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Postcodes in the United Kingdom

Postal codes used in the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown dependencies are known as postcodes (originally, postal codes). They are alphanumeric and were adopted nationally between 11 October 1959 and 1974, having been devised by the General Post Office (Royal Mail). The system uses alphanumeric codes to designate geographic areas. A full postcode, also known as a "postcode unit," identifies a group of addresses or a major delivery point. It consists of an outward code and inward code. The outward code indicates the area and district, while the inward code specifies the sector and delivery point, typically encompassing about 15 addresses.

Postcode areas are generally named after major towns or cities, such as B for Birmingham, although some are named after smaller towns or geographical features. London has eight postcode areas (N, E, EC, SE, SW, W, WC, and NW) instead of a single area, and Northern Ireland uses the BT area code for Belfast. The system aids in sorting mail and is used in various applications. They help calculate insurance premiums, designate destinations in route planning software, and serve as aggregation units in census enumeration. The Postcode Address File (PAF) database stores and updates the boundaries and address data for around 29 million addresses, ensuring accurate delivery and extensive utility beyond postal services.

The initial postcode system evolved from named postal districts introduced in London and other large cities from 1857. London was divided into numbered subdivisions in 1917, which extended to other cities by 1934. Each postcode area contains multiple post towns and districts. For example, the GU postcode area covers a significant part of southern England, with Guildford as a major town, and Woking as another post town within the GU22 district.

Structure
A full postcode is known as a "postcode unit" and designates an area with several addresses or a single major delivery point. The structure of a postcode is two alphanumeric codes that show, first, the name post town and, second, a small group of addresses in that post town. The first alphanumeric code (the outward code or outcode) has between two and four characters and the second (the inward code or incode) always has three characters. The outcode indicates the postcode area and postcode district. It consists of one or two letters, followed by one digit, two digits, or one digit and one letter. This is followed by a space and then the Incode which indicates the postcode sector and delivery point (usually a group of around 15 addresses, but sometimes more). The incode (always three characters), starts with a number (denoting a sector within the district), and ends with two letters (denoting delivery points which are allocated to streets, sides of a street or individual properties).

Postcode area names
Postcode areas are usually, but not always, named after a major town or city – such as B for Birmingham. Some are named after a smaller town (e.g. Southall postcode area is UB after Uxbridge) or a combination of towns (e.g. SM appears to be named after Sutton and Morden). A small number are geographic in nature – such as HS for the Outer Hebrides, FY for Fylde (the region around Blackpool) and ME for the Medway conurbation, with Rochester as its main post town. In the case of London (a Post Town), there is not a single "London" postcode area; rather there are eight (N, E, EC, SE, SW, W, WC and NW) reflecting the preceding system for coding London based on compass points. In the case of Northern Ireland, the entire province has a single postcode area BT (named for Belfast). Postcodes generally do not align with historical county or local authority boundaries, and can also cross national boundaries (e.g. CH and TD postcode areas).

Postcode districts and numbering
The initial system of named postal districts, developed in London and other large cities from 1857, evolved towards the present form: in 1917 London was split into broad numbered subdivisions, and this extended to the other cities in 1934.

Each postcode area contains a number of post towns and postcode districts. Example: a sizeable part of southern England is covered by the GU postcode area, named after the town of Guildford. Guildford itself consists of postal districts GU1 and GU2. Nearby Woking, a major commuter town—10 km away—is a post town within the postcode district GU22.

As a general rule, the central part of the town/city the postcode area is named after will have the number 1 e.g. B1 (Birmingham) – but there a limited number of postcode areas that start 0 or 10, e.g. SL0 and AB10. Large post towns are generally numbered from the centre outward such that outlying parts have higher numbered districts. In most post towns, the postcode "aa1 1AA" was allocated to the crown or principal post office. These are increasingly defunct, as post offices have closed or moved.

Alternatively, but less commonly, post towns and postcode districts within the area may be numbered according to: geographical direction (e.g. the Outer Hebrides area HS, the districts are numbered from north to south); alphabetical order of district sub-offices (particularly in London (e.g. E2 is Bethnal Green, E3 is Bow, E4 is Chingford etc.); and clusters, particularly if the postcode area encompasses several major towns or cities (e.g. S postcode area with Sheffield S1-S36, Chesterfield S40-S49, Rotherham S60-S65, Barnsley S70-S75 and Worksop S80-S81). Accordingly, the centrality of a postcode district within a postcode area cannot be reliably inferred from the postcode alone (e.g. SE1 covers a large part of Central London south of the Thames whereas SE2 covers Abbey Wood at the far eastern end of the Elizabeth Line). See postcode area.

Numbering of postcode districts is normally consecutive, but this is not universal. Non-consecutive numbering arises when districts are numbered for geographical and/or clustering reasons (e.g. PH postcode area's highest numbered district is PH50 but, within the range of PH1-PH50, the numbers PH27-PH29 and PH45-PH48 are not allocated, so as to maintain a distinct geographical link for each group of allocated numbers).

Postcode use
Postcodes have been adopted for a wide range of purposes in addition to aiding the sorting of mail: for calculating insurance premiums, designating destinations in route planning software and as the lowest level of aggregation in census enumeration. The boundaries of each postcode unit and within these the full address data of currently about 29 million addresses (delivery points) are stored, maintained and periodically updated in the Postcode Address File database.

Theoretically, deliveries can reach their destination using the house number (or name if the house has no number) and postcode alone; however, this is against Royal Mail guidelines, which request the use of a full address.

London
The London post town covers 40% of Greater London. On inception (in 1857/8), it was divided into ten postal districts: EC (East Central), WC (West Central), N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, and NW. The S and NE sectors were later abolished. In 1917, as a wartime measure to improve efficiency, each postal district was subdivided into sub-districts each identified by a number; the area served directly by the district head office was allocated the number 1; the other numbers were allocated alphabetically by delivery office, e.g. N2 East Finchley delivery office, N3 Finchley delivery office, N4 Finsbury Park delivery office etc. Since then these sub-districts have changed little.

