What would a map of the UK look like if we drew it not by land mass, but by other key metrics?
An argument could be made that number of people is as important as square miles, or even something more abstract, like how many times larger the average house price is than the average wage.
New visualisation tools are helping analysts to deliver new ways of visualising our country. Here’s what some show:
Moving from each square representing 0.1% of the UK land area, to 0.1% of the UK population. This visualisation, by Josep Ferrer, neatly shows how London (the 32 boroughs) has a huge population. As referenced in London Sport’s Demographic Change report, London is home to more people than all of Scotland and Wales combined.
So, how many times the average income is the average house price?
This visualisation by base1 shows a slightly squished, but still recognisable, map of England (each hexagon is a local council area) which is coloured based on the relationship between the average wage and average house price in that area.
The headline for England is that the average house used to be 3.6 years of wages back in 1997. The figure is 7.6 years of wages in 2025.
The shading shows how 13 areas in England have house prices exceeding 14 years of the average wage. 11 of those 13 areas are London boroughs – Barnet, Harrow, Brent, Camden, Waltham Forest, Redbridge, Kensington & Chelsea, Westminster, Richmond-upon-Thames, Wandsworth and Merton.
