A classification of cities and city regions in England and Wales, 1966

Armen G. (1972) A classification of cities and city regions in England and Wales, 1966, Reg. Studies 6, 149–182. An outline of the development of the concepts of the city and the city region is followed by the physical delimitation and classification of 100 examples of each, on the basis of some 130 characteristics relating to people, place and activity as in 1966. In contrast to factor analysis, the illustrated method of classification—elementary cluster analysis—lays equal emphasis on all selected characteristics and accepts the occurrence of overlap between classes relating to complex entities like cities and city regions. Each classification results in a hierarchy of three nesting groups: “divisions” (e.g. service and manufacturing cities and city regions) which comprise “classes” (e.g. ports, holiday resorts etc.) which are made up of “sub-classes” (e.g. large ports, medium ports etc.). The broad similarity of results for cities and city regions suggests that the character of a city region is at present largely determined by the characteristics of the city upon which it is centred.