Talk:List of ONS built-up areas in England by population

Error On 75000-99999 List Comment

The comment above the 75,000-99,999 list states that Reading is a city, despite the opposite being stated earlier in the article and Reading not being in the list below. Could someone work out which city is meant to be referenced? TGwydFr (talk) 14:14, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

 Done, thanks for picking it up. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:01, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Oops I copied the sentence and edited it to fit each section, missing it, the section Reading is actually in is correct. Chocolateediter (talk) 19:04, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Synthesis concerns

I'm concerned that this article contains WP:SYNTH. The source it uses explicitly excludes London but this article includes it. The source also doesnt refer to these areas as towns or cities but built-up areas. Eopsid (talk) 10:34, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Taken on your points. Chocolateediter (talk) 16:43, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I would take it further. This is not a list of towns and cities in England by population, it is a list of ONS artefacts that use names that happen to be those of towns and cities in England but any area matches are coincidental. IMO, the article should be deleted per policy that says statistical divisions are not of themselves notable. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:12, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

The population figures in this article are based on an Excel data download. Surely this is a primary source? Wikipedia articles are based on secondary sources. The population figures for districts are more widely reported, at least by the council's themselves, and the council areas have defined boundaries so it would be feasible to have a table for those. Even so, the list itself should fulfil WP:NLIST requirements of coverage in secondary sources, unless it can be looked upon as a navigational aid to finding articles. Rupples (talk) 02:36, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Primary sources are okay so long as they are not misused. We've for a long time used ONS direct references as authoritive statistical measures as their sources are complete and come with definition and analysis. The issue here is the source is (potentially) being misused by our own interpretation of the source.

Council district numbers published by the council themselves would be just as equally a Primary source, not all councils publish suxh numbers, or at the same time etc. Which is why the comprehensive ONS has been preferred in the past. Koncorde (talk) 05:04, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Fundamentally, the ONS is a reliable source for its own definitions. If the ONS says that the population of an area that it clearly delineates on a map is x, then we accept that as true. A problem arises when they use a name that is widely used to mean a differently delineated area, especially one significantly smaller than common understanding or even legal definition of the area concerned.

A WP:SYNTH violation (if not a deliberate falsehood) arises when an editor cites the ONS to give the population of an area that is different from that delineated by the ONS. That can be done explicitly or, as in this case, implicitly by wikilinking the ONS name to our article name. It can also be done by calling the article a "list of towns and cities in England by population" when it is no such thing – it is a list of ONS-defined built-up area subdivisions.

A misleading waste of space. Delete. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 08:54, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Presumably then, this article if retained, should be titled "List of population by ONS Built up areas in England". Rupples (talk) 10:31, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Milton Keynes

Further information: History of Milton Keynes § 1960s plans for a new city in North Buckinghamshire, 1967 designation of Milton Keynes

It appears that I need to explain to Chocolateediter the reason why we cannot link the statistical area that the ONS calls "Milton Keynes" to our article Milton Keynes. Nor can we quote the ONS population figure without an explanation of what it is and, more importantly, what it is not. To do otherwise is deliberately to mislead our readers.

For reasons best known to itself, the ONS has arbitrarily divided the city (as defined by the 1967 designation, which explicitly includes Bletchley, Wolverton, Stony Stratford in the "designated area") into two subdivisions: "Bletchley" (actually Bletchley and Fenny Stratford) and called the other it calls "Milton Keynes". The latter is just a fragment of the city: whether the ONS calls it a BUA or a BUASD is irrelevant: it is still a subdivision. But the key point is that it would deliberately mislead readers if we link it to Milton Keynes, just as much as it would if we linked it to City of Milton Keynes, Milton Keynes (civil parish), Milton Keynes (village) or even Central Milton Keynes. We have no article that maps to the ONS [sub]division, nor are we ever likely to have, since it is not at all notable.

If the ONS followed its its declared methodology, it would have had five BUA[S]Ds for MK. And it would have divided its own home city (Newport, Wales) into a least four fragments – which of course it has not done. The ONS is a reliable source for its own definitions; it will be a {{failed verification}} if it is used for something else. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:57, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I know why, if a parish council decides to become a town council in England, it turns the area it governs into a town. Bletchley and Fenny Stratford has a town council (probably happened just before 2011 census), I assume the ONS added West Bletchley and called it Bletchley since it seems obvious to put it with it and not the other parishes of Milton Keynes and Bletchley was the common name of the two parishes.