Some older road signs in Hackney still show the North East (NE) sector/district.

Other large cities and towns
Following the successful introduction of postal districts in London, the system was extended to other large towns and cities. Liverpool was divided into Eastern, Northern, Southern and Western districts in 1864/65, and Manchester and Salford into eight numbered districts in 1867/68.

In 1917, Dublin—then still part of the United Kingdom—was divided into numbered postal districts. These continue in use in a modified form by An Post, the postal service of the Republic of Ireland. In 1923, Glasgow was divided in a similar way to London, with numbered districts preceded by a letter denoting the compass point (C, W, NW, N, E, S, SW, SE).

In January 1932 the Postmaster General approved the designation of some predominantly urban areas into numbered districts. In November 1934 the Post Office announced the introduction of numbered districts (short postal codes) in "every provincial town in the United Kingdom large enough to justify it". Pamphlets were issued to each householder and business in ten areas notifying them of the number of the district in which their premises lay. The pamphlets included a map of the districts, and copies were made available at local head post offices. The public were "particularly invited" to include the district number in the address at the head of letters.

A publicity campaign in the following year encouraged the use of the district numbers. The slogan for the campaign was "For speed and certainty always use a postal district number on your letters and notepaper". A poster was fixed to every pillar box in the affected areas bearing the number of the district and appealing for the public's co-operation. Every post office in the numbered district was also to display this information. Printers of Christmas cards and stationery were requested to always include district numbers in addresses, and election agents for candidates in the upcoming general election were asked to ensure they correctly addressed the 100 million items of mail they were expected to post. Businesses were issued with a free booklet containing maps and listings of the correct district number for every street in the ten areas.

The ten areas were:
 * Birmingham
 * Brighton/Hove
 * Bristol
 * Edinburgh
 * Glasgow
 * Leeds/Bradford
 * Liverpool
 * Manchester/Salford
 * Newcastle upon Tyne
 * Sheffield

For example, Toxteth was Liverpool 8. A single numbering sequence was shared by Manchester and Salford: letters would be addressed to Manchester 1 or Salford 7 (lowest digits, respectively). Some Birmingham codes were sub-divided with a letter, such as Great Barr, Birmingham 22 or Birmingham 22a, as can still be seen on many older street-name signs.

Modern postcode system
The Post Office experimented with electromechanical sorting machines in the late 1950s. These devices presented an envelope to an operator, who would press a button indicating which bin to sort the letter into. Postcodes were suggested to increase the efficiency of this process by removing the need for the sorter to remember the correct sorting for as many places. In January 1959 the Post Office analysed the results of a survey on public attitudes towards the use of postal codes, choosing a town in which to experiment with codes. The envisaged format was a six-character alphanumeric code with three letters designating the geographical area and three numbers to identify the individual address. On 28 July Ernest Marples, the Postmaster General, announced that Norwich had been selected, and that each of the 150,000 private and business addresses would receive a code by October. Norwich had been selected as it already had eight automatic mail sorting machines in use. The original Norwich format consisted of "NOR," followed by a space, then a two-digit number (which, unlike the current format, could include a leading zero), and finally a single letter (instead of the two final letters in the current format).

In October 1965, Tony Benn as Postmaster General announced that postal coding was to be extended to the rest of the country in the next few years.

On 1 May 1967 postcodes were introduced in Croydon. The many postcodes for central Croydon began with "CRO", while those of the surrounding post towns with CR2, CR3 and CR4. The uniform system of a set of three final characters after the space (such as 0AA, known as the inward code) was adopted. This was to be the beginning of a ten-year plan, costing an estimated £24 million. Within two years it was expected that full coding would be used in Aberdeen, Belfast, Brighton, Bristol, Bromley, Cardiff, Coventry, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, Newport, Reading, Sheffield, Southampton and the Western district of London. By 1967, codes had been introduced to Aberdeen, Southampton, Brighton and Derby. In 1970, codes were introduced to the London Western and North Western postal districts. In December 1970, much Christmas mail was postmarked with the message "Remember to use the Postal Code" although codes were used to sort mail in only a handful of sorting offices.

During 1971, occupants of addresses began to receive notification of their postcode. Asked in the House of Commons about the completion of the coding exercise, the Minister of State for Posts and Telecommunications (whose role superseded that of Postmaster General in 1969), Sir John Eden, stated that it was expected to be completed during 1972. The scheme was finalised in 1974 when Norwich was completely re-coded but the scheme tested in Croydon was sufficiently close to the final design for it to be retained, with CRO standardised as CR0 (district zero) thus removing the need to create a CR1 district.

A quirk remained: the central Newport (Gwent) area was allocated NPT at a similar time to Croydon becoming CRO, and surrounding areas were (as today) allocated NP1–NP8. NPT lasted until the end of 1984 when it was recoded NP9.

Girobank's GIR 0AA was the last domestic postcode with a fully alphabetical outward code. That code no longer exists in the Royal Mail's PAF system, but was taken over by the bank's current owners, Santander UK.

Adaptation of earlier systems into national system
When the national postcode system was introduced, many existing postal districts were incorporated into it, so that postcodes in Toxteth (Liverpool 8) start with L8. The districts in both Manchester and Salford gained M postcodes, so Salford 7 became M7 and so on (and similarly in Brighton and Hove, both using the prefix BN). The old coding lives on in a small number of street signs with (for example) "Salford 7" at the bottom. In other cases, the district numbers were replaced with unrelated numbers. In Glasgow many of its G-prefixed numbers are not used as C1 became G1, W1 became G11, N1 became G21, E1 became G31, S1 became G41, SW1 became G51, and so on. In London (as postally defined), 1917-created postal districts are mapped unchanged to those of today but its much enlarged administrative area, Greater London, was created in April 1965. From that month the remaining 60% of Greater London's area has postcodes referring to 13 other post towns. Additionally, there were too few postcodes to adequately cover districts in central London (particularly in the WC and EC areas), so these were subdivided with a letter suffix rather than being split into new numbered districts so as to retain the familiar codes.

