Gardiner V., Matthews H. The changing geography of the United Kingdom

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Household size and composition

A third theme is the decline in average household size and the growing diversity of

household types (Haskey 1996). Average household size has almost halved over the past

century, falling from 4.6 persons per household in 1901 to 2.43 in 1996. The most

recent (1992-based) household projections for England assume that the figure will be

down to 2.17 by 2016. As a corollary, the number of households has been growing much

more rapidly than the population. Between 1961 and 1991, for instance, in Great Britain

the former increased by 38 per cent, the latter by only 9 per cent. Similarly, the

projections for the period 1991–2016 suggest that, alongside population growth of

around 8 per cent, the number of households in England will rise by 23 per cent—an

absolute increase of 4.4 million households. Such an increase is generating a great deal

of planning concern and attempts are being made to minimise the impact on the

countryside (see Breheny and Hall 1996).

The direct reasons for the fall in average household size are the rapid increase

in households comprising only one person (up from 17 to 26 per cent of all

households between 1961 and 1991) and the falling number of large households

(the share of households with six or more people down from 6 to 2 per cent). The

latter is due partly to the fall in family size since the early 1960s (see pp. 171–3)

and partly to a cutting by two-thirds of the number of families sharing

accommodation with each other. The growth in individual persons living alone

arises from a number of factors which indicate clearly the growing diversity of

household types: more elderly loners due to greater longevity, absence of (nearby)

children and ability to maintain separate households; more young adults moving

away from home for higher education or first job or to gain independence; and more

middle-aged people divorcing or separating, particularly men leaving behind

partners with children. Related both to the latter and to the growth of single

motherhood is the rise in lone-parent families with dependent children, up from 2 to

FIGURE 9.6 Composition of households, by type of household and family, 1961–96, Great

Britain

Sources: Censuses, and 1996 General Household Survey. Crown copyright. After Haskey

(1996).

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6 per cent of all households between 1961 and 1991. The main casualty of these

changes has been couples with dependent children, down from 38 to 25 per cent

over this thirty-year period (Figure 9.6).

There is a clear geography to these household patterns, partly related to the two

other aspects of population composition just described (Champion et al. 1996;

Haskey 1996). Besides Northern Ireland where the proportion of large (6+ person)

households is three times that of the next largest region (West Midlands), the main

concentration of high average household size in 1991 was central southern England,

arising from the strong in-migration of families with children. Below-average size is

found in more remote rural areas and other areas which have gained retirement

migrants, the extreme case being East Sussex at 2.24. The main conurbations are

distinctive in having above-average shares of both very small and very large

households, mainly as a result of their attractiveness for both young adults and ethnic

minorities.

Conclusion

The processes underlying national population change have altered greatly over the past

half century and are continuing to exhibit new developments. Craig (1997:12) has

summarised the key trends of the ten-year period since 1984 as follows: ‘Population

growth has resumed for, although fertility is still low, the expectation of life is rising and

there is now a net gain of people from migration. Life styles have altered in that there has

been a steady increase in cohabitation and a sharp rise in births outside marriage.’ Also

impressive are the steady growth of the ethnic minority population and the fluctuations in

the pace of the two main dimensions of population redistribution, the North-South drift

and the urban-rural shift, especially the stronger demographic basis of the major cities in

recent years.

Since such important changes can occur within a decade or so, it is perhaps not

surprising that those involved in anticipating the future stress the degree of

uncertainty that is involved in projections. In the latest (1996-based) population

projections for the UK, Shaw (1998) demonstrates the effect of adopting what he

reckons to be the likely range between high and low variants for the three main

components. Looking ahead to the year 2036, the mortality variants produced a range

of 0.75 million around the principal projection, migration a range of around 2 million

and fertility the largest range of some 3.5 million. It is certain, however, that,

whatever the changes that do occur, they will—like those of the past few decades—

have extremely important ramifications for the economy, society and geography of

the UK.

References

Armitage, B. and Babb, P. (1996) ‘Population review: (4) Trends in fertility’, Population Trends 84:

7–13.

Bolting, B. (1996) ‘Population review: (7) Review of children’, Population Trends 85: 25–31.

