This file provides a rural-urban view of 2001 Output Areas (OA) in England and Wales. The ZIP file contains the Rural Urban Classification in XLSX and CSV format and includes a user guide. The files were originally from the NeSS website. Click on the Download button in the top right corner to download the file.
The classification of rural and urban areas is the outcome of a project co-sponsored by:
- Office for National Statistics (ONS);
- Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra);
- Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (now Communities and Local Government);
- Countryside Agency (CA); and
- National Assembly for Wales (NAW).
The classification was developed in 2004 by a consortium co-ordinated by Prof. John Shepherd from Birkbeck College. The technical work was lead by Peter Bibby of University of Sheffield and the project also involved the University of Glamorgan and Geowise. The rural and urban classification of Output Areas (this dataset), Super Output Areas and Wards has been provided to enable datasets to be analysed according to the classification. This provides a powerful tool for the development and monitoring of rural and urban policies.
Please Note: Output Areas do not have all the same codes as the SOA and Ward level Datasets. For SOAs and Wards the classifications for ‘Villages, Hamlets and Isolated Dwellings’ have been combined.
The classification enables each of the 175,434 Output Areas in England and Wales to be classified on the basis of context i.e. whether the surrounding area of a given Output Area is sparsely populated or less sparsely populated. Secondly, the classification enables Output Areas to be distinguished on a morphological basis - as predominantly urban or predominantly town and fringe, predominantly village or predominantly dispersed (which includes Hamlets and Isolated Dwellings). The key for these are shown below. The town and fringe, village, hamlet and isolated dwellings classifications are taken as being rural.
2005 Rural and Urban morphology indicator:1 - denotes predominantly urban >10k2 - denotes predominantly town and fringe3 - denotes predominantly village4 - denotes predominantly dispersed (hamlet and isolated dwellings)
2005 Rural and Urban context indicator:0 denotes less sparsely populated areas1 denotes sparsely populated areas