GB postcodes available as OpenData
Prior to 1 April 2010, the Royal Mail licensed use of the postcode database for a charge of about £4,000 per year. Following a campaign and a government consultation in 2009, the Ordnance Survey released Code-Point Open, detailing each current postcode in Great Britain together with a geo-code for re-use free of charge under an attribution-only licence (Open Government Licence as part of OS OpenData).

Postcodes linked to a variety of UK geographies
The Office for National Statistics (ONS Geography) maintains and publishes a series of freely available, downloadable postcode products that link all current and terminated UK postcodes to a range of administrative, health, statistical and other geographies using the Code-Point Open grid reference.

Overview
The postcodes are alphanumeric, and are variable in length: ranging from six to eight characters (including a space). Each postcode is divided into two parts separated by a single space: the outward code and the inward code respectively. The outward code includes the postcode area and the postcode district, respectively. The inward code includes the postcode sector and the postcode unit respectively. Examples of postcodes are "SW1W 0NY", "PO16 7GZ", "GU16 7HF", and "L1 8JQ".

Outward code
The outward code is the part of the postcode before the single space in the middle. It is between two and four characters long. Examples of outward codes are "L1", "W1A", "RH1", "RH10" or "SE1P". A few outward codes are non-geographic, not divulging where mail is to be sent.

Postcode area
The postcode area is part of the outward code. The postcode area is either one or two characters long and is alphabetical, with there being 121 such areas. Examples of postcode areas are "L" for Liverpool, "RH" for Redhill and "EH" for Edinburgh. A postal area may cover a wide area, for example "RH" covers various settlements in eastern Surrey and north eastern West Sussex, and "BT" (Belfast) covers the whole of Northern Ireland.

Postcode district
The postcode district is one digit, two digits or a digit followed by a letter.

Inward code
The inward code is the part of the postcode after the single space in the middle. It is three characters long. The inward code assists in the delivery of post within a postal district. Examples of inward codes are "0NY", "7GZ", "7HF", or "8JQ".

Postcode sector
The postcode sector is made up of a single digit (the first character of the inward code).

Postcode unit
The postcode unit is two characters added to the end of the postcode sector. A postcode unit generally represents a street, part of a street, a single address, a group of properties, a single property, a sub-section of the property, an individual organisation or (for instance Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency) a subsection of the organisation. The level of discrimination is often based on the amount of mail received by the premises or business.

Validation
The format is as follows, where A signifies a letter and 9 a digit:

Notes:
 * As all formats end with 9AA, the first part of a postcode can easily be extracted by ignoring the last three characters.
 * Areas with only single-digit districts: BL, BR, FY, HA, HD, HG, HR, HS, HX, JE, LD, SM, SR, WC, WN, ZE (although WC is always subdivided by a further letter, e.g. WC1A)
 * Areas with only double-digit districts: AB, LL, SO
 * Areas with a district '0' (zero): BL, BS, CM, CR, FY, HA, PR, SL, SS (BS is the only area to have both a district 0 and a district 10)
 * The following central London single-digit districts have been further divided by inserting a letter after the digit and before the space: EC1–EC4 (but not EC50), SW1, W1, WC1, WC2 and parts of E1 (E1W), N1 (N1C and N1P), NW1 (NW1W) and SE1 (SE1P).
 * The letters Q, V and X are not used in the first position.
 * The letters I, J and Z are not used in the second position.
 * The only letters to appear in the third position are A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, J, K, P, S, T, U and W when the structure starts with A9A.
 * The only letters to appear in the fourth position are A, B, E, H, M, N, P, R, V, W, X and Y when the structure starts with AA9A.
 * The final two letters do not use C, I, K, M, O or V, so as not to resemble digits or each other when hand-written.
 * Postcode sectors are one of ten digits: 0 to 9, with 0 only used once 9 has been used in a post town, save for Croydon (see above).

A postcode can be validated against a table of all 1.7 million postcodes in Code-Point Open. The full delivery address including postcode can be validated against the Royal Mail Postcode Address File (PAF), which lists 29 million valid delivery addresses, constituting most (but not all) addresses in the UK. A regular expression for validating UK postcodes is specified in the British Standards document BS 7666.

Post towns
All or part of one or more postcode districts are grouped into post towns. Larger post towns may use more than one postcode district, for example Crawley uses RH10 and RH11. In a minority of cases, a single number can cover two or more post towns – for example, the WN8 district includes Wigan and Skelmersdale post towns; and the GL17 district contains five post towns.

Crown dependencies
The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man established their own postal administrations separate from the UK in 1969. Despite this, they adopted the UK-format postcodes in 1993–94: Guernsey using GY, the Isle of Man using IM, and Jersey using JE.

The independent jurisdiction of Sark was assigned a unique postcode district GY10 in 2011 to differentiate it from Alderney. The CEO of Guernsey Post, Boley Smillie, said "this has been a long time coming" and "... Sark should have had its own identity back then [when postcodes were adopted in 1993]".

British Overseas Territories
Some of the British Overseas Territories have postcodes that broadly follow the format of the UK postcode system or, in Gibralter's case, adopts the UK format:

These were introduced because mail was often sent to the wrong place, e.g., to St Helena instead of St Helens, Merseyside or St Helens, Isle of Wight. and to Edinburgh instead of Edinburgh, Tristan da Cunha, and many online companies would not accept addresses without a postcode. Mail from the UK continues to be treated as international, not inland, and sufficient postage must be used.

Bermuda has developed its own postcode system, with unique postcodes for street and PO Box addresses, as have the Cayman Islands, Montserrat and the British Virgin Islands. Montserrat recently introduced postal codes, and a system has been under consideration in Gibraltar with the code GX11 1AA being introduced as the generic postcode for the territory in the interim.

The separate postal code systems for those territories are shown below:

The British Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia in Cyprus use Cypriot postal codes for civilian use. The British military use BFPO addresses.