I linked Milton Keynes to the part of the article explaining Milton Keynes's towns maybe you don't didn't know that with a link if you put an article name, a # and a header in the article it sends you to that part of an article not the top.

No BUASDs exist in the 2021 Census you say it is irrelevant then contradict yourself in the next paragraph by trying to use it sound as if the ONS did it to specifically make Milton Keynes smaller. Chocolateediter (talk) 23:23, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

You really don't understand Milton Keynes, do you? (You are not at all unusual in that!) "Milton Keynes: different by design": it simply cannot be squeezed into the strait-jacket of historic definitions.

Milton Keynes consists of constituent towns, villages and other settlements – not unlike Greater London. The fraction that the ONS calls "Bletchley" consists of two parishes, "Bletchley and Fenny Stratford (NB two towns with one town council for administrative convenience) and West Bletchley (not a town, but includes Old Bletchley, the original Bletchley, a small village outside Fenny Stratford before the railway junction arrived). The fraction that the ONS calls "Milton Keynes" consists of a bunch more parishes, of which three are towns: Central Milton Keynes, Stony Stratford and Wolverton.

Yes, of course I am aware of links to sections. So what makes you think that Milton Keynes#Original towns and villages is a valid match for the ONS artefact?

Of course what this case demonstrates is this whole article is fundamentally unsound: it is a list of ONS statistical areas, not a list of cities and towns. Even the ONS does not claim that it is, indeed https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/datasets/c0db0e8c67d04935bcf1749ca6027fef/about they say explicitly] that it is precisely not that.

I reiterate: we must not mislead readers with deliberate WP:EGGs. We must not put content in articles that we know to be false: that principle is not negotiable. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 00:14, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

PS if we are to continue with the fiction that this is a list of cities, then the city in this case is City of Milton Keynes and its population at the 2021 census was 287,060 Cakeism? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 00:47, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

@Chocolateediter - if you haven't read the guidelines on BUA figures have a look at WP:UKSTAT, but statistical geography is down the pecking order a fair bit. Have to agree with @JMF, although the BUA/SDs have been used to create county settlement tables in articles, those are intended to be very high level and give a very general indication of largest areas. The Equalizer (talk) 01:01, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

It is a list article indicating the largest areas by population. That UKSTAT needs updating as ONS haven’t supplied new data of larger areas since 2011(it reads like it was written for the 2001 census data). For the 2021 census the smaller ones (formerly known as BUA sub-divisions) were renamed to Built-up area. Explain high-level. Chocolateediter (talk) 01:18, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

The BUA terminology only changed for this census but the general guidelines remains sound. The statistical geography extents don't always follow administrative boundaries which is what most locals recognise as the traditional definition of a settlement, which only give a general idea of extent and hence a very high level indication of place sizes. BUAs are subdivided at gaps in the urban space as well as cartographically. The problem though of only using administrative geography is that not everywhere is parished, neither does a parish contain all settlements or might be subdivided across them. The Equalizer (talk) 01:41, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Whatever population figure is used, it should be consistent with the land area stated in the Milton Keynes infobox to enable correct calculation of the population density. Rupples (talk) 01:43, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Actually no (conferring with myself). While that should be the case for the Milton Keynes article it may not necessarily apply for this article. Reading above there's serious questions as to WP:SYNTH. Maybe this article should be deleted? A list of settlements by population should follow articles in reliable sources where such lists have been set out. Has the ONS produced a listing that agrees with this one? Rupples (talk) 02:05, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Is it valid to selectively pick out the population of Milton Keynes "urban area" from Citypopulation.de (in the note), where the table in which it is included shows populations of over 2.7m for Manchester, 2.5m for Birmingham and doesn't include say, Wolverhampton and Sunderland Bradford? http://www.citypopulation.de/en/uk/cities/englandua/ Rupples (talk) 02:34, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

There are several problems with this article. The title claims to be towns and cities, but the data is built-up areas, without fully explaining the differences in definitions. As such, we end up with inevitable differences of opinion as we've seen above on Milton Keynes as to what areas should be deemed towns / cities and where their links should be going. The built-up area data that's been used is part of a wider set of data that isn't yet complete - it's missing the built-up conglomerations data that's still awaited from the Office for National Statistics. The data used therefore excludes London, and any list purporting to show towns and cities in England by population which has to qualify itself by saying "but excluding London, because we can't work out what to say for it" (I paraphrase) isn't that useful to the average reader.

