The Urban Footprint of Scottish Cities

I recently did some mapping on my other blog which showed the urban footprint of English cities, which seemed to strike a chord with lots of people. I had already extracted the data for Scottish cities and made it publicly available, so I thought I'd do something similar here. The images below show what you might call the urban footprint of seven Scottish cities - Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Inverness, Stirling and Perth. These are settlements with official 'city' status though some places have more people than the smaller Scottish cities. The first image shows the seven Scottish cities mapped at the same scale. Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee are all local council areas in their own right so I've shown the urban footprint of those areas within their administrative boundary. The other three smaller Scottish cities sit within much larger local authority areas so I've tried to show the core urban areas of these places (i.e. the continuous urban fabric of the city).

Click here for larger version

Same as above, but with scale bar - big version

In order demonstrate how Glasgow's council boundary 'under-bounds' the urban area, I've also extracted an image showing the wider Greater Glasgow urban area (and a bit beyond) with the boundaries of all council areas overlaid on top. This does of course raise the question of what a 'city' is, but that's a debate for another time. The purpose of this little mapping experiment was just to provide a visual comparison of the size of the seven Scottish cities in relation to their built up areas.

Greater Glasgow urban area - bigger version

If you want these images in higher resolution versions, I've uploaded them in this zipped folder - the first image in full size and half size, in addition to the Glasgow image at full resolution. I know there is a lot more to Scotland's urban places than the seven 'official' cities, but I've just focused on them for now in these simple graphics. Maybe I'll come back to this in future.

Addendum: after the original post I added in a revised first map with a scale bar, just to provide a little more context for those unfamiliar with the places I've mapped. To provide a bit more information, the populations of the cities are as follows: Glasgow - 599,000; Edinburgh - 495,000; Aberdeen - 212,000; Dundee - 142,000; Stirling - 46,000; Perth - 47,000; Inverness - 57,000. For the final three cities, these populations equate to the urban areas I've shown but are not precise. I've written about this issue before, in a blog post from a few years ago. The Greater Glasgow area - comprising the contiguous built-up area - has a population of about 1.2 million and the wider Glasgow City Region has a population of about 1.7 million. 

Indyref 2014: results map and downloadable data

This page is the result of a little overnight mapping while I watched the Scottish Independence Referendum on 18/19 September 2014. You can explore the results in the map below or download the raw data at the bottom of the page.

I'll add to the map as results come out, but if you click on Glasgow or Edinburgh you'll see that I've loaded in some pretend data for now. You'll also see that in the clickable info windows you can scroll down and download the underlying data table and geographic shapefile (I'll make this link live once all results are in). Most areas are red now as they have no data...

Independence Referendum Results Map (full screen version)

National overview map with local area drop-down list

You can access the raw data from the infowindow when you click on the map or by using the links below. Feel free to use this for mapping and exploring the results.

Data table - this is a basic excel table with the the results, including % yes, % no, turnout, area codes and so on.

Shapefile (for GIS users) - this should work fine. You just need to unzip it and add it to the GIS of your choice.

KML- you can download the KML file from either of the map tabs (the ones with the little red map pin icons) at this link.


Small disclaimer: I put these together overnight as the results were coming in. I have checked them for errors but if you spot any problems let me know and I'll fix them.

Indyref 2014: the electorate, area-by-area map

I've blogged previously here about the 32 council areas of Scotland and their populations but this post is specifically about the total electorate for the Scottish Independence Referendum held on Thursday 18 September 2014. I've put this online as a reminder to myself (and others) of the number of people registered to vote nationally and in each area because the results will come in on a council-by-council basis through the early hours of 19 September. In total, there are 4,285,323 registered voters across Scotland (97% of those eligible). But where are they all? See the map below for details of this by clicking on an area - or click the link below the map to view a drop-down list of areas.