British Forces Post Office (BFPO)
The British Forces Post Office (BFPO) provides a postal service to HM Forces separate from that provided by Royal Mail in the United Kingdom, with BFPO addresses used for the delivery of mail in the UK and around the world. BFPO codes such as "BFPO 801" serve the same function as postal codes for civilian addresses, with the last line of the address consisting of "BFPO" followed a space and a number of 1 to 4 digits.

For consistency with the format of other UK addresses, in 2012 BFPO and Royal Mail jointly introduced an optional alternative postcode format for BFPO addresses, using the new non-geographic postcode area "BF" and the notional post town "BFPO". Each BFPO number is assigned to a postcode in the standard UK format, beginning "BF1". Inward codes are assigned: 0 – Germany, 1 – UK, 2 – Rest of Europe, 3 – Rest of World, 4 – Ships and Naval Parties, 5 – Rest of World, Operations and Exercises, 6 – Rest of World, Operations and Exercises. The database was released commercially in March 2012 as part of the Royal Mail Postal Address File (PAF). A postcode is not required if the traditional "BFPO nnnn" format is used.

Non-geographic codes
Most postcodes apply to a geographic area but some are used only for routing and cannot be used for navigation or estimating distances. They are often used for direct marketing and PO boxes (e.g. in the Brighton BN postcode area, BN50-BN52 are allocated to PO Boxes in Brighton, Rottingdean and Hove). Non-geographic postcode area BX (possibly for "PO Box"?) is entirely non-geographic, with all its codes independent of the location of the recipient. They are also referred to as "business service indicator addresses", which are used for centralised scanning of inward mail.Similarly, the XX postcode area is allocated for parcel returns of large volume retailers (and for medical sample testing during the COVID pandemic).

Some geographic postcode sectors or districts are set aside solely for non-geographic postcodes (e.g. BS98, BT58, EC50, IM99, JE4, M60, N1P, NE99, SA99, SW9 and WV98). Though there are no binding rules, the first two numbers in the range 91 to 95 are often allocated to businesses and in the range 96 to 99 to Government departments. However, there are many exceptions to this (e.g. American Express has the postcode area BN88; in Glasgow G58 is allocated to National Savings, as part of a mnemonic postcode G58 1SB, though it is located in G43 postcode district; and in Glasgow G70 is allocated to HMRC which is located in G67).

The letters HQ for the last two letters may also mean it is most likely a non-graphical postcode or that Royal Mail holds the mail where a redirection, bulk mail delivery or open and scan to email service is available. Girobank's headquarters in Bootle used the non-geographic postcode GIR 0AA. There is also a special postcode for letters to Santa/Father Christmas, XM4 5HQ.

Many non-geographic postcodes do not appear on Royal Mail's own online postcode finder tool or their Click and Drop online postage printing tool, which can add to confusion when responding to organisations that use such addresses. Likewise, delivery services or couriers other than Royal Mail may not be able to deliver to such non-physical addresses. The UK government provides alternative geographic addresses to BX addresses for couriers.

Special postcodes
Postcodes are allocated by Royal Mail's Address Management Unit and cannot be purchased or specified by the recipient. However, Royal Mail sometimes assigns semi-mnemonic postcodes (sometimes based on the actual geographic postcode district) to high-profile organisations.

Prominent examples are:

The postcode printed on Business Reply envelopes (which do not require a stamp) often ends with the letters BR.

Sorting
Postcodes are used to sort letters to their destination either manually, where sorters use labelled frames, or increasingly with letter-coding systems, where machines assist in sorting. A variation of automated sorting uses optical character recognition (OCR) to read printed postcodes, best suited to mail that uses a standard layout and addressing format.

A long string of "faced" letters (i.e. turned to allow the address to be read) is presented to a keyboard operator at a coding desk, who types the postcodes onto the envelopes in coloured phosphor dots. The associated machine uses the outward codes in these dots to direct bundles of letters into the correct bags for specific delivery offices. With a machine knowledge of the specific addresses handled by each postal walk at each office, the bundles can be further sorted using the dots of the inward sorting code so that each delivery round receives only its own letters. This feature depends upon whether it is cost effective to second-sort outward letters, and tends to be used only at main sorting offices where high volumes are handled.

When postcodes are incomplete or missing, the operator reads the post town name and inserts a code sufficient for outward sorting to the post town, where others can further direct it. The mail bags of letter bundles are sent by road, air or train, and eventually by road to the delivery office. At the delivery office the mail that is handled manually is inward sorted to the postal walk that will deliver it; it is then "set in", i.e. sorted into the walk order that allows the deliverer the most convenient progress in the round. The latter process is now being automated, as the roll-out of walk sequencing machines continues.

Integrated Mail Processors
Integrated Mail Processors (IMPs) read the postcode on the item and translate it into two phosphorus barcodes representing the inward and outward parts of the postcode, which the machines subsequently print and read to sort the mail to the correct outward postcode. Letters may also be sequentially sorted by a Compact Sequence Sorter (CSS) reading the outward postcode in the order that a walking postman/woman will deliver, door to door. On such items the top phosphorous barcode is the inward part of the code, the bottom is the outward.

IMPs can also read RM4SCC items, as used in Cleanmail, a different format to the above.

Mailsort and Walksort
A newer system of five-digit codes called Mailsort was designed for users who send "a minimum of 4,000 letter-sized items". It encodes the outward part of the postcode in a way that is useful for mail routing, so that a particular range of Mailsort codes goes on a particular plane or lorry. Mailsort users are supplied with a database to allow them to convert from postcodes to Mailsort codes and receive a discount if they deliver mail to the post office split up by Mailsort code. Users providing outgoing mail sorted by postcode receive no such incentive since postcode areas and districts are assigned using permanent mnemonics and do not therefore assist with grouping items together into operationally significant blocks. Walksort was discontinued in May 2012.

Listings and availability
There are approximately 1.7 million postcodes in the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.

Each postcode is divided by a space into two parts. As mentioned above, the first part starts with the postcode area and ends with the postcode district. The second part begins with a single digit, which indicates the postcode sector, and ends with the postcode unit.

