Urban population change has always been an important reference data for the study of urban sustainable development. This paper refers to the data on the population change of British cities after WWII and focuses on the population change and urban development of seven cities, namely London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Bristol, and Coventry, through the research method of data analysis. Finally, the paper concludes that, through data analysis, the essay broadly classifies the seven UK cities studied into three categories of cities based on the reasons for population increase in the late 20 th century. The first category is those cities where population change is mainly due to economic reasons such as urban expansion ; the main representative cit ies are London and Manchester. The second category is for cities where the population change is mainly due to the reform and development of urban culture. The third category is cities where the main reason for population change is mobility and migration. Typical examples are the “North-Sout h Drift” represented by Birmingham and the “Urban-Rural Shift” represented by Bristol.
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