Quote:
Originally Posted by New Brisavoine
Currently the London FUA is less than 1 million inh. smaller than the Paris FUA, but it we used a 40-50% threshold it could easily be 2.5 million inh. smaller than the Paris FUA.
And Newbury ISN'T part of the London FUA, precisely because too few people commute to London.
You've answered the question yourself. If western areas are dense, that means they have their own strong urban centers that work independently from London. Rural areas, on the other hand, don't have strong urban centers, and are therefore entirely attracted by London.
You can walk from the Dutch border to the French border all along the Belgian coast without ever leaving built-up streets I believe, yet that doesn't make it a giant city of 50 km.
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And once again, if you're to put the threshold higher and London goes lower so be it - I would recommend that. I'd still stand by it as I don't think 15% of commuters out in the styx a city maketh.
The west very definitely commutes into London, if not more than the little villages in the north east. However the paradox is that because its so dense and functioning in their own they get hijacked out of the count. This is why Slough is excluded despite contiguity and sending in 30% of its population. Similarly Maidenhead and Twyford at 40%, because they're too near Reading, St Albans at 50% because it's considered its own nexus by administrating Hatfield and Welwyn Garden City alongside.
Also the building block effect means different types of units decide vastly different outcomes. This is the main reason for the disparities.
Many UK towns get excluded because their Local Administrative Unit (LUA) will not be deemed contiguous, eg separated by an empty patch of field or forest. Such as Woking at 65% and Brentwood at 40% commuters, near to London, but whose Local Authority will happen to include large rural areas, and thus deem them too 'low density'. Despite Woking with over 100K and Brentwood 55K populations.
Yet that is the same for many other cities round the world right? -being separated from the main by patches of countryside in between?
Well no, because other places can get them bypassed. In the US their LUA's will be based on
counties. That's a considered a single unit despite some as large as 2360 sq km (50% larger than Greater London), and who'll get everyone in there counted, including the huge tracts between settlements -it'll all be considered 'contiguous'. This is how it ends up the size of Wales and some.
Paris gets round this (rightly so) because it uses
communes, high density and very small, but that knit together and around what would otherwise be blocking if larger, i.e. London's larger local authority size. It doesn't inflate anything like the US style of counting, and nowhere near that size, but you can see from the density of the map above how a similar unit area could have differing results for London.
In other words the whole FUA methology strives to be equal, but it simply cannot without a standard unit, if its building blocks are of different sizes and criteria.
For the mostly Belgian coastline -then yes, it absolutely does make it one unit (although I have to say, it's a tad gappy in the east, and very suburban and holiday-homey most everywhere else). Southern England has similar which is why Brighton has a population of 290K in one book for its city proper, and 640K in others, but as mentioned also gappy at its sides. Without those gaps I'd definitely consider them one city, or at least one entity.
The Brighton-Hove Built Up Area is considered a unit, and 40km long, (but stopping before Peacehaven in the east, it could continue to 53km if allowing gaps).
It has a spine of transport (note the South Coast Line), and what effects one town has a ripple effect on the others, such as the current housing crisis. As the authorities realised it functioned as one city, they created the Sussex and Brighton Strategic Authority to unify leadership, quell the squabbling and coordinate the services:
My main point through is to walk on city streets surrounded by buildings either side from one end to the other -once again there's no physical or even administrative barrier stopping people doing this. Tokyo-Yokohama, Guangzhou-Foshan, Los Angeles-Long Beach, Osaka-Kobe.
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