Postcode areas are also divided into several post towns, which predate the introduction of postcodes, with the London post town uniquely covering more than one postcode area.

As of June 2016, there are 124 postcode areas, 2,987 postcode districts, 11,192 postcode sectors, and 1,500 post towns. , 55,540 full postcodes in England and Wales contain only one household. Addresses receiving large volumes of mail are each assigned separate "large user" postcodes. But most postcodes are shared by several neighbouring properties, typically covering about 15 addresses.

Life-cycle of postcodes
There are also significant numbers of discontinued (terminated) codes. Each month some 2,750 postcodes are created and 2,500 terminated.

Postcode Address File (PAF)
The Address Management Unit of Royal Mail maintains an official database of UK postal addresses and postcodes in its Postcode Address File (PAF), which is made available under licence for a fee regulated by Ofcom. The PAF is commercially licensable and is often incorporated in address management software packages. The capabilities of such packages allow most addresses to be constructed solely from the postcode and house number. By including the map references of postcodes in the address database, the postcode can be used to pinpoint a postcode area on a map. PAF is updated daily.

On its website, Royal Mail publishes summary information about major changes to postcode sectors and postal localities (including post towns). Individual postcodes or postal addresses can be found using Royal Mail's Postcode and Address Finder website, but this is limited to 50 free searches per user per day.

Code-Point Open
A complete list of all current Great Britain postcodes, known as Code-Point Open, has been made available online (since 1 April 2010) by Ordnance Survey. Under the government's OS OpenData initiative, it is available for re-use without charge under an attribution-only licence. The Code-Point Open list includes median coordinates for each postcode but excludes postcodes in Northern Ireland and the Crown dependencies. Unlike the PAF products provided by Royal Mail, the Code-Point Open list does not include postal address text.

ONS Postcode Directory and National Statistics Postcode Lookup
The Office for National Statistics also produces postcode directories, under similar licence terms to the OS product. Both the ONSPD and NSPL contain Northern Ireland postcodes, with centroid coordinates in the OSI grid as opposed to the OSGB grid, although Northern Ireland postcodes are subject to a more restrictive licence permitting internal business use only. Postcodes for the Crown Dependences are also included, without co-ordinates. A further difference is that non-current postcodes and dates of introduction and withdrawal of postcodes are included.

Other uses
While postcodes were introduced to expedite the delivery of mail, they are useful tools for other purposes, particularly because codes are very fine-grained and identify just a few addresses. Among these uses are:
 * With satellite navigation systems, to navigate to an address by street number and postcode
 * By life insurance companies and pension funds to assess longevity for pricing and reserving
 * By other types of insurance companies to assess premiums for motoring/business/domestic policies
 * To determine catchment areas for school places or doctors' surgeries
 * Finding the nearest branch of an organisation to a given address. A computer program uses the postcodes of the target address and the branches to list the closest branches in order of distance as the crow flies (or, if used in conjunction with street-map software, by road distance). This can be used by companies to inform potential customers where to go, by job centres to find jobs for job-seekers, to alert people of town planning applications in their area, and a great many other applications.

The phrase "postcode lottery" refers to the variation in the availability of services by region, though not always because of postcodes.

For these and related reasons, postcodes in some areas have become indicators of social status. Some residents have campaigned to change their postcode to associate themselves with a more desirable area, to disassociate with a poorer area, to reduce insurance premiums or to be associated with an area with a lower cost of living. In all these cases Royal Mail has said that there is "virtually no hope" of changing the postcode, referring to their policy of changing postcodes only to match changes in their operations.

Postcode areas rarely align with local government boundaries and a few straddle England's borders with Wales and Scotland. This has led to British Sky Broadcasting subscribers receiving the wrong BBC and ITV regions, and newly licensed radio amateurs being given incorrect call signs.

title: Postcodes in the United Kingdom


text:
Millport, Great Cumbrae

Millport (Port a' Mhuilinn) is the only town on the island of Great Cumbrae in the Firth of Clyde off the coast of mainland Scotland, in the council area of North Ayrshire. The town is 4 mi south of the ferry terminal that links the island to the Scottish mainland.

Due to its small size, the island and its town are often linked in the minds of visitors and residents and Cumbrae is often referred to as Millport. The island offers views across to the Isle of Arran as well as of its smaller neighbour which lies barely a kilometre away, called Little Cumbrae. The Cumbraes are referred to as the Kumreyiar in the medieval Norse Saga of Haakon Haakonarson.

Etymology
The Gaelic name Cumaradh means "place of the Cymric people", referring to the Brittonic-speaking inhabitants of the Kingdom of Strathclyde. Alternatively, the name Cumbrae may derive from Kil Maura meaning "cell or church of a female saint".

History
During the development of the River Clyde as a main thoroughfare for goods, shipbuilding and smuggling, Millport was a strategic base for Customs and Excise. Several of the streets in Millport are named after crew members of the Revenue cutter Royal George. The Victorian era was a period of rapid growth, both in terms of population, governance, amenities and property. To the west and east of the old harbour, many fine Victorian and Edwardian villas were built, along with new tenements. Many of these used rock mined from The Eileans. These large houses still form the backbone of the housing stock.

The Cathedral of the Isles of the Scottish Episcopal Church, completed in 1851, seats only 100 people. It is the smallest cathedral in Great Britain and is variously described as "the smallest cathedral in Europe", "the second smallest in Europe", or "probably the smallest in Europe". Various other churches such as the cathedrals in Nin and Zadar in Croatia lay claim to this title.

The local Lady Margaret Hospital was founded in 1900 and bears the name of Lady Margaret Crichton-Stuart, daughter of John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute as a tribute and mark of respect to the eldest daughter of Lord Bute.

Population and demographics
The usual island population of 1,376 as recorded by the 2011 census was a slight fall from the 2001 figure of 1,434. The population increases substantially during the summer tourist season.