View full screen or view a map with drop-down area list

So, if you don't know your Clackmannanshire from your Angus, or your East Ayrshire from your East Dunbartonshire, this little map should help. Many people I know here in England are less than familiar with the exact location or attributes of Scottish local authorities - as are many people in Scotland - so this is really just a visual guide. The results are expected to emerge between 2am and 6am, so we'll be able to do our sums through the night! You can view the underlying data table here.

Another very interesting dimension to the referendum - apart from the outcome, the 'don't knows', the level of engagement and all sorts of other things - is the fact that 16 and 17 year olds are eligible to vote. The total numbers are not very high - 109,533 - but given the closeness of the polling this group in particular could have a decisive role to play. Highland Council have provided a breakdown of the figures across Scotland, ranging from a high of 10,864 in Glasgow to 460 in Orkney. But, how likely are people in each area to vote either Yes or No? Chris Hanretty from the University of East Anglia has a short blog post on this, which is worth reading - plus a nice graphic.

In total, 18% of registered voters were those intending to vote by post. This figure is pretty high and many people (my parents included) voted in this way before the Westminster machine came to life following the YouGov poll lead from last week.

Finally, one of the best things about the referendum is the fact that turnout is expected to be extremely high - perhaps in the region of 90%. When the results start coming in we'll have an idea of what kind of turnout we can expect and what the magic number is in terms of either Yes or No securing a majority. I've calculated this for turnout ranging from a high estimate of 95% to a low of 70%, as below. The second column shows how many votes would be cast under each level of turnout and the final column shows the '50% +1' figure that would secure a majority for either side.

Buckle up, etc.

Buildings of Scotland in one layer

This is a short post to provide an update on a little mapping project that's been on the back burner for a while. With the release of Ordnance Survey open data products a couple of years ago, people have been using the buildings layer in the Vector Map District product to clip larger geographic areas and show only those areas where people live - or, more accurately, where there are buildings - as below.

This is what the layer looks like

The data come in Ordnance Survey tiles and as anyone who has worked with this knows, it's inevitable that the area you want to map will fall at the intersection of four tiles. Well, it sometimes seems this way. To solve this problem, I've patched together the buildings layer for all tiles and made it available for download in the Data section of the site. I've done this because I wanted to have a ready-made layer for using in my work and I'm sharing it because I know others might find it useful. The file, when unzipped, is about 134MB so it's not too big. Anyone using this just needs to know that it's a fairly generalised file and not individual building outlines. You'll see that when you zoom in the buildings have been merged together in many places (as below). That's all for now.

The centre of the universe

Travel to Work Patterns in Scotland

I've recently been working with local level travel to work data for England and Wales from the 2011 Census and have produced a few maps of this. The same level of data are not yet available for Scotland but looking back through my data archives I discovered (to my horror) that I had not mapped Scottish commuting patterns for 2001 in any kind of detail. So, I plugged in QGIS, got the Data Zone travel to work data in the right format and produced a few maps. All this is of course in preparation for when the 2011 data becomes available and I can then compare how commuting patterns have changed. For now, though, I just wanted to share these maps, which I think do a good job of identifying the spatial structure of commuting as it was in 2001. I don't know if it will have changed much but it will be interesting to find out in due course. Click any of the maps to enlarge.

A general overview - bigger map

A smaller zoomed-in version showing Central Scotland

Selected cities - bigger map

Travel to work data for Scotland also includes travel to place of school or study so I just stripped those bits out and mapped travel to work flows. The other technical detail is that in 2001 many of the smaller flows were subject to a disclosure control process where flows with a value of 0, 1, 2 and 3 were changed in order to preserve confidentiality. But I'm not really worried about that for now as these maps are just intended to convey the broad patterns and I think they do that quite well.

Population Density in Scotland

Following on from the theme of the previous post, this post is all about population density. To cut a long story short, I took 1km grid cell data from the EU, joined it to population data for 2011 and did a little bit of 3D mapping - partly as an experiment with a dataset I'll use in our new MSc in Applied GIS and partly to see what spatial patterns it reveals. Entirely expected results, but the maps are quite striking. I've added some basic labels and a little bit of text to the first image. The second image focuses more closely on the North and East of Scotland and the final one is a close up of central Scotland. Click on the links below these smaller versions to see gigantic versions. Clicking on the thumbnails below will take you to a full screen size version.

