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.

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).