Urban Maps

[Insula Dei]

Though it would be interesting to have the suburbs (which are actually in conurbation with Brussels) included here as well. When I think of my family there (Vilvoorde / Zaventem/ Sterrebeek area), may aunt's household was obviously bi-lingual (Flemish-German). Two of my cousins married francophone partners, two other Flemish-speakers, but all the marriages ultimately broke up, and my cousins tend to speak Flemish with their children (but also German, when we visit them - they all used to work for longer periods with German companies - so I think that still qualifies as multi-lingual households). I think I have a few years ago seen a map on how Flemish is entering Brussels from the East, would be interesting if that trend goes on.

Btw, just in case you wonder what is driving my interest - my oldest cousin's first marriage broke up because he couldn't stand his father-in-law's Flemish nationalism (with Gross-German undertones) anymore, and what he shared on that with me was quite irritating.

Getting reliable figures for the 'Vlaamse Rand' is the big problem there. The best indicator there are probably municipal election results (since these tend to play out along linguistic lines). But even that still leaves one with a lot of 'noise' (EU-related expats form a non-negligible part of the population of some of these municipalities and in principle are allowed the vote).


For example, based on the 2012 election results,  it's safe to say that Linkebeek is about 80% francophone, but just how accurate that 'about' is, is near impossible to say.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

From the late 50s or early 60s.

[Smid]

Has anyone posted a link to this blog before? I don't recall having seen it, but I don't trawl through every thread as closely as some others may.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Housing types in Manchester:



Note that the City of Manchester includes a much smaller part of the wider city than the cities of Brum or Sheffield do. Due to an accident of history it doesn't even include the entire inner city (part is in Salford).

But, anyway, certain similar concentric patterns can be observed again: flats in the city centre (a mixture of new flats for young professionals and council built stuff), by-law terraces, and suburban semis (with - again - a significant proportion of suburban council houses being terraced).

One unusual feature, though, is the complete collapse of villadom: basicall all those big nineteenth century houses in Manchester have been converted into flats (or whatever) as the sort of people who once lived in them have completely abandoned the city proper. The highest percentages of detached houses - and these are still rather low - are in the Wythenshawe estate, south of the Mersey. Which is telling.

It's also worth mentioning that one of Manchester's inner city districts, Hulme, has one of the most complicated housing histories in Britain. There's a decent introduction to that here.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Any statistics for social-v-private renting there?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Sure: I can do a whole set of tenure maps if you want.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Sure: I can do a whole set of tenure maps if you want.

*Nods head in approval*

[YL]

Are you going to do the housing type maps for Bristol? It'd be interesting to see how different it looks; in particular I'd expect the flat in converted house category to have more territory.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I was thinking of Bristol fairly soon, yes. A different sort of large city.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Bristol:



Bristol is a different sort of big city to those done previously: it's older - as a major urban area at least - and is considerably more prosperous. Sort of like the London of the West Country or something. Large parts of the built up area are outside city limits. Hilarious local accent, incidentally.

Anyway, most of the patterns are probably familiar by this point - though it's worth noting that some of the highest rates of Semis in Bristol are council estates - but the number of converted flats is far higher. And notably the extremely high concentrations are not quite in student territory (though there's an overlap) but genuinely upscale districts.

[EPG]

Dublin population density. The major suburbs and eastern commuter towns are labelled.

The map shows the four administrative counties of County Dublin. Observe that scattered apartment schemes on the southern fringe comprise some of the highest-density parts of the county, and that density falls off quickly to the south-east of the city, which (as followers of the Irish demographic maps thread will remember) is a distinctive part of Ireland with high rates of wealth, education, Protestantism/irreligion, social liberalism, etc etc.

Dublin City is notable for the big, empty areas of the Phoenix Park to the west and North Bull Island to the east.
Fingal to its north expanded its population rapidly in the last twenty years. Consequently, it has a younger and more non-Irish demographic profile than the rest of Dublin, let alone other counties. Swords and Dublin haven't grown into each other thanks to an airport and motorway in between. Blanchardstown and Balbriggan also grew quickly. The other seaside towns have an older profile.
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown is relatively low-density because that's where the rich people live, particularly west and east of Dún Laoghaire town itself. Unlike the other counties, its population hasn't grown much, and the average age is higher.
South Dublin is actually to the south-west of the city. The western part of the county has been urbanising since the 1970s, though all of the towns labelled grew up around older village cores. The eastern fringe is more like Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, well-off and older.