The island has an active and engaged community with a wide range of interest groups represented in the many clubs and associations on the island. The island has its own radio online station, Radio Millport. The Guardian reported that Cumbrae was number 8 in British online property searches in 2021, attributing this to the effect of the COVID-19 lockdown then in force.

As well as its numerous beaches, Millport has an 18-hole golf course with views over the Arran hills and the Firth of Clyde. Other recreational facilities include a crazy golf course, Millport Bowling Club with a putting green, and two football pitches. In addition to coastal sea fishing, primarily for mackerel, fly fishing is available at two fresh water reservoirs.

The perimeter road around the island is used by walkers and cyclists and provides access to the island's beaches.

The community is represented by The Cumbrae Community Council. Council members are elected by the residents, and all groups and individuals on the island are invited to its monthly meetings. The community council provides a connection with North Ayrshire council, and its members are formal members of Locality Planning Partnerships. Millport is part of North Ayrshire, and is represented on North Ayrshire Council as part of the North Coast council ward which is based at Cunningham House in Irvine, the administrative centre of North Ayrshire Council.

Developments
The Garrison House in the centre of town, constructed in 1745, was formerly the barracks/Captain's mansion, then the home of the Earl of Glasgow, and is now in community ownership (see "Current Developments" below).

The Garrison House was badly damaged after an arson attack in 2001. Cumbrae Community Development Company, the local development trust, made a successful bid to the National Lottery and other funders to enable the building to be re-constructed for community benefit. After several years of work renovation of the property was completed in 2008 at a total cost of £5 million. It now houses the Museum of the Cumbraes, a library, council offices, a GP surgery and the Garrison Café.

, developments on the island include:
 * A flood protection scheme is being developed for the south of the island.
 * A marina is proposed as part of the flood protection scheme works.
 * Millport Town Hall is being brought back into use.
 * A proposal is underway to buy the former National Watersports Centre and make it into a community facility called The Wave.
 * A large development of around 40 family sized homes is underway between Millport Bowling Club and Penmachrie Farm.
 * In 2011, Millport considered applying for city status, on the basis of having a cathedral. It would have been the smallest city in the UK.

Economy and education

Millport has a hotel and guest house, and many properties are available as holiday lets. A motorhome site caters for short term stays.

The wide sandy beaches close to the centre of the town are popular for paddling and swimming. One of the best known landmarks in Millport is the Crocodile Rock, a rock on the foreshore that has been painted to look like a crocodile. It has been a feature since at least 1913 when Robert Brown was acknowledged by the council for the work.

Millport has the world's narrowest house, The Wedge, which measures 47 in at its front. The house is 22 feet long by 11 feet wide at its widest point (22 x).

Millport Bay is a popular destination for sailors in the summer, and has a number of donation-based visitor moorings. There is a small boatyard at the western end of the town. The town hosts Scotland's biggest independent country music festival, the Millport Country Music Festival, in September each year, and a fireworks display is held during September. The historic paddle steamer PS Waverley calls at Millport twice a week during the summer, on trips originating at Ayr and Glasgow.

Primary-aged children on the island attend Cumbrae Primary School. Older children attend Largs Academy on the mainland. FSC Millport is a biological teaching and research centre operated by the Field Studies Council. The centre's origins can be traced back to 1885, when the oceanographer Sir John Murray set up a floating laboratory in a lighter which he called 'The Ark'. This led to the establishment of the Millport Marine Biological Station in 1897 by the naturalist David Robertson, also known as the 'Cumbrae Naturalist'.

In 1970 the station became the University Marine Biological Station Millport of the University of London. In 2014 ownership transferred to the Field Studies Council, which built new classrooms and accommodation for school and university visitors as well as providing holiday accommodation. The National Watersports Training Centre was a Sportscotland facility that taught a wide range of courses including sailing, windsurfing, paddlesports, cruising and yachting. The centre closed in 2020, and a local group is planning to reopen the site for community use.

Transport
In spite of its relatively remote feel, Millport is only one hour's travel from major transport hubs of Glasgow Airport and Glasgow Central railway station. Millport is accessible by public transport via the train at Largs, with a ferry journey of eight minutes. A bus to Millport meets each ferry.

In popular culture
The town of Millport was the titular setting for the BBC Radio 4 comedy Millport; written by Lynn Ferguson. The series was broadcast between 2000 and 2002, and recounts the lives of several Millport inhabitants including Irene Bruce (played by Ferguson) and her sister Moira, with the former desperate to leave the isolate community and start her life anew in the mainland. The radio series resulted in a television adaptation in 2002 that did not progress beyond the pilot, the latter being not well received by the islanders

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Millport, Great Cumbrae


text:
Creative destruction

Creative destruction (German: schöpferische Zerstörung) is a concept in economics that describes a process in which new innovations replace and make obsolete older innovations.

The concept is usually identified with the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, who derived it from the work of Karl Marx and popularized it as a theory of economic innovation and the business cycle. It is also sometimes known as Schumpeter's gale. In Marxian economic theory, the concept refers more broadly to the linked processes of the accumulation and annihilation of wealth under capitalism.

The German sociologist Werner Sombart has been credited with the first use of these terms in his work Krieg und Kapitalismus (War and Capitalism, 1913). In the earlier work of Marx, however, the idea of creative destruction or annihilation (German: Vernichtung) implies not only that capitalism destroys and reconfigures previous economic orders, but also that it must continuously devalue existing wealth (whether through war, dereliction, or regular and periodic economic crises) in order to clear the ground for the creation of new wealth.

In Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), Joseph Schumpeter developed the concept out of a careful reading of Marx's thought, arguing that the creative-destructive forces unleashed by capitalism would eventually lead to its demise as a system. Despite this, the term subsequently gained popularity within mainstream economics as a description of processes such as downsizing to increase the efficiency and dynamism of a company. The Marxian usage has, however, been retained and further developed in the work of social scientists such as David Harvey, Marshall Berman, Manuel Castells and Daniele Archibugi.

