The Belfast Metropolitan Area is a grouping of council areas which include commuter towns and overspill from Belfast, Northern Ireland with a population of 579,276[1] and 670,447 in 2011, this is combining the Belfast, Carrickfergus, North Down, Lisburn and Castlereagh districts along with the town of Newtownabbey.
The area was first officially classified as a Metropolitan Area in the late 1990s when the British government began to prepare for a cohesive plan that would include the Belfast Region. Six local government districts – Belfast, Castlereagh, Carrickfergus, Lisburn, Newtownabbey and North Down, were identified as the key areas within the Metropolitan Area. The continuous built-up area centred on Belfast, which is contained within these six districts, is defined as the Belfast Metropolitan Urban Area.[2]
The Area is made up of established towns, their overspill and the general con-joining of settlements as Belfast expands. Established towns include Carrickfergus, Bangor, Lisburn and Holywood. Many of these towns were established and important long before Belfast rose to prominence; Carrickfergus, for example, was the Norman capital of the northern part of Ireland.[citation needed] Bangor had been an important centre of Christianity and learning from its foundation in 555 AD. The recent re-classification of Lisburn as a city does not change its position within the Metropolitan Area.
In the 2011 UK Census, the distributions of population, religion, national identity and proportion of immigrants within the Belfast Metropolitan Area, were as follows.
Population density
Percentage who were Catholic or brought up Catholic
Most commonly stated national identity
Percentage born outside the UK and the Republic of Ireland