a new section on the CfC/UoN 2016 definition. In each case, the attribution would need to be stated. I'm willing to do a draft unless I would be wasting my time due to strong opposition. Is that the case?

In the context of urban economic strategy, they are not niche – any more than any specialist in a specialist subject is. https://news.google.com/search?q=%22Centre%20for%20CIties%22&hl=en-GB&gl=GB&ceid=GB%3Aen shows extensive press coverage of their reports. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:33, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't see their significance to this list - and that is the point - they are niche because they are a specialist in a specialist subject which is not this list, and instead they have made their own thing for their purposes. If we're talking about re-framing the content of to align with whatever CFC have then whether or not CFC's version is even notable or significant (again, niche) is up for question. At present this article is supported only by the fact it was a piece of work generated by a government department.

If the data is honestly that dead (and a broadly irrelevant type of measurement), this feels close to being a PROD. Koncorde (talk) 21:46, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes, if the CfC continuing usage is not to be integrated, I support changing this article to be a redirect to List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, maybe specifically to a short section that gives a brief history of it. I suggest that we do the same with ESPON metropolitan areas in the United Kingdom: I can't see how that article has any import either, other than as an historical curiosity like this one.

I'm unconvinced that we need to bother anyone else with a formal WP:PROD or WP:MERGEPROP – "If the need for a merge is obvious, editors can be bold and simply do it". John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:21, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

References