People, spaces and places - The Visualization of Spatial Social Structure - page 47

Box 2.3 The areal hierarchy

The hierarchy of 1980s areal units in Britain used in this topic is shown here.
Arrows indicate which units nest into which. Dashed connections imply a
very similar geography. All of these scales cover the whole of Britain:

17 Level II European Regions

64 Counties and Metropolitan Areas

97 Family Practitioner Committee Areas

121 Postcode Areas

116 Local Education Authorities

136 'Functional' City Areas

280 Local Labour Market Areas

322 Travel-to-work Areas

459 Local Government Districts

633 Parliamentary Constituencies

852 Amalgamated Office Areas

2,649 Postcode Districts

8,604 Postcode Sectors

10,444 1981 census wards and
Scottish part postcode sectors
10,519 1981 nomis wards

10,756 1987 nomis wards

129,211 1981 Enumeration Districts

125,476 1971 Enumeration Districts

in tables. 9 Functional regions are, in this sense at least, an aspatial concept, an
attempt to take out the effect of movement and the relationship between places
where the real differences are to be found.

9 This I and colleagues have done several times in recent years to help illustrate the growth of
the North - South divide, but which does not help illustrate that within each functionally defined
area, within each city, town and possibly even within many larger villages, divides also have tended
to grow.