Scotland - full size version

North and East Scotland - full size version

Central Scotland - full size version

What else can we say about population density in Scotland? Well, the average population density across Scotland in 2011 was just over 67 people per square kilometre (411 in England, 6,500 in Hong Kong, 1,000 in Bangladesh and 407 in the Netherlands). However, this is an example of when an 'average' figure is pretty misleading because most of Scotland's people are crammed in to the Central Belt - more than two thirds of the total. As you can see from the second image above, the rest are concentrated in the towns and cities of the North and East of Scotland. The obvious point here is that on the face of it Scotland doesn't appear to be very densely populated but the experience for most Scots is one of living in a densely populated country - at least on a day to day basis. For example, Glasgow's population density is over 3,000 people per square kilometre. 

The other thing to say is that the data is perhaps not 100% accurate. Some areas which are dark on the maps and apparently have zero population might in reality be populated, but this is the exception. If you're interested in finding out more about the data, take a look at the original source on the EU's data portal.

The 32 Scottish Council Areas

At present, there are 32 council areas in Scotland. I say 'at present' because over the past few years there has been talk of either merging some of them, or all of them, though in November 2012 this was emphatically denied by the Scottish Government. The 32 council areas will also serve as the areas in which the votes will be counted in for the independence referendum on 18 September 2014. Coincidentally, 32 is also the number of Boroughs in London but Scotland's population is lower than London: 5,295,403 compared to 8,173,94. They vary greatly in relation to their size, population and characteristics. The image below shows all 32 ordered by geographical size.

Scottish Council Areas, 2014

The Highland council area is by far the largest, at over 11,000 square miles (c.30,000 sq km). Lots of people like to point out that this is about the same size (even slightly bigger) than Belgium. However, as of the 2011 Census the population was 232,132, which equates to roughly 9 people per square kilometre. At the other end of the scale, Dundee is the smallest council area geographically, covering only 26 square miles (67 sq km). The population of Dundee in 2011 was 147,268 so this gives a population density of 2,457 per square kilometre, the second highest in Scotland.

The most densely populated council area is also the most highly populated - Glasgow's population in 2011 was 593,245, with a population density of 3,395 people per square kilometre. This sounds quite crowded but actually is relatively spacious. In Manila, the most densely populated city in the world, population density is about 43,000 per square kilometre and in Delhi (with over 11 million people) population density is over 25,000 per square kilometre. 

Current population estimates put Scotland's population at 5,327,700 as of mid-2013, which is a rise of 14,100 on the previous year's estimate. This was due to a net inflow of around 10,000 in addition to births outnumbering deaths during the period. Scotland's population is at its highest ever level. You can read more about this here. A more detailed breakdown of current estimates for council areas can be found in this document.

Finally, the report that led to media reporting of the merger or abolition of Scottish council areas is worth a read. Their proposals for re-structured council areas are in a Table on p. 11 and include such ideas as merging the three current Ayrshire council areas and merging the two Lanarkshire ones. Many others (e.g. Glasgow, Highland, Fife would remain the same).

Sites of Special Scientific Interest

On the Data link above, you'll find details of Scottish Natural Heritage's data which you can download and play around with. This includes details of Scotland's Sites of Special Scientific Interest. These areas are described by SNH in the following way:

"Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) are those areas of land and water (to the seaward limits of local authority areas) that Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) considers to best represent our natural heritage - its diversity of plants, animals and habitats, rocks and landforms, or a combinations of such natural features. "

I decided to make a web map of this so that people can more easily access the information - see below. To find out a little bit more about each SSSI, just click on it. You can pan and zoom around the map in the normal way. I've also included a link below the map to a full screen version. When you click on an area, you'll see that it's classified in one of three ways: 'biological', 'geological' or 'mixed'. There are SSSIs all over Scotland but you'll notice that a vast number of them are in the north of Scotland. Many are also along the coast or other water features inland. The furthest north would appear to be Hermaness in Shetland and the furthest south is the Mull of Galloway.

