An observation from a non-Sheffielder

[Berberis]

What exactly do you mean by culture. Sheffield has more theatres than any other city outside London. The City Hall is on a par with the Usher Hall in Edinburgh. Plus the Arena venue that Leeds is now trying to copy. Okay no opera house and the art galleries are a bit small but there's always seemed to be plenty of artists, writers, and musicians around.

 

cough, Manchester cough.

[Mr Sheffield]

My point was these are not particularly traditional to the 'old' Sheffield which was predominantly a working-class city dominated by heavy industry.

 

Sheffield theatres are certainly well established now - but for years the Lyceum was shut, so that re-opening was an important part of the city's regeneration and wish to improve it's cultural offerings.

 

However - we have very few international cultural events in Sheffield that would interest people from far and wide (Manchester just had an it's yearly International Festival for example. Edinburgh has it's fringe). World snooker for 2 weeks a year doesn't count as culture to me, welcome as it is.

 

And as you accepted, very little opera, not a great deal of classical music, poor art galleries. So it has a long way to go yet.

 

What about the British and European swimming championships we have had here, and the AVIVA Indoor Athletics - European Trials and UK Championships! and this year we will have "The Sports Personality of the year Awards in Sheffield"!

[Herbaliser]

It is really simple unisol.

 

Sheffield is the 4th largest city by population.

 

Sheffield is not the 9th largest city. Sheffield is the 9th largest urban area.

 

When you have first hand experience of other cities the "4th largest" stat is a real eye opener. Really? How can that be? It doesn't seem like it. After reseaching the stat, I get it now. The statisticians have more than one measure for what I experienced.

 

Is there a problem with the "9th largest" urban area stat? Does it seem wrong to you? I'd make it go away for you if I could, but it seems to be a fact.

 

I've skim read the whole thread and was pretty surprised that anyone picked holes in your original post. I know exactly what you mean about Sheffield not feeling like the 4th biggest city, and I think your explanation, along with the suggestion about the hills creating an artifically close sense of boundary (yours too? can't remember), explain the feeling well.

 

I think the difference between conurbation and city is largely irrelevant in terms of the sense of how big somewhere seems. I visited Manchester recently and didn't really pay attention to when I entered the city; the urban area I drove through felt large and in my mind I associated it all with Manchester, whether or not it was officially the city or the conurbation. When it comes to explaining the discrepancy between sense of size and actual size, then the difference between city and conurbation becomes important.

 

I'm Sheffield born and bred, but having lived in other cities too, I find it hard to reconcile the facts with the feelings when it comes to the size of Sheffield, and the city/ conurbation distinciton definitely helps.

[donuticus]

Surely if you are going to compare Sheffield with the Metropolitan Borough of Manchester you would need to add the populations of Barnsley, Rotherham and Doncaster to create a Greater Sheffield?

[Herbaliser]

Surely if you are going to compare Sheffield with the Metropolitan Borough of Manchester you would need to add the populations of Barnsley, Rotherham and Doncaster to create a Greater Sheffield?

 

Rotherham maybe, but not Barnsley and Doncaster. Only Rotherham is included in the Sheffield Urban Area.

[rubydazzler]

This thread has been such a giggle. Although I'm not totally sure why spinac has the feeling that we're deliberately trying to misrepresent Sheffield as the 4th city of England, to dupe people It actually IS and it does it all by itself and not like imposters such as Leeds and Manchester who only achieve their big city feeling and large catchement by annexing other towns and cities and pretending they're part and parcel.

 

Admittedly Sheffield doesn't have as much of the feeling of fun and excitement it had in past years, but that's probably due to people being so much duller these days. Or maybe it's just me being so much older

 

Does anyone know or can work out how much space we'd take up if we were flat and not hilly?

[spinac]

This thread has been such a giggle. Although I'm not totally sure why spinac has the feeling that we're deliberately trying to misrepresent Sheffield as the 4th city of England, to dupe people It actually IS and it does it all by itself and not like imposters such as Leeds and Manchester who only achieve their big city feeling and large catchement by annexing other towns and cities and pretending they're part and parcel.

 

Hi RD - I guess that the one statistic that kept being repeated and the other stat not being known or mentioned made it feel like I was being [decieved][hoodwinked][whatever] when my own personal experience was telling me something different!

 

I made the observation last Friday "there's something wrong with that stat" and caused offence. I've done some research and discovered there's nothing wrong with the stat - it IS a fact, but it's a fact that needs to be combined with other facts to give the full picture ... I get the full picture now - it all makes sense! 4 and 9 at the same time - it depends how you slice and dice.

 

There are cities with smaller populations that feel bigger because their centres are more vibrant supported from a population just outside their strict city boundaries.

[pattricia]

So what is your final conclusion spinac ?

[mrmark]

All these data are from Wikipedia so are as suspect as you want to believe

 

List of towns and cities in England by population Sheffield 5th 439,866

List of English districts by population Sheffield 3rd 530,300

List of the 25 largest urban areas in the UK Sheffield 9th 640,720

 

see the following pages

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_towns_and_cities_in_England_by_population

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_districts_by_population

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conurbations_in_the_United_Kingdom

 

so for all those folk claiming fact status for their favorite bit of data perhaps you should consider the source and the limits before you claim something in absolutist terms. Sheffield isn't 4th in any of these lists, but I'm sure one could be found where it is.

[HeadingNorth]

so for all those folk claiming fact status for their favorite bit of data perhaps you should consider the source

 

 

The Census. There is no more authoritative source.