Thanks to all who gave suggestions - a few of you have asked me to
summarise, so here it is...
http://www.ndgf.org.uk/uksgb - the UK Standard Geographic Base - 'Core
spatial units for the UK' - identifies these, mostly statutory/admin
boundaries, but little or no reference to census geography that I could
find.
MIDAS and EDINA were both suggested - relevant pages seem to be:
http://www.midas.ac.uk/census/gopher.html - although I haven't been able
to get into any of the gopher files (could be because I'm non-academic,
non-registered??)
http://edina.ed.ac.uk/ukborders/data.html - Table of boundaries etc.
available through EDINA. Also http://edina.ed.ac.uk/ukborders/doc.html -
these are brief guides to downloading from EDINA, but contain nice brief
notes on e.g. census versus electoral boundaries.
These resources may have limited potential for those of us in
non-academic situations...
ONS produce a "Names & codes listings - conventions" file - yet to see
it, but could be useful.
Publication-wise these were suggested:
Denham C (1993) "Census Geography - an overview", in Dale. A and Marsh C
(eds) The 1991 Census User's Guide, London HMSO
Stan Openshaw (ed), 1995, Census Users Handbook, Geoinformation
International, Cambridge. ISBN 1 899761 06 3
Author Lavin, Michael R.
Title Understanding the census : a guide for marketers,
planners, grant writers and other data users
Kenmore, N.Y. : Epoch, c1996
Control No. 0897749952
On the whole, the general impression is that a comprehensive review and
comparison of *all* geographies, indicating common ground, coding
structures etc. is just not available (one comment was "...a total dog's
dinner"). Perhaps ripe for development with some more of that 'joined
up government' approach?!
Thanks for all your comments,
Cheers
Ben
--------------------------
Ben Wheeler
Public Health & Health Policy
Gloucestershire Health Authority
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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