Full screen version

Finally, I've added a static map below which shows all SSSIs - this time coloured by category.

Click for full size version

Data Zones of Scotland

The idea of writing a blog about the Scottish statistical geography known as the 'Data Zone' seems like a very boring one. Somewhat niche, you might say. But it's probably a bit more interesting than you might think - particularly if you're into maps, geography and data. If you do any work on population or data in Scotland, you will probably have heard of the 'Data Zone'. They are, according to the Scottish Government, 'the key small-area statistical geography in Scotland'. If you're reading this then there is a chance you already know that there are 6,505 of them. At the time of the 2011 Census, the total population of Scotland was 5,295,403 so this gives an average of 814 people per Data Zone. The highest population of any Data Zone in 2011 was 8,698 - up from 4,510 in the 2006 mid-year estimate - in an area of Dunfermline to the west of the M90. See the table below for more information on Data Zone populations. If you want to know more about how they were created, read about it here.

Scotland's most populous Data Zone in 2011

DZs by population

Five Data Zones in Scotland had a population of zero at the time of the 2011 Census. Four of these are in Glasgow and one is in Edinburgh. Only one had a population of zero from the 2006 mid-year estimates; a small area in Castlemilk, as you can see below. Demolition has obviously played a part in all of this.

DZ in Castlemilk, Glasgow

DZ in Balornock, Glasgow (Red Road flats area)

DZ in Sighthill, Glasgow

DZ near Ibrox Stadium, Glasgow

DZ in Muirhouse, Edinburgh

This variation in population is also evident in relation to the geographical size of Data Zones. The biggest Data Zone in Scotland is larger in area than Hong Kong (see below) - which has a population of more than 7 million in an area compared to the Highland Data Zone of S01003915, which in 2011 had 608 people. Hardly surprising that parts of the Highlands are sparsely populated, but this Data Zone also dwarfs nearly all other DZs in Scotland - in fact, the largest one has room for the smallest 5,164 Data Zones, but probably not the infrastructure, housing or services... I've also superimposed the largest two Data Zones on to Glasgow and Edinburgh, just to give you an idea of the scale.

Scotland's largest Data Zones by area

Scotland's largest DZ over Glasgow/Edinburgh

I think I've used up all my goodwill, so I'll stop here. Next time you're at a party and there's a lull in the conversation, I recommend bringing this subject up. 

What is this blog all about?

This blog is all about maps of Scotland and Scottish things. I decided to start it because in my 10+ years living in England I started to get a bit out of touch with things in my native land and since I'm a bit of a mapping and data boffin this blog would be a good way to keep up with things whilst also using my skills in a productive way. It's probably also a bit of a task-avoidance blog but at least it's informative.

I've written a couple of academic papers which either focus on Scottish themes or are explicitly Scottish in focus (exhibit 1), and I've also done a bit of interactive mapping of Scotland as well (exhibit 2) but to date most of my work has focused on England because that's where I've lived since 2003. Since I'm originally from the Highlands and have also lived in Glasgow I do keep a close eye on what's going on north of the border. With this blog I hope to follow things more closely.

I have thought for some time that there aren't enough map blogs which focus on Scotland. London is well covered and I do a lot of non-Scottish stuff in my work so I thought it was about time to rectify things. Since this is a map blog, I need a map in each post so the one below is just to demonstrate the relative scale of the Highland Council area and London. The former has only around 230,000 people but is bigger than Wales and the latter is actually pretty small in comparison but has over 8 million people.

Most of the maps you'll find on the blog have been made using freely available open datasets, and you'll see the relevant attribution and sources on each map or blog. If you have any questions or requests, please feel free to get in touch - I don't have comments enabled on here but my e-mail address is easy to find.