Читать книгу Anglo-American Cultural Studies - Jody Skinner - Страница 32

new and smallWe’ve had some practice now with this kind of question about American cities, but we’ll have an additional problem with British cities from the start: the definition of “city” in Britain is complicated by the fact that the monarch can simply grant an area “city status.” Some cities have been cities since time immemorial. Others compete each year for the coveted status. Size doesn’t always play a role. Milton KeynesMilton Keynes, founded in the 1960s to relieve congestion in LondonLondon, isn’t a city although it currently has around 230,000 inhabitants while the beautiful city of WellsWells with a population of around 10,000 advertises itself as the smallest city in EnglandEngland and has a famous cathedral. A cathedral by the way is [30]one characteristic of most cities. And London isn’t really a city at all but is made up of lots of little cities like the one we just saw, the City of WestminsterWestminster.

ports and resortsSince the sea has always been very important for Britain, we could pick port cities like PortsmouthPortsmouth in the southeast or PlymouthPlymouth in the southwest. Other important ports are BristolBristol, just across the mouth of the Severn RiverSevern River near the English-WelshWelsh border, and NewcastleNewcastle, not far from the border to ScotlandScotland. Seaside resorts include BrightonBrighton in the south and BlackpoolBlackpool in the northwest. Tourist centers which advertise their historic rootsroots include YorkYork and ChesterChester and BathBath. And then there are the ancient university cities of OxfordOxford and CambridgeCambridge, both near LondonLondon.

the most British city?But would you call any of these cities “British”? They’re all in EnglandEngland! And what about cities like GlasgowGlasgow in the west and EdinburghEdinburgh near the east coast of ScotlandScotland? Or CardiffCardiff and SwanseaSwansea in WalesWales or BelfastBelfast in Northern IrelandNorthern Ireland? As you might notice, there’s a problem with the question itself since city identityidentity like national identitynational identity is problematic in a kingdom made up of four countries.

the biggest?Yet another problem lies in determining the population of any of these cities. The 2011 censuscensus came up with the name “built up areas” after former even uglier names like “aggregates of the urban and remaining parts of each local authority,” “primary urban area,” “unitary authority, and government office region.” The US city limits were much easier to understand for a Top 10 list. In the UK Top 10 lists of cities depend on just how and where you draw the limits. At least everyone seems to agree on Britain’s top two and the only two cities with more than one million (although some say that BirminghamBirmingham actually has a little less than a million). Other than LondonLondon and Birmingham, the following English cities are usually among the top 10 (listed here alphabetically): BradfordBradford, BristolBristol, LeedsLeeds, LeicesterLeicester, LiverpoolLiverpool, ManchesterManchester, and SheffieldSheffield. In ScotlandScotland EdinburghEdinburgh (the capital) and GlasgowGlasgow are the largest cities (both make all Top 10 lists of UK cities). The largest city in WalesWales (and the capital), CardiffCardiff, comes in around 10 or 12 of the Top UK cities depending on which list you use. Cardiff is larger than BelfastBelfast, the capital of and largest city in Northern IrelandNorthern Ireland, which has a population of around 300,000 or maybe more than double that many if you consider the Belfast Metropolitan Area. Since there are no official registration offices in Britain – just as there are none in the US – the exact numbers may vary, [31]depending on who’s counting when. And although calculating the exact size of Britain’s biggest cities individually can prove to be surprisingly difficult, it is somewhat easier to determine where most people live when we look at the nation as a whole.