I can see a few ways of trying to improve matters:

• Delete the article - there aren't huge numbers of articles linking to this page, but equally it is a potentially useful topic that one might reasonably expect there to be an article about.
• Rename the article - 'List of built-up areas in England by population' or the like.
• Expand the data to acknowledge the fact that many towns / cities have multiple definitions for which population statistics are compiled, and enlarge the tables to have perhaps three columns for: built-up area; conglomeration (temporarily using the 2011 data until the 2021 data is released); and area (if any) officially holding town or city status. Not all places would have figures in each column - for example London isn't a single built-up area, whilst Halifax has no area that formally holds town status.

Conceptually, I think the third option would be most useful to readers for understanding at a glance the complexities involved, but I can also see it would be fraught with difficulty to compile as a sortable table. There would be questions such as how you arrange the overlapping definitions for parishes that have declared themselves towns which fall within a larger urban area, whether Greater Manchester (conglomeration) and Manchester (city / built-up area) should go on the same row, and what you do with the likes of Leighton Buzzard where the town council is called Leighton-Linslade but the built-up area is called Leighton Buzzard. Even if we could reach consensus on every such issue, the result would probably be WP:SYNTH.

I'm therefore leaning towards the idea that the best solution would be to rename the article to be explicit that it is purely talking about built-up areas, not towns or cities, but to have two columns of data for built-up area and conglomeration. For the conglomerations column we can either use the larger 2011 built-up areas as a placeholder, or leave it blank pending release of the 2021 conglomerations data. (Late last year I asked ONS when it was due, and was told they were aiming to release the conglomerations around Spring 2024.) That way it's clearer to the reader that the built-up area data alone is only a partial picture, which helps to explain some of the things which feel odd if you look at the 2021 built-up areas in isolation, like Wythenshawe not being part of Manchester, Caversham not being part of Reading, and Bletchley not being part of Milton Keynes.

Of course, even once the conglomerations data is released there'll be aspects that feel odd to locals as to how their areas have been treated, but we would be faithfully reporting what a reliable source has said rather than adding layers of our own interpretation. Stortford (talk) 08:06, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm glad I'm not the only one who contacted the ONS about when the conglomeration data would be released. I for one am leaning towards deletion of this article for the same reasons that Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of largest United Kingdom settlements by population and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of localities in England by population were deleted. I think the Settlements in ceremonial counties of England by population article and its child articles have the same problem. Eopsid (talk) 09:51, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes I too support a deletion of this article, largely because there's thousands of definitions as to what can constitute a "town" or "city." Using Milton Keynes as an example, the de jure "City" is not the Milton Keynes urban area, but the wider City of Milton Keynes unitary authority area. Hence, by default, in official sources "Milton Keynes" usually refers to, by default, the UA and not the contiguous built-up area [1][2]. Yet, others will argue that the actual "city" of Milton Keynes is either its 1967 designated area, or the slightly wider Milton Keynes built-up area (some Baby Boomers may even argue that it's Milton Keynes Village).

And there's countless examples of these problems. Is "London" Greater London, the City of London, the London urban area or "London Airspace"? Is Luton just the Borough of Luton or does it also include Dunstable and Houghton Regis?

The fact that these ambiguities exist means that any attempt to define what a town, city or settlement is is likely based on POV and NOR. If we want to list BUAs, then there is an article for that, and the same is true for civil parishes, cities and unitary authority areas. The boundaries of places are subjective, and they should be listed on WP based on a set of criteria.