Breheny, M. and Hall, P. (eds) (1996) The People—Where Will They Go? London: Town and Country

Planning Association.

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Champion, T. (1989) ‘Internal migration and the spatial distribution of population’, in H.Joshi (ed.)

The Changing Population of Britain, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Champion, T. (1996) ‘Population Review: (3) Migration to, from and within the United Kingdom’,

Population Trends 83: 5–16.

Champion, T. (ed.) (1993) Population Matters: The Local Dimension, London: Paul Chapman

Publishing.

Champion, T. and Dorling, D. (1994) ‘Population change for Britain’s functional regions, 1951–91’,

Population Trends 77: 14–23.

Champion, T., Wong, C., Rooke, A., Dorling, D., Coombes, M. and Brunsdon, C. (1996) The

Population of Britain in the 1990s, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Compton, P.A. (1991) ‘The changing population’, in R.J.Johnston and V.Gardiner (eds) The

Changing Geography of the United Kingdom, London: Routledge.

Craig, J. (1997) ‘Population Review: (9) Summary of issues’, Population Trends 88: 5–12.

Denham, C. and White, I. (1998) ‘Differences in urban and rural Britain’, Population Trends 91: 23–

34.

Dorling, D. and Atkins, D. (1995) Population Density, Change and Concentration in Great Britain

1971, 1981 and 1991, Studies on Medical and Population Subjects 58, London: HMSO.

Dunnell, K. (1995) ‘Population Review: (2) Are we healthier?’, Population Trends 82: 12–18.

Grundy, E.M.D. (1996) ‘Population Review: (5) The population aged 60 and over’, Population

Trends 84: 14–20.

Haskey, J. (1996) ‘Population Review: (6) Families and households in Great Britain’, Population

Trends 85: 7–24.

Haskey, J. (1997) ‘Population Review: (8) The ethnic minority and overseas-born populations of

Great Britain’, Population Trends 88: 13–30.

Shaw, C. (1998) ‘1996-based national population projections for the United Kingdom and

constituent countries’, Population Trends 91: 43–9.

Further reading

A summary view of the main changes since the early 1970s, forming the first of a series of

nine articles in the Office for National Statistics’ ten-yearly review of population trends is

provided by B.Armitage (1995) ‘Population review. Structure and distribution of the

population’, Population Trends 81: 7–16. The topics covered in more detail in the

subsequent articles are mortality and health (Dunnell 1995), migration (Champion 1996),

fertility (Armitage and Babb 1996), the elderly (Grundy 1996), families and households

(Haskey 1996), children (Botting 1996) and ethnic minority populations (Haskey 1997),

with Craig (1997) providing a summary round-up of issues. Note that Population Trends

appears quarterly and includes a standard set of Tables updating the key features of

population change, mainly at national level. T.Champion (ed.) (1993) Population Matters:

The Local Dimension (London: Paul Chapman Publishing) offers a collection often essays

on local population characteristics and trends and on their policy implications, including

those for schools, the labour market, housebuilding, health-care and local government

finance. T.Champion, C.Wong, A.Rooke, D.Dorling, M.Coombes and C. Brunsdon

(1996) The Population of Britain in the 1990s (Oxford: Clarendon Press) is an atlas with

accompanying text, focusing on the demographic and social features which have been

changing most rapidly in the past decade and which have had the most significant policy

impacts. A 680-page volume, forming the principal work of reference D.Coleman and

J.Salt (1992) The British Population (Oxford: Oxford University Press). An impressive

atlas drawing primarily on Census data and providing a highly original perspective on the

British population using population-based cartograms at district and ward level, with

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sections on population change, demography, labour market, housing, health, society and

politics is D.Dorling (1995) A New Social Atlas of Britain (Chichester: John Wiley and

Sons). S.Jackson (1998) Britain’s Population (London: Routledge) is a readable

introductory text which includes chapters on population data sources and demographic

methods as well as on historical trends, fertility and mortality, migration and distribution,

and current policy issues.

