Understanding Scottish Places

The 2022 Scottish Census shows that more than half of Scotland’s population (53.9%) live in towns, most in places of 1,000-50,000 people. This reinforces the need to understand how Scotland’s towns are changing. There are a total of 508 towns identified in the latest updated version of USP a rise from 479.

Understanding Scottish Places (USP) provides consistent, comparable, well-evaluated data that highlights shared characteristics, challenges and opportunities across towns, supporting better planning, management and policy decisions.

USP has three parts: a national town typology, an assessment of how towns inter-relate and the ‘Your Town Audit,’ which gathers local insights to complement national data. These tools allow users to explore and compare profiles for all 508 Scottish towns. The 2025 version now includes green agenda variables, house price data and increased map functionality for ease of comparison.