Also FYI, as JMF pointed out, Bletchley is indeed 100% an integral part of Milton Keynes, and it's relation to MK is indistinguishable from that of any modern area of the city, including Central Milton Keynes, because it's been part of the city since its founding [3]. So the "Milton Keynes" BUASD is completely nonsensical in any case. Anonymous MK2006 (talk) 23:19, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Another MK-type example is Wolverhampton and Bilston. The Wolverhampton 2021 BUA excludes Bilston, so the ONS see Bilston as separate from Wolverhampton but within the City of Wolverhampton. Designations can change. Looks as though Bletchley was previously viewed by the ONS as little more than a suburb of Milton Keynes, but has revised this view and now treats it as a town in its own right, within the City of Milton Keynes. Rupples (talk) 10:46, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

No, in fact at designation, Bletchley was the largest settlement in the area, and a town in its own right for at least 50 years. Milton Keynes was a tiny village near Newport Pagnell. The other "anchor" settlements were the towns of Wolverton and Stony Stratford. Legally, Milton Keynes is Bletchley, Wolverton, Stony Stratford, the villages and the new neighbourhoods. It is polycentric, the original "15 minute city". No suburbs in the conventional sense.

Back in 2001, the ONS had a logical approach (see Milton Keynes urban area#Built-up area sub-divisions) but as the city developed, they lost the plot. They could have defined BUASDs defined by the A5, A421, A422 and the flood plain of the River Ouzel. But now they have painted themselves into a corner and hoping that the OS will dig them out of it. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:06, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

That the ONS defined a BUASD it calls Bletchley is not really a problem. The serious issue is that they defined a single BUASD for all of the rest the city (rather than the geographic four) and specifically that they called it "Milton Keynes". That is just sloppy. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:25, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

@Rupples I think the problem is that there are various legal entities called "Milton Keynes", i.e. the 1967 designated area of Milton Keynes, the Milton Keynes urban area, Milton Keynes (civil parish) and the City of Milton Keynes (unitary authority area). However, over time the differences between these have blurred since the city has, and continues to, expand.

That Bletchley was part of the 1967 MK designation probably isn't relevant enough to the ONS today because it's relation to MK is, for all intents and purposes, almost identical to Newport Pagnell. Both are towns within the administrative City of Milton Keynes and are physically connected to the wider core built-up-area of MK. The only difference is that NP became integrated with MK around a decade or so later than Bletchley, and wasn't included in the original designation order. But today, that is largely irrelevant, especially considering the fact that the city has expanded outside of this boundary so much so that institutions, including the ONS, likely forget that the New Town boundary ever existed in the first place.

To the ONS, the "core settlement" of "Milton Keynes" is a modern utopia of Concrete Cows and roundabouts (the stereotypical depiction of the city), whilst Bletchley and NP are towns within the wider metropolis and unitary authority area of MK, but distinct from the modern "main" settlement, which they have hence decided to name "Milton Keynes."

Now, IMO, I agree with JMF that the Milton Keynes BUA overall needs more BUASDs, none of which should be called "Milton Keynes" because it would be bonkers to apply the name of a prominent and growing city to just a segment of it. But if we really were going to define what the "settlement" of Milton Keynes is, then between the BUA and the BUASD, the former is much more accurate IMO considering the fact that the city continues to expand far outside of the 1967 boundary, and excluding those new developments from the population count of the city is wildly misleading. (Now Milton Keynes City Council may prefer us to even use the unitary authority area definition, but getting consensus for that would probably be harder than trying to fly to Mars, so that's for another debate...). Anonymous MK2006 (talk) 00:26, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Kudos to Anonymous MK2006 for using the word "bonkers" — first time I've seen it on Wikipedia :) But seriously, isn't it the case of the ONS merely changing the nomenclature? For 2021, aren't the 2011 BUASDs now BUAs and the 2011 BUAs now "built up conglomerations"? Point 6 BUASD is not used for the 2021 figures. Is there a ONS population figure available for "Milton Keynes built up conglomeration"? If not, is it preferable to wait until one is published by ONS/NOMIS and use that, rather than use citypopulation.de's calculated figure? Rupples (talk) 08:08, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

No conglomeration layouts or figures are available yet. Citypop.de are not to be trusted, seems they are trying hard to be first for the stats but I've seen where they are not using new nomenclature or inventing counts. Only reason they have been used in the past is that ONS data was not always directly referenceable, but am hoping the latest census data is more accessible enough so that they can be ditched altogether. Note that 2021 new-styled 'BUA' figures are available from ONS albeit rounded and those are currently being referred to in this article. The Equalizer (talk) 11:31, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

References

Move or delete this article

The current title of this article is dishonest. It is not a "List of towns and cities in England by population". It is a list of ONS built-up areas and should be named accordingly.