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Chapter 10

Towns and cities

David Herbert

Introduction

The forces which transformed Britain’s economy from an agricultural to an industrial base

during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also brought about a major redistribution of

population and established the bases for an urban nation. Already by the mid-nineteenth

century, over half the British population could be classed as urban dwellers, and by the end

of the twentieth century this figure was of the order of 80 per cent and mirrored the overall

situation in the European Union. The shape of urban Britain was influenced by pre-existing

settlements, but many new towns and cities were added. As British cities grew, so changes

in transport technology allowed them to widen their spheres of influence and create city

regions. The description of transport as the ‘maker and breaker’ of cities summarised its

effects. Throughout the nineteenth century and the early twentieth, transport as the maker

of cities focused on their centres and underpinned the dominant processes of concentration

and centralisation. From about the 1920s, more flexible transport systems, principally private

cars, led to deconcentration and decentralisation, the dispersal of people and activities;

transport became the ‘breaker’ of cities.

Accompanying the dominant flow outwards from city centre towards the peripheries

were regional-scale shifts prompted by planning strategies to contain urban growth and

divert some activities to the north and west of Britain. Containment was effected principally

through planning controls and green-belt policies, aided by major initiatives such as new

towns and town expansion schemes. The redistribution of activities proved more difficult to

achieve, as a succession of failed regional policies testified (Prestwich and Taylor 1990). At

the same time, the urban system had become more complex. Concepts such as the city

region, metropolitan area, and local labour market area, reflected attempts to capture the

essence of new urban forms resting on flows and linkages rather than physical contiguity.

Globalisation added a further dimension and, whereas the idea of external, global impacts

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FIGURE 10.1 Framework of local labour-market areas (LLMAs) in the United Kingdom

Source: After Champion (1994).

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on local urban systems was not new, the rising intensity of transnational flows of goods,

capital and information over the last two decades of the twentieth-century has given this

process a new meaning. The nature of global-local interaction is a major issue in a debate

which both recognises the power of wider national and international forces and the relevance

of local socio-political formations. The argument that cities have vital roles as creative

control and cultural centres within the broad dynamics of globalisation (Ash and Graham

1997) approaches the right balance between local and global effects.

Monitoring urban change in the United Kingdom has become a focused research

activity most closely associated with the Centre for Urban and Regional Development

Studies (CURDS). The Daily Urban System consists of a Core and its primary commuting

field or Ring; the Local Labour Market Area (LLMA) adds the Outer Areas from which

commuters are drawn (Figure 10.1). In 1981, it was estimated that 61.6 per cent of the

British population lived in cores, 26.6 per cent in rings, 6.6 per cent in outer areas, and

5.2 per cent in rural areas. Comparisons up to 1991 are difficult because of redefinitions

of areas, but the main divisions of LLMAs are metropolitan areas, divided into dominant,

subdominant and rural, and free-standing areas, divided into urban and rural.

Metropolitan LLMAs held 61.5 per cent of total population in 1991 compared with

62.8 per cent in 1981, but free-standing LLMAs had increased from 37.2 per cent to

38.5 per cent.

This chapter will consider both macro processes of economic and social change which

affect cities and patterns of change and interaction within urban areas. Initially, there is

some focus on processes such as decentralisation and counter-urbanisation that have regional

impacts within the United Kingdom. Within the mosaic of the city, there is discussion of

specific sectors such as housing, inner city, commercial centres and employment and also

of key issues such as problem areas, ethnic districts and the trends towards gentrification.

Later sections are concerned with management and the application of urban policies.

Processes of urban change

Economic decentralisation has been a continuing feature of British cities, and its impacts on

the manufacturing and industrial bases were its main manifestations. As Hall (1985) observed,

it took over a hundred years, from 1851 to 1951, for technology and foreign competition to

halve the numbers employed in British agriculture, but it took only thirteen years from

1971 to 1983 to cut manufacturing jobs by one-third.

There are striking parallels between the 1880s and the 1980s. Then rural England was

in the process of losing much of its traditional economic base. Now it is urban England’s

turn. The root cause in both was structural transformations arising from the new

technologies and the changing balance of geographical disadvantage.