The map also includes parts of counties Meath (north-west), Kildare (south-west) and Wicklow (south). Bray has been an established town for centuries. Leixlip and Celbridge were small villages until the 1960s; Ashbourne until the 1980s.

There is lots of interesting data for this city, but I'm not sure whether to present it by small area (~260 people each) or electoral division (~3,000 people each). Small areas are more consistently-sized and less misleading for density, but perhaps harder to read.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Dublin population density. The major suburbs and eastern commuter towns are labelled.

The map shows the four administrative counties of County Dublin. Observe that scattered apartment schemes on the southern fringe comprise some of the highest-density parts of the county, and that density falls off quickly to the south-east of the city, which (as followers of the Irish demographic maps thread will remember) is a distinctive part of Ireland with high rates of wealth, education, Protestantism/irreligion, social liberalism, etc etc.

Dublin City is notable for the big, empty areas of the Phoenix Park to the west and North Bull Island to the east.
Fingal to its north expanded its population rapidly in the last twenty years. Consequently, it has a younger and more non-Irish demographic profile than the rest of Dublin, let alone other counties. Swords and Dublin haven't grown into each other thanks to an airport and motorway in between. Blanchardstown and Balbriggan also grew quickly. The other seaside towns have an older profile.
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown is relatively low-density because that's where the rich people live, particularly west and east of Dún Laoghaire town itself. Unlike the other counties, its population hasn't grown much, and the average age is higher.
South Dublin is actually to the south-west of the city. The western part of the county has been urbanising since the 1970s, though all of the towns labelled grew up around older village cores. The eastern fringe is more like Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, well-off and older.

The map also includes parts of counties Meath (north-west), Kildare (south-west) and Wicklow (south). Bray has been an established town for centuries. Leixlip and Celbridge were small villages until the 1960s; Ashbourne until the 1980s.

There is lots of interesting data for this city, but I'm not sure whether to present it by small area (~260 people each) or electoral division (~3,000 people each). Small areas are more consistently-sized and less misleading for density, but perhaps harder to read.

Great post. Personally I would use DEDs simply out of the convenience and that, at least in the city, they do correspond fairly well to what are thought of as separate districts and parts of towns. Small Areas tend to be a lot of clutter... although if you go outside the city and especially into Fingal and the absurdly named 'South Dublin'* the DEDs get less useful in that regard and small areas are preferable. Also if you want a slightly larger area albeit unwieldy geography, the census has data for Dublin Parishes.

* - absurdly named because what most people think of 'South Dublin' is in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown or in the City. Of course I should note that pretty much nobody identifies themselves with these invented in 1994 'counties'.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Wait, the Fingal boundaries are from the 1990s?! What's the excuse for them then?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Wait, the Fingal boundaries are from the 1990s?! What's the excuse for them then?

It followed the abolition of Dublin County Council (which covered the whole of the country except for the 'city' which was under different boundaries then - and have been modified again since, moving Howth and Bayside into Fingal) and the division of the county into three council areas due to the growth of the greater Dublin Metro area. The boundaries of the three counties are ridiculously and arbitrary and didn't make sense in 1993-4 and even less now with the population of the ridiculously named 'South Dublin' and Fingal having exploded massively since. Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown's borders have being mostly defined by the new city limits and the historic area of the barony of Rathdown. This is ridiculous because areas like Rathfarnham, which are in 'South Dublin' have more in common with DR-L than the county they are (which might as well be called outside 'Tallaght'). This area is much older in terms of settlement with Dun Laoghaire being a historic town in its own right (its town council having been abolished under the Local Government Act which created the counties). South Dublin being focused primarily on the quasi-suburb/city of Tallaght and its environs, that was primarily built in the 70s and 80s as part of the project to remove the overspill from the city (and part of the project to suburbanize the entire Dublin region too). I suppose the river was then used to divide the boundary between the other two new counties, but I'm not too sure.

Fingal's population has gone up by about 120,000 persons since its creation (admittedly some of that is due to it being redrawn, although that would have been only a slight change). Its population in 2011 is 275,000 and is one of the fastest growing areas of the country. Despite this when it comes to local government reform the loudest voice (albeit not so loud now that the Greens have vanished) tends to be in favour of returning to the pre-94 situation. I've never quite grasped the logic of this although certainly as I said earlier nobody thinks of themselves as 'Fingallian'.