In modern economics, creative destruction is one of the central concepts in the endogenous growth theory. In Why Nations Fail, a popular book on long-term economic development, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argue the major reason countries stagnate and go into decline is the willingness of the ruling elites to block creative destruction, a beneficial process that promotes innovation.

In Marx's thought
Although the modern term "creative destruction" is not used explicitly by Marx, it is largely derived from his analyses, particularly in the work of Werner Sombart (whom Engels described as the only German professor who understood Marx's Capital), and of Joseph Schumpeter, who discussed at length the origin of the idea in Marx's work (see below).

In The Communist Manifesto of 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels described the crisis tendencies of capitalism in terms of "the enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces": "Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. ... It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the whole of bourgeois society on trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of existing production, but also of previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity – the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions. ... And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented." A few years later, in the Grundrisse, Marx was writing of "the violent destruction of capital not by relations external to it, but rather as a condition of its self-preservation". In other words, he establishes a necessary link between the generative or creative forces of production in capitalism and the destruction of capital value as one of the key ways in which capitalism attempts to overcome its internal contradictions: "These contradictions lead to explosions, cataclysms, crises, in which ... momentaneous suspension of labour and annihilation of a great portion of capital ... violently lead it back to the point where it is enabled [to go on] fully employing its productive powers without committing suicide." In the Theories of Surplus Value ("Volume IV" of Das Kapital, 1863), Marx refines this theory to distinguish between scenarios where the destruction of (commodity) values affects either use values or exchange values or both together. The destruction of exchange value combined with the preservation of use value presents clear opportunities for new capital investment and hence for the repetition of the production-devaluation cycle: the destruction of capital through crises means the depreciation of values which prevents them from later renewing their reproduction process as capital on the same scale. This is the ruinous effect of the fall in the prices of commodities. It does not cause the destruction of any use-values. What one loses, the other gains. Values used as capital are prevented from acting again as capital in the hands of the same person. The old capitalists go bankrupt. ... A large part of the nominal capital of the society, i.e., of the exchange-value of the existing capital, is once for all destroyed, although this very destruction, since it does not affect the use-value, may very much expedite the new reproduction. This is also the period during which moneyed interest enriches itself at the cost of industrial interest. Social geographer David Harvey sums up the differences between Marx's usage of these concepts and Schumpeter's: "Both Karl Marx and Joseph Schumpeter wrote at length on the 'creative-destructive' tendencies inherent in capitalism. While Marx clearly admired capitalism's creativity he ... strongly emphasised its self-destructiveness. The Schumpeterians have all along gloried in capitalism's endless creativity while treating the destructiveness as mostly a matter of the normal costs of doing business".

Other early usage
In the Origin of Species, which was published in 1859, Charles Darwin wrote that the "extinction of old forms is the almost inevitable consequence of the production of new forms." One notable exception to this rule is how the extinction of the dinosaurs facilitated the adaptive radiation of mammals. In this case creation was the consequence, rather than the cause, of destruction.

In philosophical terms, the concept of "creative destruction" is close to Hegel's concept of sublation. In German economic discourse it was taken up from Marx's writings by Werner Sombart, particularly in his 1913 text Krieg und Kapitalismus: "Again, however, from destruction a new spirit of creation arises; the scarcity of wood and the needs of everyday life... forced the discovery or invention of substitutes for wood, forced the use of coal for heating, forced the invention of coke for the production of iron." Hugo Reinert has argued that Sombart's formulation of the concept was influenced by Eastern mysticism, specifically the image of the Hindu god Shiva, who is presented in the paradoxical aspect of simultaneous destroyer and creator. Conceivably this influence passed from Johann Gottfried Herder, who brought Hindu thought to German philosophy in his Philosophy of Human History (Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit) (Herder 1790–92), specifically volume III, pp. 41–64. via Arthur Schopenhauer and the Orientalist Friedrich Maier through Friedrich Nietzsche´s writings. Nietzsche represented the creative destruction of modernity through the mythical figure of Dionysus, a figure whom he saw as at one and the same time "destructively creative" and "creatively destructive". In the following passage from On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), Nietzsche argues for a universal principle of a cycle of creation and destruction, such that every creative act has its destructive consequence: "But have you ever asked yourselves sufficiently how much the erection of every ideal on earth has cost? How much reality has had to be misunderstood and slandered, how many lies have had to be sanctified, how many consciences disturbed, how much 'God' sacrificed every time? If a temple is to be erected a temple must be destroyed: that is the law – let anyone who can show me a case in which it is not fulfilled! – Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality"

Other nineteenth-century formulations of this idea include Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, who wrote in 1842, "The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!" Note, however, that this earlier formulation might more accurately be termed "destructive creation", and differs sharply from Marx's and Schumpeter's formulations in its focus on the active destruction of the existing social and political order by human agents (as opposed to systemic forces or contradictions in the case of both Marx and Schumpeter).

Association with Joseph Schumpeter
The expression "creative destruction" was popularized by and is most associated with Joseph Schumpeter, particularly in his book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, first published in 1942. Already in his 1939 book Business Cycles, he attempted to refine the innovative ideas of Nikolai Kondratieff and his long-wave cycle which Schumpeter believed was driven by technological innovation. Three years later, in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Schumpeter introduced the term "creative destruction", which he explicitly derived from Marxist thought (analysed extensively in Part I of the book) and used it to describe the disruptive process of transformation that accompanies such innovation: Capitalism ... is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary. ... The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers' goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates. ... The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in. [... Capitalism requires] the perennial gale of Creative Destruction. In Schumpeter's vision of capitalism, innovative entry by entrepreneurs was the disruptive force that sustained economic growth, even as it destroyed the value of established companies and laborers that enjoyed some degree of monopoly power derived from previous technological, organizational, regulatory, and economic paradigms. However, Schumpeter was pessimistic about the sustainability of this process, seeing it as leading eventually to the undermining of capitalism's own institutional frameworks: "In breaking down the pre-capitalist framework of society, capitalism thus broke not only barriers that impeded its progress but also flying buttresses that prevented its collapse. That process, impressive in its relentless necessity, was not merely a matter of removing institutional deadwood, but of removing partners of the capitalist stratum, symbiosis with whom was an essential element of the capitalist schema. [... T]he capitalist process in much the same way in which it destroyed the institutional framework of feudal society also undermines its own."