(Hall 1985:10)

Deindustrialisation ran strongly during the 1970s and 1980s, and between the early

1970s and the early 1990s manufacturing jobs in Britain declined from 7.5 to 4.3 million.

The job losses in the inner cities could be most strongly tied to the closure of factories

unable to cope with cramped sites, inadequate accommodation and intense market

competition. There were transfers of firms, forced moves because of urban renewal, and

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‘deaths’ of uneconomic units. Outside the inner cities, firms were more successful and

the expansion of information technology and services employment was marked on the

crescent from Cambridge to the M4 corridor; numbers of employees in the south of the

country increased by 1.35 million between 1979 and 1990. The North-South divide, despite

some apparent reversals, shows a remarkable persistence, and Champion and Green (1991)

concluded that most of the best performing LLMAs on economic indicators were in a

halo around London whereas the worst were from northern Britain. The divide had

widened, but there was also greater diversity within regions that made a simple dichotomy

misleading. Green et al. (1994) noted that when recession hit the British economy in the

early 1990s large northern cities were among the last to feel the impact. In this latest

recession it was the construction, financial and services sectors which experienced

retrenchment and losses, halting the rapid rise of the producer services sector which had

fuelled growth in London and the South East. The fortunes of London were also adversely

affected by the collapse of the commercial property market in 1991 that left the capital

with a huge surplus of office space. What were described as the ‘first green shoots’ of

recovery appeared in the North, Midlands and Wales, rather than in the South. Older

regions such as South Wales had shown some success in attracting investment and there

were some forty Japanese firms there by the mid-1990s, with total employment rising from

940,000 in 1981 to 964,000 in 1991.

Decentralisation of people

All parts of metropolitan Britain, the large free-standing cities and the older industrial regions

lost population through migration between 1981 and 1991. Overall population loss was greatest

from the central parts of main cities and there was little to suggest that Britain is not experiencing

a continuing drift away from metropolitan areas. The drift was slower in the 1980s than in the

previous decade, but smaller towns and rural areas continued to show relative growth. Migration

was reflected in increased suburbanisation, and counterurbanisation was recognised as an

additional trend. In some ways counter-urbanisation and suburbanisation were indistinguishable

and formed parts of an ongoing dispersal process. There was also, however, a form of product

cycle dispersal whereby some economic activities were relocating to small towns in rural

settings. Allied to this were indications that increased use of the Internet and ‘Tele-working’

were having some effect on the distribution of workplaces. Such changes were most evident

in outer Metropolitan area corridors formed around motorways in parts of southern England

such as Berkshire, Hampshire, Surrey, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Bibby and Shepherd

(1997) spoke of the ‘Golden Belt’ in England from Dorset, through Wiltshire, Oxfordshire,

Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, to Cambridge. It was here that they predicted that the pressure

for more land for housing to accommodate the 4.38 million extra households expected in

England by the year 2016 would come, thus threatening green-belt land. Remoter, mainly

rural districts, showed significant decennial increases in population in all standard regions of

the United Kingdom and reached 115 per cent in the South West and 84 per cent in East

Anglia. In Social Trends (1997), it was predicted that the population of the non-metropolitan

counties and Greater London would increase by between 3 per cent and 4 per cent between

1993 and 2001. Greater London would show the greatest increase in numbers of children and

East Anglia of those of working or retirement ages. Counter-urbanisation remains a credible

but not unambiguous British trend and the clearest indicators are those of a resurgence of non-

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metropolitan growth. Given these impacts upon the countryside, there are questions on the

survival of rurality in Britain. Is there an ‘urban’ and a ‘rural’ in traditional senses of the

terms? Clearly in terms of lifestyles and values the distinctions have become blurred, but

differences persist. Cloke et al. (1997), in their studies of rural England, found that people,

particularly long-term rural residents, acted as if rurality still had a geographical dimension.

They had an imagined rural community to which they felt they belonged, and attitudes towards

in-migrants who either tried to take over or did not participate in the local community were

antagonistic.

London, with its status as a ‘world city’, has been a special case. Inner London has

shown a significant improvement in its population change since the low point of the early

1970s and its ability to achieve positive change may be symptomatic of new forces at work

in the centres of really major urban areas. The London phenomenon remains perplexing.

