Lesson video

Hello, my name is Mr. March, and I'm here today to teach you all about UK cities and its population distribution.

So grab everything that you need for today's lesson and let's get going.

By the end of today's lesson, you'll be able to locate major cities of the UK and describe and explain the UK's uneven population distribution.

There are just two key terms for today's lesson.

Those are population distribution and population density.

Population distribution refers to the pattern of where people do and do not live.

Whilst population density refers to the average number of people that live within a square kilometre.

There are just two learning cycles for today's lesson, and we're gonna start with the first learning cycle, which is major cities of the UK.

Now, as of 2022, there were 76 cities in the UK.

City status is associated with three key elements, the first of which is having a cathedral or a university.

Second is having a particular form of local government, and the third and final one is having a large population.

Which cities do you live in or near to? You may like to pause the video at this point whilst you consider or even discuss your answer.

So this is the breakdown of those 76 UK cities I mentioned just a while ago.

And with our four countries across the United Kingdom, six of those cities are found in Northern Ireland, seven in Wales, eight in Scotland, and the remainder, 55, found across England.

Can you name a city in each of these countries? Again, you may like to pause the video whilst you consider your answer to that question right there.

Major cities in the UK include the following.

Now, this is our list of cities for England, and you can begin to see that there are different demarcations for different cities.

The red square is of course referring to it being the capital city.

So London is the capital city of England, and then we have other cities there as well.

We have Newcastle, Leeds, Bradford, Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield.

And we have other cities in England as well as you can see as I go through the list here.

If we move on to Scotland then, the list becomes slightly shorter, but again we can see that capital city, Edinburgh.

Moving forward into Wales, again, the capital city of Cardiff, but also that major city on the south coast of Wales, Swansea.

And then, finally, in Northern Ireland we have that key city, the capital city Belfast.

So a learning check.

And the question is, as of 2022, how many cities are there in the UK? I would like you to pause the video whilst you try to remember and consider your answer.

And the correct answer was 76.

There are 76 cities in the UK spread across the four countries that make up the United Kingdom, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Really, really well done if you are able to remember and identify that as the correct answer.

Another learning check is which cities are all found in England.

Now you have four options here, and I would like you to read through those four options and read through the cities that you see in each option.

The question again is, which cities are all found in England? So I'd like you to do is read through those options, pause the video whilst you consider, and then select your answer.

Best of luck.

And the correct answer was C, which is Bristol, Newcastle, Leicester, and Leeds are all major cities in England alone.

The other options, for example, A, Portsmouth, Nottingham, Swansea, and Brighton has their city in the country of Wales.

B, Belfast, Norwich, Manchester, and Birmingham has a city from Northern Ireland with Belfast.

And finally, D, Sheffield, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Plymouth, there is an example of a city there in Scotland being Glasgow.

So really, really well done if you're able to identify C as the correct answer.

So another learning check.

I would like you now to try to identify the cities that you can see labelled on the screen as A, B, C, and D.

So can you now pause the video whilst you consider and then select your answer.

Best of luck.

And the correct answers were so.

Directly really in the middle of England, we have Birmingham, UK's second city.

In option B, we have Bristol down in the southwest.

C, we have the capital city of Scotland, Edinburgh.

And then finally, D, we have the capital city of England, but also of course the capital city of the United Kingdom, London.

So really, really well done if you are able to get those four answers correct.

Now we're on to our practise questions, and we have a map task, and we have three map tasks within this one question.

First task is I would like you to lightly shade and label the countries.

Number two is to label the capital cities and use that square icon you can see in front of you.

And thirdly, I would like you to label the major cities.

Now, the major cities are listed there below.

So what I'd like you to do is pause the video whilst you attempt these three tasks which make up the practise question.

Best of luck.

And now some feedback.

So the first task then asked you to lightly shade and label the countries.

Well, we can see in this map right here how the four countries are split, and you probably have got something similar where the four countries are shaded in different colours.

So we have Northern Ireland off in the west.

We have Scotland in the north.

We have England making up the majority of the United Kingdom.

And finally, Wales is just neighbouring to the west of England.

Then you are asked to label the capital cities.

Well, if we look at that map that's in front of you, you can again see those red squares which are drawing your attention to the capital cities.

So once again, we can see that Belfast, the capital city of Northern Ireland, is found on the east coast of Northern Ireland.

We can see that Edinburgh is located in the southeast of Scotland.

We can see that London is located in the southeast of England.

And finally, Cardiff also is found in the southeast of Wales.

Finally, then I asked you to label the major cities, and I gave you a list of those major UK cities.

Now, if we just compare the map that you can see on the left with the list that was provided, we can see where those major cities are located.

For example, Plymouth is located in the southwest of England.

We have Birmingham, the UK's second city.

Located more or less in the centre of England, we have Glasgow, that second city in Scotland located just to the west of Edinburgh.

Swansea as well is a major city within Wales just located to the west of Cardiff.

So really, really well done if you are able to locate those different cities on the map.

We're on now to our second and final learning cycle, which is the UK's population distribution.

The national census which started in 1801 and recorded a total UK population of 10.

5 million people.