[EPG]

Yeah, the Fingal - South Dublin boundary is the River Liffey.

The Minister at the time said that the South Dublin - Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown boundary was "the watershed which divides South Dublin naturally into east and west sectors".

The 1985 boundary reorganisation was before the construction of the M50 motorway. If they were to revise it today, they'd probably extend the city boundary unto that great road, which would still exclude Blanchardstown, and spin the other county boundaries clockwise.

As for Howth, Sutton, and Baldoyle in the far south-east of Fingal, Ray Burke described their move out of the city to the county as an "abortion of a proposal". There was doubtless some recondite political scheme behind it - Fianna Fáil claimed it was intended to strengthen Fine Gael on Fingal County Council, which certainly sounds plausible to me.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Yeah, the Fingal - South Dublin boundary is the River Liffey.

The Minister at the time said that the South Dublin - Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown boundary was "the watershed which divides South Dublin naturally into east and west sectors".

He said that? Lulz.

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Err... no. That would mean effectively cutting off large parts of the Southside from their 'natural' hinterland. The Motorway divides Sandyford - where I'm from - in half.

If they were drawing the boundaries now it would make sense to divide Blanchardstown/Castleknock from Swords and the rest of Fingal. Blanchardstown would be a better match with Lucan anyway, the river be damned.

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Plausible given election results and local demography. Although the Howth ward was abolished in the time between the 2004 and 2009 locals.

[EPG]

I meant they'd move the boundary west towards Blanchardstown, not south.

It doesn't matter whether Howth has its own ward or joins with somewhere else; the point was to join Howth to an otherwise strongly Fianna Fáil area.



We have to go to ED level to look at changes in population density since 1981. The reorganisation was in 1985, so the earliest sub-county level data we have are from the 1986 census.

The most obvious phenomena: the population of the western fringe of the county, the increased population density visible in even the large northern/southern areas, big falls in population in formerly high-density parts of the inner suburbs and the repopulation of what in 1981 were extremely run-down areas of the city centre, mainly through modern apartment construction.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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Ummm.... yes. I was just referring to tracking the local election results in that area (which did indeed favour FG significantly under the ward was abolished). Now It's part of the Malahide, or rather Howth-Malahide, ward and that voted differently in 2009 - with a strong Labour vote (which suggested that in these ummm... not so deprived areas of Dublin Labour picked up a lot of the votes that had originally gone to the Greens. Need to explore this).

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Right. The Old 'city' is really the boundaries created by the expansion of the city if it had halted in the 60s - especially in the Northside.

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In the 'city' only the South Eastern quarter and what I think is the Docklands seem to have gained in density over the past 30 years, which is interesting...

[EPG]

Now It's part of the Malahide, or rather Howth-Malahide, ward and that voted differently in 2009 - with a strong Labour vote (which suggested that in these ummm... not so deprived areas of Dublin Labour picked up a lot of the votes that had originally gone to the Greens. Need to explore this).

Yep, or more generally, Labour took the floating, high-standards middle-class vote that was lodged with Greens/PDs in 2004 and will inevitably go somewhere else this time.

Heck, they got 3/6 seats in the richest City Council ward. Though this pattern didn't hold true in DLR or South Dublin, where Fine Gael took that vote instead.

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The main growth areas in the City Council area: new developments in Cherry Orchard, Islandbridge, Meakstown, Ashtown and Clongriffin, and redevelopment in the city centre, including the Docklands but also Dublin 1/2 generally, Smithfield and HSQ.

The main declining areas: Kilbarrack, Coolock/Artane, Donnycarney, Ballymun/Finglas, Cabra, Ballyfermot, Drimnagh, Crumlin. These are all areas of high social housing, most of which were built in the 1940s and settled by former tenement residents, suggesting that the life cycle is starting to take their toll.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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Pembroke-Rathmines is significantly studented and is more, how should I put this, generally more 'urban' than most places further South. IIRC the percentage of people renting privately is v. high for Dublin. Also Ruairi Quinn has a big personal vote in Rathmines proper.