Whilst there were clear new forces at work in the 1980s—renewed interest in parts of the

inner city, new trends in the housing market, and the swing towards producer services —the

net longer-term impacts of these remain difficult to judge. Gordon (1988) argued that there

were no fundamental changes in the process of population deconcentration but fluctuations

stimulated by the vagaries of the housing market and demographic characteristics of new

inner-city populations. Although London, and some other large British cities, continues to

attract large numbers of in-migrants, often from overseas, it is not of the scale experienced

by large American cities such as New York and Los Angeles where such in-migration creates

overall increases in inner-city populations. Finally, it must be noted that London is a large

area and contains a range of urban places with often separate profiles and experiences.

Urban housing markets

Economic restructuring and the changing geography of employment opportunities are critical

factors in understanding the changing form of British cities. They were not the only factors,

however, and in some ways they followed rather than led the outward movement of people.

To understand this outward movement, there are social as well as economic factors to

consider: residential preferences, the housing market, the infrastructures including transport,

and changing government policies. Urban housing development was strongly influenced

by the fiscal advantages of owner-occupancy, the rising costs of land and buildings, and an

interventionist planning system.

The advantages of owner-occupancy were related to advantageous tax positions

on mortgage repayments and rapid increases of house prices that made purchase a very

worthwhile investment. This has remained true though Social Trends (1997) estimated

that on average owner-occupiers with mortgages had expenditures on housing three

times as much as either outright owners or social sector tenants. Successive governments

encouraged the growth of owner-occupancy, and the only real deviations from this policy

came in the later 1980s with restrictions on the amounts of mortgage funds qualifying

for tax relief. By the early 1990s there was also a recession in house prices, affecting

London in particular, and widespread negative equity (people holding mortgage-loans

which were greater than the value of their property), especially among buyers in south-

east England who had purchased between 1988 and 1991. This recession was short-

lived and Nationwide Building Society estimated a halving of negative equity between

late 1996 and mid-1997, with falls most pronounced in the South East although it was

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still the worst affected area. In 1997, Nationwide recorded a 12.5 per cent rise of house

prices over the past year.

The state has intervened in the housing market as both a builder and landlord of

‘affordable housing’. The public sector share of total housing stock rose most rapidly between

1947 and 1961 when it changed from 12 per cent to 25 per cent in England and Wales. By

1995, this public sector share had fallen to 18 per cent in England and Wales, though it

remained higher in Scotland (31 per cent) and Northern Ireland (24 per cent). Housing

associations, which also have a brief to provide affordable housing, held 4 per cent of

housing stock in 1995 (Social Trends 1997). The major changes in the 1980s and 1990s

were linked with the slowdown in housing construction in the public sector and with

legislation, such as the Housing Act of 1980, which gave tenants the right to buy (Figure

10.2). Between 1979 and 1995, about 2.2 million public sector dwellings were sold under a

scheme which gave generous incentives to sitting tenants; sales have now stabilised at around

100,000 per year. By 1991, 14 per cent of these properties had been re-sold and had become

part of the private housing market. The sales from the public sector have been uneven in

their impact. Whereas high-rise flats made up 25 per cent of public sector stock, only 4 per

cent of these had been purchased. Sales have proceeded most briskly in favoured estates

and the overall effect has been to widen the disparities between the private and public

sectors. Public sector housing has become more closely aligned with the most disadvantaged

sections of society, and through the 1990s over 25 per cent of all public sector tenancies

went to homeless households and most of the rest to those classed as priority need. Also in

the 1990s there have been increases in larger-scale disposals of public sector housing, usually

to housing associations.

Owner-occupancy has continued to grow and moved from 54 per cent in 1981 to 68

per cent in 1996. Highest levels of owner-occupancy (80 per cent) were among the higher

social class groups, but greatest change occurred among manual and lower-skilled workers.

FIGURE 10.2 Housebuilding completions by sector and council house sales

Sources: Department of Environment, Welsh Office, Scottish Office, Social Trends (1997).