Track the growth of the UK's cities over the last 100 years and a familiar pattern emerges: northern and coastal decline, and the growth of London. But the devil is in the detail.
"London doesn't function in isolation, it's part of a network of cities," said Robin Edwards, a research assistant at University College London's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. "Population centres are feeding on London - those that provide geostructural roles are the ones that have grown the most."
By combining census data from 1901 to 2011 with official assessments of urban boundaries, Edwards was able to track the rise and fall of cities by using a mapping technique called rank-size plots. The result (below) reveals that cities close to London - the likes of Reading, Crawley and Southend - experienced the most rapid growth.
The planned town of Milton Keynes (80km from London) grew from a population of zero in 1967 to more than 229,000 in 2011. In contrast, in the industrial north Blackburn, Burnley and Wigan suffered heavy declines. But the dataset struggles to tell the most significant story of urban population change: commuters.
"You can't consider London by itself," said Edwards. "You have to look at least to the commuter catchment area." That covers the "cluster" of Cambridge to Brighton and Bristol. Edwards argues that improved transport links will make these clusters bigger. The fate of cities does not exist in isolation.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
