The Nottingham Urban Area is an area of land defined by the Office for National Statistics, consisting of the city of Nottingham and the adjoining urban areas of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, in the East Midlands of England. It had a total population of 666,358 at the time of the 2001 census, and is currently estimated at 675,600.

The Nottingham Urban Area is bounded to the west by a narrow gap between Breaston and Borrowash. In the 1991 census, Ilkeston was considered outside of the Nottingham Urban Area. Clifton is within the current city boundaries, but is considered separately for ONS purposes.

Greater Nottingham is largely within the three districts of Rushcliffe, Broxtowe and Gedling surrounding the city, though the area spills into the Nottinghamshire district of Ashfield, and also to the Amber Valley and Erewash districts of Derbyshire. The Nottingham Urban Area is, by the ONS' figures, the 7th largest in England, with a size between that of the Liverpool Urban Area and Sheffield Urban Area.

Nottingham (ⁱ/ˈnɒtɪŋəm/ NOT-ing-əm) is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire and is one of eight members of the English Core Cities Group.

Nottingham is famed for its links with the legend of Robin Hood and, during the Industrial Revolution, obtained worldwide recognition for its lace-making, bicycle and tobacco industries. With origins tracable back to 600 AD, Nottingham was granted its city charter as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of Queen Victoria in 1897 and has since been officially titled the City of Nottingham. The city has historically been nicknamed The Queen of the Midlands, being the smaller yet less industrialised regional neighbour to the Midlands biggest city, Birmingham. Nottingham is considered the primary centre of England's East Midlands region, being home to numerous regional headquarters and media stations including the BBC East Midlands and the Regional Government Office.

Whilst Nottingham has always had a tightly-drawn authority boundary, accounting for its relatively small population of 306,700, Nottingham's Urban Area has a population of approximately 670,000; in the 2001 census, it was the eighth largest urban area in the United Kingdom. Eurostat's concept of the Larger Urban Zone listed the area's population at 825,600 as of 2004.

An urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.

Urban areas are created and further developed by the process of urbanization. Measuring the extent of an urban area helps in analyzing population density and urban sprawl, and in determining urban and rural populations.^{[citation needed]}

Unlike an urban area, a metropolitan area includes not only the urban area, but also satellite cities plus intervening rural land that is socio-economically connected to the urban core city, typically by employment ties through commuting, with the urban core city being the primary labor market. In fact, urbanized areas agglomerate and grow as the core population/economic activity center within a larger metropolitan area or envelope.

In the US, Metropolitan areas tend to be defined using counties or county sized political units as building blocks of much larger, albeit more condensed population units. Counties tend to be stable political boundaries; economists prefer to work with economic and social statistics based on metropolitan areas. Urbanized areas are a more relevant statistic for determining per capita land usage and densities.^{[citation needed]}

Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes. The origin of the legend is claimed by some to have stemmed from actual outlaws, or from ballads or tales of outlaws.

Robin Hood became a popular folk figure in the medieval period continuing through to modern literature, films and television. In the earliest sources, Robin Hood is a yeoman, but he was often later portrayed as an aristocrat wrongfully dispossessed of his lands and made into an outlaw by an unscrupulous sheriff.

In popular culture, Robin Hood and his band of "merry men" are usually portrayed as living in Sherwood Forest, in Nottinghamshire, where much of the action in the early ballads takes place. So does the very first recorded Robin Hood rhyme, four lines from the early 15th century, beginning: "Robyn hode in scherewode stod." However, the overall picture from the surviving early ballads and other early references suggest that Robin Hood may have been based in the Barnsdale area of what is now South Yorkshire (which borders Nottinghamshire).

Simon Patrick Tipping (born 24 October 1949) is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sherwood from 1992 to 2010.

Tipping was born in Halifax. He went to Hipperholme Grammar School (when a state school) in Hipperholme. At the University of Nottingham, he gained a BA in Philosophy in 1972 and an MA in Social Sciences in 1978. He was a social work in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire from 1972-9. From 1979-83, he was a Project leader for the (C of E) Children's Society in Nottingham. From 1981-93, he was a Nottinghamshire county councillor.

He contested Rushcliffe in 1987. He took Sherwood from the Conservatives in 1992.

He has worked in a number of junior government positions starting out as PPS to Jack Straw while he was home secretary (1997-9). He then moved on to being a Junior minister at the Privy Council office (1999–2001), and then Chairman of the sub-committee on environment, food and rural affairs (2001-5). After a short period on the back benches, he has returned to being PPS for Jack Straw.