Anyway, Labour's vote there wasn't, in numerical terms, much higher than most of the other city wards. Only significantly lower, as far as I can see, with wards with large numbers of inner suburban lower-middle class owner-occupiers mainly on the northside (ah, but see below) and some places where the Far left/SF are strong. Not a huge shock.

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Yes that sounds right. I sort of refuse to think of places like Clongriffin and Meakstown as 'the city' though even if technically....

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This was discussed in the demographics thread. Unusually large numbers of old owner-occupiers, as well as council housing (which is more concentrated in the Finglas, Ballymun and Ballyfermot and less in Kilbarrack and the likes). Presumably property prices can be part of the explanation here - close enough to the city to be more expensive than, say, Clonsilla or Swords but too far to be 'city centre' with it being mostly private housing rather than flats so less of a demand to rent (most of these areas also not being proximate to a university also being a factor here).

I wonder what is the DED with the 5,600% increase since 1981? Balbriggan Rural... or one of those surrounding Swords? Swords itself and Blanchardstown were mostly 70s developments and so would have had a decent sized population by 81. My own DED of Glencullen is one of the darkest Green on the map and while it certainly has grown much in population, I doubt it has that much.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Special new tenure key:



Outright, Mortgaged, Social, Private

[EPG]

Pembroke-Rathmines is significantly studented and is more, how should I put this, generally more 'urban' than most places further South. IIRC the percentage of people renting privately is v. high for Dublin. Also Ruairi Quinn has a big personal vote in Rathmines proper.

Pembroke-Rathmines is indeed full of students, but we all know how disinclined students are to vote, let alone to vote in their college constituency rather than their family's one. Similar factors apply to the other transient apartment-dwellers in Rathmines. In this manner, the Pembroke-Rathmines electorate somehow manages to be even more well-heeled than its population as a whole - so political party types say, anyway. As for Labour's relative weakness where the far-left was strong, that can be taken as another sign that its class profile was not very skewed in 2009, since these other people peeled off worker support.

This was discussed in the demographics thread. Unusually large numbers of old owner-occupiers, as well as council housing (which is more concentrated in the Finglas, Ballymun and Ballyfermot and less in Kilbarrack and the likes). Presumably property prices can be part of the explanation here - close enough to the city to be more expensive than, say, Clonsilla or Swords but too far to be 'city centre' with it being mostly private housing rather than flats so less of a demand to rent (most of these areas also not being proximate to a university also being a factor here).

Kilbarrack, Donnycarney, etc. don't rank up there with Ballymun or Ballyfermot for social housing (in leagues of their own), but they are still areas of high concentration compared to the rest of the city. As you mentioned, the same demographic effect has happened in areas of high owner-occupancy but middling incomes like Beaumont, Walkinstown, etc. Whereas the higher-income owner-occupancy areas didn't shrink much (Clontarf, Drumcondra) or grew (Sandymount).

Oh - The biggest percentage increase was in Blanchardstown-Mulhuddart. Its population was only 68 in 1981, 1,085 in 1986 and 3,866 in 2011. It must have been built on by the time of the 1985 reorganisation, then developed further during the boom. Blanchardstown-Tyrrelstown has a similar story; another near-empty area turned into suburbia. The areas you mention had too many people in 1981 to give them the #1 spot, but certainly grew extremely quickly after that.

Glencullen's population went from 3,343 to 17,381. As you're no doubt aware, but for the benefit of other readers, Glencullen combines the high-density areas misleadingly labelled "Sandyford" on my initial map (Sandyford proper is north of the label), and a huge mountainy area to the south all the way to the county boundary. It's one of those electoral divisions that makes you glad that sub-breakdowns by census small area exist.

[EPG]

Since so much of this discussion now hinges on social conditions, time to present a summary.



This shows the proportion of workers in Census social classes 1 and 2, which are professional and managerial/technical workers. "Professionals" include the so-called higher professions like science, medicine and the law; nurses, teachers and so on are in the "managerial and technical" group, along with assorted managers, farmers of large farms, sales assistants, artists, surveyors, librarians, hovercraft officers. Don't ask me why.