See also ESPON metropolitan areas in the United Kingdom (which began as "metropolitan areas in the United Kingdom", which it clearly was not.

So options now are move to an honest title or delete. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:05, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Would tend to agree. Until relatively recently it was a dismbig type page. Now it's some unusual mis-defined content and conflicts with other sources such as List of cities in the United Kingdom. Per my concerns raised here, we have a broader issue on wikipedia at the moment that (much like the aged source that was the ESPON totals) regarding multiple sources being used for different measures of what are (or should be) the same thing. Koncorde (talk) 22:16, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

The original release is called

"Towns and cities, characteristics of built-up areas, England and Wales: Census 2021".

If you really really want to rename it use "List of 2021 built-up areas in England", the 2031 census will probably have another term can the ONS settle on terminology honestly.

If anything combined authorities are effectively the current metropolitan areas since they've absorbed the residual metropolitan county bodies and added new areas.

Unusual and mis-defined is exactly how the UK works, the ONS is the same source as the district populations in the list of cities article. Towns and cities have a de jure (official) area and statistics as well as de facto (in practice). If we stuck purely to de jure a lot of articles would be removed. The 2011 BUASD statistics were widely used and the 2021 version is a clear successor. Citypopulation.de clearly does seem a bit iffy with its sources but if you question the ONS we would have no sources at all. Chocolateediter (talk) 01:04, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

To be clear, I am not questioning the ONS as a source for their self-defined geographic areas. The issue is our WP:SYNTH in repurposing that definition to describe something other than those definitions. If you look at the history of ESPON metropolitan areas in the United Kingdom (which is a redirect target from List of metropolitan areas in the United Kingdom: the sooner we can fix that, the better!), you will see how people have repeatedly misinterpreted it, despite its prominent hat note. In the case of this article, there is no such health warning and worse still, it explicitly links to Wikipedia city/town articles that define a geographic area that may not be (and often is not) the same as the ONS one(s). Yes, I am well aware that there are many competing definitions and that different people hold different views about which is "correct" – sometimes vociferously. So it is essential to identify primary sources for what they are – and what they are not. It is not helpful to anyone to cloud the issues deliberately, as this article as it stands does. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:17, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't necessarily think the ESPON was "wrong" in as much as it aged long past relevance. What it defined was right for its very specific quotient of right - and was used across Europe - making for a consistent approach. In contrast mixing Urban Area, BUA, BUASD, Cities, Towns, Local Authority Areas and such is way more problematic. I ultimately don't care which of them is selected, so long as it's then applied across all articles so we can be internally consistent. Koncorde (talk) 20:34, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree 100%. ESPON certainly was not wrong, for exactly the same reason as the ONS is not wrong: in each case, they have defined their terms very clearly. The problem is entirely one of our own making in articles such as this, with editors (and readers) shoehorning the source to fit some other definition, deceiving themselves with a coincidence of nomenclature. Mixing Urban Area, BUA, BUASD, Cities, Towns, Local Authority Areas and such is more than merely problematic, it deliberately misdirects our readers. I don't mind either, indeed I don't look for consistency across UK geography. I only ask for consistency and honesty within articles, that we define our terms equally clearly, that we don't wikilink between inconsistent definitions, that we don't cite the ONS for anything other that an entity that they defined. This article as it stands offends against all those principles. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:49, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

What about unlink all built-up areas in the tables and add a column along the lines of "Related settlement/s" or "Associated settlement/s". If built-up areas were un-linked and a second column wasn't added then users would keep coming in and linking things in the built-up area column all the time. Then would that solve the issue or would unlinking all built-up areas be the only thing acceptable.

Maybe (probably a silly thing rejected straight away but a suggestion not the less) add a few areas in this new "related settlement/s" column, (with a cap on how many) like Ashton, Edgbaston, etc with Birmingham. I'd just like to see small areas but can be easily disregarded. Chocolateediter (talk) 00:39, 28 April 2024 (UTC)