The 2011 rural-urban classification (RUC) of middle layer super output areas (MSOA) in England and Wales is based on the 2011 RUC of output areas published in August 2013, and allows users to create a rural/urban view of MSOA level products. This product was sponsored by a cross-Government working group comprising Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Department of the Communities and Local Government, Office for National Statistics and the Welsh Government. The classification at LSOA level is built from the RUC at OA level (the most detailed version of the classification). Assignments of MSOA to urban or rural categories are made by reference to the category to which the majority of their constituent OA are assigned. In the RUC at OA level, output areas are treated as ‘urban’ if they were allocated to a 2011 built-up area with a population of 10,000 or more. The urban domain is then further sub-divided into three broad morphological types based on the predominant settlement component. As with the previous version of the classification, the remaining ‘rural’ output areas are grouped into three broad morphological types based on the predominant settlement component. At the MSOA scale settlement form is less homogenous than at OA level and so there are just two rural settlement types. The classification also categorises output areas based on context – i.e. whether the wider surrounding area of a given output area is sparsely populated or less sparsely populated (File Size 368KB).
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