- published: 19 Mar 2008
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Coordinates: 51°49′00″N 0°48′45″W / 51.8168°N 0.8124°W / 51.8168; -0.8124
Aylesbury ( /ˈeɪlzbri/) is the county town of Buckinghamshire in South East England. However the town also falls into a notional geographical region known as the South Midlands an area that ecompasses the north of the South East, and the southern extremities of the East Midlands, and the western portion of the East of England. In the 2001 census the Aylesbury Urban Area, which includes Bierton, Fairford Leys, Stoke Mandeville and Watermead, had a population of 69,021, which included 56,392 for the Aylesbury civil parish.
The town name is of Old English origin. Its first recorded name Æglesburgh is thought to mean "Fort of Aegel", though who Aegel was is not recorded. Since earliest records there have been 57 variations of the name. Excavations in the town centre in 1985 found an Iron Age hillfort dating from the early 4th century BC. The town is sited on an outcrop of Portlandian limestone which accounts for its prominent position in the surrounding landscape, which is largely clay. Aylesbury was a major market town in Anglo-Saxon times, famous in addition as the burial place of Saint Osyth, whose shrine attracted pilgrims. The Early English parish church of St. Mary (which has many later additions) has a crypt beneath. Once thought to be Anglo-Saxon, it is now recognised as being of the same period as the medieval chapel above. At the Norman Conquest, the king took the manor of Aylesbury for himself, and it is listed as a royal manor in the Domesday Book, 1086.
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]
The Aylesbury Urban Area is defined by the Office for National Statistics as a conurbation in central Buckinghamshire, England. It had a population of 69,021 (2001 census). The largest population centre is Aylesbury itself at 56,392.
Aylesbury was, for hundreds of years, a typically small market town like others in the area such as Wendover. It population in 1801 was 3082 with steady growth up to 9099 in 1901, a three-fold increase in 100 years. At the same time, villages and hamlets such Walton and New Zealand grew slowly with separate identities to the growing town.
During the first half of the twentieth century, the population grew slightly more, reaching 21,200 in 1950. However, the rocketing population of the capital, London was creating a strain on the recently introduced Metropolitan Green Belt and Aylesbury was one of the towns chosen for major population growth to house the London overspill.
The population of the town began to increase at a faster rate, as new housing estates were built. At the same time, the centre of Aylesbury was redeveloped, with new shopping areas. The area near the Aylesbury branch of the Grand Union Canal, built in 1814, was developed into a pedestrian square. The population reached 40,000 in 1970 and 51,000 by 1990, with new housing areas being built every few years. By 2001, the urban area housed 69,021 people.