How independent is your town? New tool shines a light on place relationships

A groundbreaking new tool has been launched in Scotland that will help places plan for the future.

Launched this week by the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES), Carnegie UK Trust, Scotland’s Towns Partnership and University of Stirling the tool equips towns and cities across Scotland with information that will help them make key decisions. Understanding Scottish Places (USP) puts statistics and information for all 479 towns and cities with a population of 1,000 or more into a searchable database.

CLES’ role has been to develop intelligence on the inter-relationships towns have with other areas and subsequently make assessments of how independent or dependent they are.

The tool contains 36,000 pieces of data and uses seven levels to score a town’s inter-relationships in order to gauge how dependent they are on others. Type in any town in Scotland and you will be able to understand amongst other things: the number of assets they have such as shops in relation to their resident population; the diversity of jobs in the town; and the distance people travel to work. You can also compare towns.

To access the tool click here: www.usp.scot.

If you have any questions please contact Matthew Jackson on matthewjackson@cles.org.uk