Well, fast forward to 2022, which was the last date of the national census, and that figure has risen all the way to 67.

6 million.

So there has been a very, very steep increase since 1801.

But what is the breakdown in population between the four countries that make up the UK? The population distribution is a pattern describing where people live.

The population distribution of the UK is very much uneven.

Let me show you.

So in Northern Ireland, there are 1.

91 million people living there.

Contrast that with Scotland, which has 5.

45 million people, Wales which has just over 3 million.

And then finally, England, which has 57.

1 million people.

And we can begin to see just how uneven that distribution is.

We see the vast, vast majority of people living in England.

So, a learning check.

In 2022, what was the population of the UK? I would like you now to pause the video whilst you try to recall that fact.

Best of luck.

And the answer was 67.

6 million.

Remember that was a huge increase from the date of the very first census in 1801 where the population of the UK only numbered around 10 million people.

But really, really well done if you're able to recall that statistic that you can see in front of you.

So another learning check.

Starting with a country with the lowest population, which is the correct order? I would like you to read through the four options, pause the video whilst you then consider, and select your answer.

And the correct answer was C.

So Northern Ireland is the country with the lowest population, which is then followed by Wales with a population of just over 3 million.

Scotland follows with a population of just over 5 million.

And finally, England is the most populated country of the UK with just over 57 million people.

So really, really well done if you are able to identify C as the correct answer.

Population density is a numerical measure of the number of people that live within a kilometre squared.

Here we can see an example of an area which is densely populated.

There are lots of people living within this one kilometre squared, whilst in this one kilometre squared there are very few people.

And in geography, we use this term called sparsely populated.

So these are two key terms which we need to become familiar with, which is densely populated, which is an area which has lots of people living there and sparsely populated, which is an area which doesn't have so many people living there.

Population distribution is a pattern and population density is a numerical measure.

The population distribution of the UK, as we know, is uneven with most people, remember 57 million people, living in England.

The population density of Central London is 11,218 people per kilometre squared.

So that is very much densely populated.

There are lots of people living in the centre of London.

So a quick learning check.

Population distribution and population density are the same thing, true or false.

I would like you to pause the video here whilst you consider, and then select your answer.

And the correct answer is false.

Now, once again, I would like you to pause the video whilst you consider your response as to why that statement is false.

And the reason it's false is because population distribution is a pattern of where people do and don't live, whereas population density is a numerical measure.

It's a number of people that live within a kilometre squared.

So really, really well done if you're able to identify those two correct answers.

The population distribution of the UK is uneven and also population density varies very much across the United Kingdom as this map helpfully explains.

if we identify this map of the UK and we look at the legend there, we can see that the darker colours, for example, those dark reds, are showing areas of high density densely populated areas, whereas the areas which are green are more rural.

These are more countryside areas which are very sparsely populated, not many people living there.

So once again, this sort of bears out the numerical data when we said that England has the vast majority of people, 57 million people we said.

And we compare it with that map in front of you, and we can begin to get a sense of where most people are living.

So we can clearly see on this map London has a very dense population.

We can also identify key cities such as Birmingham.

We can see Liverpool and Manchester in England, but we can also see other cities there as well.

We can see up towards Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland.

We can see along the south coast of Wales of Cardiff and Swansea.

We can also see a densely populated area in Northern Ireland.

This is their capital city, Belfast.

So the map in front of you which is showing population density bears out that population distribution, which we identified earlier in the lesson.

According to the office for national statistics, the population density for the UK in 2022 was 279 people per kilometre squared.

That is an average across the whole of the United Kingdom.

But if we focus more specifically on London, that deep red colour, we can see that, in London, there are more than 900 people living there per kilometre squared.

So we get to get this sense of how some areas of the UK are more densely populated and other areas of the UK are more sparsely populated.

So the population density varies very much by country.

Northern Ireland has 137 people per kilometre squared on average.

Scotland is even less at 70 people per kilometre squared.

Wales meanwhile is up around 153 people per kilometre squared whilst England is up at 434 people per kilometre squared on average.

So population density varies very much within countries, and 82% of people in the UK live in urban areas.

A vast, vast majority of us today live in cities in the UK and 20.

5% of people in the UK live in London and the southeast as that map in front of you really helpfully shows.

The lowest population density is in Northern Scotland, in the Scottish Highlands, a really mountainous region with just nine people per kilometre squared on average.

The highest is in London in Tower Hamlets with 16,478 people on average per kilometre squared.

So we can really get a sense of the differences that are existing within just our country.

So a learning check.

What was the average population density for the UK in 2022? I would like you now to read through those three options, pause the video whilst you consider, and then select your answer.

And the correct answer was B, 279 people per kilometre squared on average is the population density across the UK in 2022.

So really well done if you were able to identify that answer.

And the second learning check is starting with a country with the lowest population density, which is the correct order? Again, read through the three options, pause a video whilst you consider and then select your answer.

And the answer was A.

Starting with the lowest population density, we have Scotland, followed by Northern Ireland, then Wales, and finally, England has the highest population density.

Really, really well done if you're able to identify A as the correct answer.

