This is a re-write of a piece from a few years ago and something a bit more gentle to round off the series on local government & independence: city status.
Right, it’s not the most important thing in the world – but in the UK it’s just another one of those odd things that doesn’t make much sense.
Though given the furore around Wrexham’s (ultimately successful) bid for city status in 2022, it’s clearly important to many people.
There’s no set definition of what a city is and different nations have different approaches.
What we might consider in Wales to be a minor provincial town or very big village would likely be considered a city in the United States or Canada, for example.
I suppose it boils down to a hierarchy of settlements.
A “city” would have a sizable travel-to-work area and would be less dependent on other settlements in the wider region for services – what the Institute of Welsh Affairs’ “Understanding Welsh Places” project would label as an “Independent” place.
“Independent places have a high number of assets in relation to their population; a strong diversity of jobs; and residents travel shorter distances to travel to work and services. These places will attract people from neighbouring places to access their assets and jobs.”
Once a town has expanded to such an extent that it acts as a sub-regional hub, providing services for a collection of smaller satellite towns and villages, it’s probably earned the right to be called a city – but that doesn’t mean a city has to be a minimum size.
What would immediately spring to mind when a European thinks “city” (a very large, densely-populated urban area with a population in the high hundred thousand/millions) is usually a conurbation – a group of several cities and towns that have merged into a single highly-urbanised settlement.
Great Britain and Ireland only have perhaps a dozen true conurbations: Greater London, Glasgow, West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, West Midlands, Merseyside, Tyne-Wear and Dublin
Each one of these areas is made up of individual metropolitan boroughs or city councils. For example, Salford – within Greater Manchester – is itself a city. It’s the same case for Westminster and the City of London within Greater London.
