Constituent Parts
The largest settlements (in descending order of population) within the Greater Manchester Urban Area are Manchester, Bolton, Stockport, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, and Bury. These settlements are not coterminous with the Metropolitan Boroughs of the same name, and the ONS takes its settlement boundaries from the contiguous urban core of pre-Local Government Act 1972 local government districts. This means that the GMUA bears a much closer resemblance to the earlier "SELNEC" area than to the Greater Manchester Metropolitan County. Unlike most urban areas which expanded outwards around a central core of employment the Greater Manchester Urban Area was formed from the inward expansion of several large manufacturing towns towards a centralised marketplace for the trading of goods and raw materials.
Wigan is separate from the Greater Manchester Urban Area, although other parts of the wider Metropolitan Borough of Wigan are included. Wigan, with Ince-in-Makerfield forms a separate Wigan Urban Area; the gap is formed between Ince (of Wigan Urban Area) and Hindley (Greater Manchester Urban Area).
Other urban areas, including Glossop, New Mills and the rest of High Peak are narrowly avoided as is Golborne and much of the parish of Saddleworth.
Read more about this topic: Greater Manchester Urban Area
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“The Indian navigator naturally distinguishes by a name those parts of a stream where he has encountered quick water and forks, and again, the lakes and smooth water where he can rest his weary arms, since those are the most interesting and more arable parts to him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)