Review of Urban and Rural Area Definitions

In 2002 the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) concluded a review of Urban and Rural definitions as a follow-up to the Urban and Rural White Papers. The review examined government needs for urban and rural definitions, identified the definitions available, assessed their strengths and weaknesses, and established a small set of definitions that met a broad range of user needs. It also considered the need for a new approach to defining urban and rural areas, and set out options for further development. The following products were produced as part of the review:

The Project report (8.0Mb pdf) details the outcome of the review and recommends a number of ways forward. Some of these have already been acted upon and others have provided the basis for further work.

The User Guide (4.1Mb pdf) is aimed at the non-expert and provides quick reference material on rural and urban definitions identified in the review. The User Guide has also been published in printed form, and is on sale at £10. Further details.

The following Excel (.xls) tables are available to download:

England and Wales:
Main urban settlements (1991) with population over 1,000 (1.3 Mb xls)
Main urban settlements (1991) and their subdivisions with population over 1,000
(1.8 Mb xls)

England:
Classification of administrative areas: Rural Local Authorities (27Kb xls)
Classification of administrative areas: Rural Wards (Countryside Agency) This is available on the Neighbourhood Statistics website. You will need to select 'statistics by subject' (situated on the left of the screen), 'Indices of Deprivation and Classification' then 'Countryside Agency's Ward Level Definition of Rural Areas'

The digitised 1991 Urban Settlement Boundaries for England and Wales are also available for Geographical Information Systems (GIS) users in both ESRI shape (shp) format and MapInfo interchange format (MID/MIF).

A new version of the 1991 Urban Settlements has been produced by ODPM and Ordnance Survey (OS). This is known as the 2001 Urban Settlements and is based on 2001 boundaries of urban land and population data from the 2001 Census. It is planned to publish the boundaries on CD and these will be available from Census Customer Services in the near future.

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This page last revised: Thursday, 4 November 2004