The overwhelmingly class 1/2 areas is what you might call Stereotypical South Dublin, essentially Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown plus Pembroke and Terenure in the city as well as Templeogue and Rathfarnham in South Dublin. There are also strong class 1/2 areas in Castleknock (west of the Phoenix Park), Clontarf (north of Dublin Port), Malahide (east of Swords) and rural Howth (though not Howth town). Somewhat less pervasive are Lucan and the Meath/Kildare exurbs where our old friend, the detached house, dominates.

The areas without many professional, managerial and technical workers are those we discussed earlier: the north-east inner city, Darndale/Coolock/Priorswood to the north-east, Ballymun and Cabra/Finglas in the north-west, Ballyfermot/Irishtown/Clondalkin in the west and Tallaght in the south-west. The areas where this is true to a lesser extent are Blanchardstown in the west and Crumlin in the south-west of the city area. The Phoenix Park contains a hospital for dependent older people, which is why it appears red; on the other hand, the UCD campus on the city-DLR border appears red because of all the students.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Pembroke-Rathmines is significantly studented and is more, how should I put this, generally more 'urban' than most places further South. IIRC the percentage of people renting privately is v. high for Dublin. Also Ruairi Quinn has a big personal vote in Rathmines proper.

Pembroke-Rathmines is indeed full of students, but we all know how disinclined students are to vote, let alone to vote in their college constituency rather than their family's one. Similar factors apply to the other transient apartment-dwellers in Rathmines. In this manner, the Pembroke-Rathmines electorate somehow manages to be even more well-heeled than its population as a whole - so political party types say, anyway. As for Labour's relative weakness where the far-left was strong, that can be taken as another sign that its class profile was not very skewed in 2009, since these other people peeled off worker support.

Hmmm.... what I meant was that Pembroke is (effectively nowadays) an inner-city ward which large number of students, and the sort of people which that demographic attracts and all that that entails.

This was discussed in the demographics thread. Unusually large numbers of old owner-occupiers, as well as council housing (which is more concentrated in the Finglas, Ballymun and Ballyfermot and less in Kilbarrack and the likes). Presumably property prices can be part of the explanation here - close enough to the city to be more expensive than, say, Clonsilla or Swords but too far to be 'city centre' with it being mostly private housing rather than flats so less of a demand to rent (most of these areas also not being proximate to a university also being a factor here).

Kilbarrack, Donnycarney, etc. don't rank up there with Ballymun or Ballyfermot for social housing (in leagues of their own), but they are still areas of high concentration compared to the rest of the city. As you mentioned, the same demographic effect has happened in areas of high owner-occupancy but middling incomes like Beaumont, Walkinstown, etc. Whereas the higher-income owner-occupancy areas didn't shrink much (Clontarf, Drumcondra) or grew (Sandymount).

There's something of Teh Keltik Tigah in that fact. Oh, and Sandymount is a bit more than just 'higher-income' even if we are comparing to Clontarf and Drumcondra.

Oh - The biggest percentage increase was in Blanchardstown-Mulhuddart. Its population was only 68 in 1981, 1,085 in 1986 and 3,866 in 2011. It must have been built on by the time of the 1985 reorganisation, then developed further during the boom. Blanchardstown-Tyrrelstown has a similar story; another near-empty area turned into suburbia. The areas you mention had too many people in 1981 to give them the #1 spot, but certainly grew extremely quickly after that.

Yes that seems right. I wasn't sure how far Blanchardstown had spread by the 1980s. (Terrible place btw).

Glencullen's population went from 3,343 to 17,381. As you're no doubt aware, but for the benefit of other readers, Glencullen combines the high-density areas misleadingly labelled "Sandyford" on my initial map (Sandyford proper is north of the label), and a huge mountainy area to the south all the way to the county boundary. It's one of those electoral divisions that makes you glad that sub-breakdowns by census small area exist.

Just to make things more confusing when asked when I'm from, I usually say Sandyford . I would say more but I figure that would lead you to figuring out where exactly I live...

And yes, some of the mountain towns (like Glencullen itself) have had small populations for ages and still aren't, strangely enough, all that 'developed'. Well, except for those occasional backroads filled with rich people houses.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Tenure in Manchester. Comparisons with housing type patterns might be fun.

Anyway, across the city: Social Renting 31.6%, Private Renting 26.9%, Mortgaged 22.6%, Owned Outright 15.2%.*

_{*And lots of smaller categories (shared ownership, rent free, private renting not involving a landlord or letting agency, etc) as well.}