And our next learning check is, what percentage of people in the UK live in urban areas? I would like you now to pause the video whilst you try to recall this statistic.

So pause the video here whilst you consider your answer.

And the correct answer was 82%.

82% of people in the UK now live in urban areas, by which I mean towns and cities.

So really well done if you're able to recall that.

So the uneven population distribution and population density across the UK can be explained through many different reasons, and these can be broken down into two halves.

The first of which are human factors, and the second of which are physical factors by which I mean natural factors.

Let's have a look at the human factors first.

So the industrial revolution was a key reason as to why some areas of the UK have more people living there than in others.

Political and administrative power and trade are two key reasons also why some areas have more people living there than others.

In terms of the natural reasons, the natural factors, the physical factors, climate is a key factor as well as relief, which refers to the shape and height of the land.

We'll now have a look at these five different factors and how they influenced where people are living in the UK.

So we're gonna start with the human factors.

In the UK's most densely populated areas all reflect its industrial past.

The development of heavy industry near to supplies of raw materials such as coal during the Industrial Revolution really attracted people to move from the sparsely populated rural areas, by which I mean countryside areas, towards those urban centres where they could find jobs working in the factories.

And we see this across the UK with a number of different specialist cities and towns growing as a result of this industrial revolution.

London also developed as the capital of the UK and the centre of the global British empire and home to political and administrative functions, and the same can be said across all the different capital cities of the United Kingdom.

Cardiff, Edinburgh, and Belfast also grew as a result of this political and administrative functions.

Finally, the UK was a significant trading nation, especially with that empire through the 17 and 18.

And as a result, ports across the UK grew, whether it be for shipbuilding such as up in Newcastle and in Scotland, or perhaps with Liverpool with the trading of cotton and other products.

But really the UK was the centre of the world at this time during the Industrial Revolution, and we do see the growth of a huge shipping and trade industry as a result, and really that that history still lives on today where we find our cities and where most people are generally located.

In terms of the physical factors, upland areas, by which I mean those mountainous regions are more remote.

They're more difficult to access, and they also experience harsher climates.

The map in front of you shows us this relief map.

It's showing you where those mountainous areas are through the brown colour, all the way down to those lowland, those flat areas in the more green colour that you can see in front of you on the map.

Now, generally, the north and west of the UK have the majority of those upland areas, which maybe goes some way to explaining why it is that the north and west of the UK have less people living there, especially in comparison to the southeast of the UK, southeast of England where we see the majority of the people living in the UK, and perhaps it's no coincidence that it's because there is that flat lowland that we see there in the southeast.

And now onto our two practise questions.

The first one says to describe how population distribution and population density vary across the UK, and you need to consider the following.

How even the overall distribution is? Which countries have more people? Which areas within countries are home to more people? And how does population density vary? You may like to also include this following supportive data where we've given you different numbers of population density and percentages to help you in your own answer.

These are all statistics that have been used during today's lesson.

And the second and final practise question asks you to explain why population distribution and population density are uneven across the UK.

And I'd like you to consider the following.

I'd like you to consider the human factors and the physical factors that have led to this disparity.

I'd also like you to try and include the following supportive facts, which is capitals, raw materials, ports, as well as upland and lowland.

These are key terms and key concepts which you could try to fit into your answer.

So what I'd like you to do right now is pause the video whilst you attempt these two questions.

Best of luck.

And now some feedback.

In the first question, I asked you to describe how population distribution and population density vary across the UK.

Now you may have had something similar to this.

It says the population distribution of the UK is uneven.

67.

6 million people live in the UK and 57.

1 million people live in England.

The country with the lowest population is Northern Ireland where 1.

8 billion people live.

Urban areas are home to 82% of the UK's population, and 20.

5% of the UK's population live in London and the Southeast.

Population density averages 279 people per kilometre squared across the UK with the highest densities in England at 434 people per kilometre squared and the lowest in Scotland with 70 people per kilometre squared.

The second question asks you to explain why population distribution and population density are uneven across the UK.

Now, again, you may have had something similar to this.

It says that human factors are historical in origin and include the location of raw materials during the Industrial Revolution, which led to significant population growth in some cities.

For example, Birmingham.

Port cities grew due to trade.

E.

g.

Liverpool and the four capitals were centres for administration, and in the case of London, global power.

Physical factors divide the UK into two with the north and west home to more upland areas which face harsher climates and are more remote.

These factors all help explain why the population distribution and population density vary across the UK.

So really, really well done if you're able to include anything like that in your own answer.

On now to our learning summary.

And population density and population distribution in the UK is uneven.

Of a UK population of 67.

6 million people, 82% of those live in urban areas, so towns and cities.

And the human and physical factors which explain these differences can be seen below.

In the human factors, we can see that in the industrial revolution, that historical factor was a key reason.

The power and administrative centres also is a key factor, especially when we think about those capital cities, as well as those trading ports which were especially vital during the time of the British Empire.

In the physical factors, those natural factors, the climate and relief, by which I mean the shape of the land, are truly significant factors which explain where people do and don't live in the UK.

So really, really well done during today's lesson.

It was a pleasure teaching you, and I will see you again on the next lesson.

Goodbye.