Urban Morphology and Residential Differentiation across Great Britain, 1881–1901

The nineteenth century saw rapid urbanization and dramatic social change in Great Britain, some of which can now be viewed at national scales for the first time through linkage of georeferenced digital historical data to contemporary and historical framework data. Here, we attempt to georeference every individual address record from the 1881, 1891, and 1901 censuses for Great Britain and to define the fast-growing historical street networks and residential geographies of every urban settlement. We next devise a scale-free historical geodemographic classification using variables common to these three censuses and assign cluster group characteristics to every urban street segment. We also link the evolution of the urban street morphology with changes in residential differentiation and the geodemographic assignments over the twenty-year study period. The results of this intensive data processing make it possible to chart the development of urban residential areas across Great Britain and bring focus to the changing social structures of the cities. We examine these changes with examples drawn from the entire British urban settlement system. Our conclusions discuss the implications of this extensive analysis for improved understanding of the evolution of Great Britain’s urban system.