please empty your brain below
And yet, somehow the current ULEZ boundary is a better psychological (psychogeographical?) boundary of inner London. It feels like where the suburbs start.

Dan | 30.03.23 - 7:31 a.m. | #

No it doesn’t! The South Circular runs so much closer to central London than the North Circular; I’m just beyond the A205 in Clapham South, and feel far from ‘suburban’!

Phil SW11 | 30.03.23 - 8:03 a.m. | #

Much of the London based media seem to think that a place is only really in London if it's on the Tube map. A property feature in the Standard not so long ago referred to Herne Hill as the 'depths of South London'.

Outer Londoner | 30.03.23 - 8:09 a.m. | #

I have spent an hour trying to find a definitive definition of what TfL think Outer London is, and I have failed.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 30.03.23 - 8:47 a.m. | #

TfL use the strategic planning definition as they are one of the Mayors strategic partners. If I was to guess where a definition might be it would be the Mayors Transport Strategy or the Transport Supporting Paper of the 2050 Infrastructure Plan.

David | 30.03.23 - 8:53 a.m. | #

Well that's what I'd have thought.

The strategic definition makes Newham an inner London borough (confirmed by TfL here) and Haringey an outer London borough (confirmed by TfL here).

By this definition Greenwich should be an inner London borough. But I'm struggling to find confirmation of whether TfL thinks Greenwich is in or out.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 30.03.23 - 9:01 a.m. | #

I think the statisticians are right.

Steve | Homepage | 30.03.23 - 9:39 a.m. | #

I believe the statutory definition of Inner/Outer reflects the old (pre 1965 ?) London County Council boundary. After the establishment of the GLC, some statutory servicesprovided by boroughs in Outer London ( eg Building Control) were the responsibilty of the GLC the old LCC area and the Inner London Education Authority ran schools and colleges in Inner London.

I think that the statistical classification of Inner and Outer was created by the GLC in the 1970s and reflects demographic similarities/differences between boroughs. GLC statistical documents of the late 70s and early 80s refer to these as Group A and Group B boroughs, mainly for clarity of definition, but also, I suspect so as not to feed suspisions in Outer London boroughs the the GLC were planning to take over
The Group A/Group B classification became widely used by central government departments.

Boneyboy | 30.03.23 - 10:40 a.m. | #

It would be instructive to see the North/South Circular Roads and/or the Zone 3/4 boundary supermimposed on that map.

timbo | 30.03.23 - 10:54 a.m. | #

It was so much easier in my day, when "Inner London" equated with the area covered by the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA). I always assumed that this in turn was an inheritence from the pre-1965 area of the London County Council, which seems to be confirmed by Boneyboy.

cau1khead | 30.03.23 - 10:59 a.m. | #

The Inner London Education Authority's area post-1965 corresponded with that of the London County Council, bar North Woolwich which went to the London Borough of Newham.

Ian Paton | 30.03.23 - 11:12 a.m. | #

The patchwork of definitions reflects the long and complex history of London, and there are valid reasons to include or exclude some boroughs in "inner" or "outer".

I don't make the definitions, but none of Greenwich or Newham or Haringey feel very "inner" to me, any more than Brent or Merton would be.

Andrew | 30.03.23 - 11:41 a.m. | #

now draw superloop on this gif

dg writes: see yesterday’s comments. :)

wolf | 30.03.23 - 11:47 a.m. | #

My mind map of inner and outer London was the old bus zones, so London Regional Transport and the GLC before that would have had a concept of inner and outer London.

Still Anon | 30.03.23 - 11:48 a.m. | #

TfL did some analysis of which bits of inner London were most like Outer London, and which bits of outer were like Inner.

South Kilburn and Queens Park in Brent were the most inner of Outer London; I can’t remember which was the most outer of Inner London; might have been the southern bit of Lewisham.

David | 30.03.23 - 12:03 p.m. | #

Back in the early seventies we had a geography lesson on this very subject. Teacher asked hands up who thinks they live in Inner London and who in Outer London. Several claimed Inner without living there. In the end the class agreed after a discussion of definitions and the difficulty of coming up with them, that I was the only Inner London resident as I lived within Wandsworth while most lived in Merton or Kingston.

ap | 30.03.23 - 12:21 p.m. | #

Finally...

According to a 2021 press release about cycling, TfL place Greenwich in Outer London.

So with Newham in Inner London, and Haringey and Greenwich in Outer London, TfL's definition doesn't match any of the three official definitions.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 30.03.23 - 1:51 p.m. | #

I wonder if it would be useful to consider the TfL fare zones as well?

Does anyone who lives in, say, Zone 2 really consider themselves to reside in "Outer" London? It would be a bit broad for Zone 1 to Inner and Zones 2-6 to be Outer.

Another geographical divider to think of, particularly with respect to the ULEZ extension, is those areas within the North/South Circular, and those outside it.

Or perhaps the divider should be those who would once have lived in 020 7- vs 020 8- telephone areas (or 0171/0181 areas). That was also a fairly clear delineator of inner/outer London.

You could also define it via boroughs that were within the Inner London Education Authority but life is short.

I look forward to a comprehensive set of maps covering all of those :-)

Adam Bowie | Homepage | 30.03.23 - 4:27 p.m. | #

Adam Bowie, the phone areas won't work. I live in Ewell in Surrey and have a 020 8xxx xxxx number

Mike | 30.03.23 - 5:44 p.m. | #

And if you work for local government and other bodies - the “inner London weighting” can make a big difference to your pay packet. Newham is classed as a outer London borough in this case…

(For teachers, it’s around £2,200 extra!)

James Scantlebury | 30.03.23 - 8:29 p.m. | #

It looks to me like there are two standard classifications of Inner/Outer.

1) The administrative, based on the old LCC/ILEA boundary.

2) The statistical: which is Group A/ Group B classification from the 1970s.

I speculate that TFL's use of inner outer isn't fixed and somehow uses either or both, depending on the document author's understanding of the subject and perhaps how well the figures suit TFL.

Boneyboy | 30.03.23 - 8:58 p.m. | #

Classifying whole boroughs as inner or outer London isn't a very realistic split of London anyway, as you end up with anomalies like the long stretch of the "Edgware Road" going through Kilburn and Brondesbury where the boundary between Camden and Brent runs along the road, meaning that one side in Brent is outer London, while the other in Camden is inner London.

Mikey C | 30.03.23 - 10:33 p.m. | #

Using the fare zones - Zone 2 in North London lines up generally pretty well with the definitions here, but in south London Zone 2 only takes in the Northern halves of Wandsworth, Lambeth, Southwark & Lewisham
mappinglondon.co.uk/2021/tube-zones

hengist | 31.03.23 - 2:41 p.m. | #

The North Circular Road is entirely within Outer London, if you count Newham as Outer. (It does form the boundary of Haringey for a short distance)

The South Circular Road is mainly within Inner London, but does stray in the London Borough of Richmond at one end and Greenwich (which is only Outer on some definitions) at the other end.

Zone 2 is almost entirely within Inner London however you define it.

Zone 4 is almost entirely within outer London.

....and Zone 3 is in outer London north of the Thames and mainly inner London south of the Thames (on the "statutory" definition).

South London always gets a raw deal on fares.

timbo | 31.03.23 - 2:58 p.m. | #

You could also consider the three contract areas for the TfL road network, one of which is "Central" and doesn't include Newham.

But it also doesn't include Lewisham, so maybe not that helpful.

Quizzical Eyebrow | Homepage | 05.04.23 - 12:18 a.m. | #











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