Examples
Schumpeter (1949) in one of his examples used "the railroadization of the Middle West as it was initiated by the Illinois Central." He wrote, "The Illinois Central not only meant very good business whilst it was built and whilst new cities were built around it and land was cultivated, but it spelled the death sentence for the [old] agriculture of the West."

Companies that once revolutionized and dominated new industries – for example, Xerox in copiers or Polaroid in instant photography – have seen their profits fall and their dominance vanish as rivals launched improved designs or cut manufacturing costs. In technology, the cassette tape replaced the 8-track, only to be replaced in turn by the compact disc, which was undercut by downloads to MP3 players, which is now being usurped by web-based streaming services. Companies that made money out of technology which eventually becomes obsolete do not necessarily adapt well to the business environment created by the new technologies.

One such example is how online ad-supported news sites such as The Huffington Post are leading to creative destruction of the traditional newspaper. The Christian Science Monitor announced in January 2009 that it would no longer continue to publish a daily paper edition, but would be available online daily and provide a weekly print edition. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer became online-only in March 2009. At a national level in USA, employment in the newspaper business fell from 455,700 in 1990 to 225,100 in 2013. Over that same period, employment in internet publishing and broadcasting grew from 29,400 to 121,200. Traditional French alumni networks, which typically charge their students to network online or through paper directories, are in danger of creative destruction from free social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Viadeo.

In fact, successful innovation is normally a source of temporary market power, eroding the profits and position of old firms, yet ultimately succumbing to the pressure of new inventions commercialised by competing entrants. Creative destruction is a powerful economic concept because it can explain many of the dynamics or kinetics of industrial change: the transition from a competitive to a monopolistic market, and back again. It has been the inspiration of endogenous growth theory and also of evolutionary economics.

David Ames Wells (1890), who was a leading authority on the effects of technology on the economy in the late 19th century, gave many examples of creative destruction (without using the term) brought about by improvements in steam engine efficiency, shipping, the international telegraph network, and agricultural mechanization.

Ludwig Lachmann
"These economic facts have certain social consequences. As the critics of the market economy nowadays prefer to take their stand on 'social' grounds, it may be not inappropriate here to elucidate the true social results of the market process. We have already spoken of it as a leveling process. More aptly, we may now describe these results as an instance of what Pareto called 'the circulation of elites.' Wealth is unlikely to stay for long in the same hands. It passes from hand to hand as unforeseen change confers value, now on this, now on that specific resource, engendering capital gains and losses. The owners of wealth, we might say with Schumpeter, are like the guests at a hotel or the passengers in a train: They are always there but are never for long the same people."

David Harvey
Geographer and historian David Harvey in a series of works from the 1970s onwards (Social Justice and the City, 1973; The Limits to Capital, 1982; The Urbanization of Capital, 1985; Spaces of Hope, 2000; Spaces of Capital, 2001; Spaces of Neoliberalization, 2005; The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism, 2010 ), elaborated Marx's thought on the systemic contradictions of capitalism, particularly in relation to the production of the urban environment (and to the production of space more broadly). He developed the notion that capitalism finds a "spatial fix" for its periodic crises of overaccumulation through investment in fixed assets of infrastructure, buildings, etc.: "The built environment that constitutes a vast field of collective means of production and consumption absorbs huge amounts of capital in both its construction and its maintenance. Urbanization is one way to absorb the capital surplus". While the creation of the built environment can act as a form of crisis displacement, it can also constitute a limit in its own right, as it tends to freeze productive forces into a fixed spatial form. As capital cannot abide a limit to profitability, ever more frantic forms of "time-space compression" (increased speed of turnover, innovation of ever faster transport and communications' infrastructure, "flexible accumulation" ) ensue, often impelling technological innovation. Such innovation, however, is a double-edged sword:

"The effect of continuous innovation ... is to devalue, if not destroy, past investments and labour skills. Creative destruction is embedded within the circulation of capital itself. Innovation exacerbates instability, insecurity, and in the end, becomes the prime force pushing capitalism into periodic paroxysms of crisis. ... The struggle to maintain profitability sends capitalists racing off to explore all kinds of other possibilities. New product lines are opened up, and that means the creation of new wants and needs. Capitalists are forced to redouble their efforts to create new needs in others .... The result is to exacerbate insecurity and instability, as masses of capital and workers shift from one line of production to another, leaving whole sectors devastated .... The drive to relocate to more advantageous places (the geographical movement of both capital and labour) periodically revolutionizes the international and territorial division of labour, adding a vital geographical dimension to the insecurity. The resultant transformation in the experience of space and place is matched by revolutions in the time dimension, as capitalists strive to reduce the turnover time of their capital to 'the twinkling of an eye'."

Globalization can be viewed as some ultimate form of time-space compression, allowing capital investment to move almost instantaneously from one corner of the globe to another, devaluing fixed assets and laying off labour in one urban conglomeration while opening up new centres of manufacture in more profitable sites for production operations. Hence, in this continual process of creative destruction, capitalism does not resolve its contradictions and crises, but merely "moves them around geographically".

Marshall Berman
In his 1987 book All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity, particularly in the chapter entitled "Innovative Self-Destruction" (pp. 98–104), Marshall Berman provides a reading of Marxist "creative destruction" to explain key processes at work within modernity. The title of the book is taken from a well-known passage from The Communist Manifesto. Berman elaborates this into something of a Zeitgeist which has profound social and cultural consequences:

"The truth of the matter, as Marx sees, is that everything that bourgeois society builds is built to be torn down. 'All that is solid'—from the clothes on our backs to the looms and mills that weave them, to the men and women who work the machines, to the houses and neighborhoods the workers live in, to the firms and corporations that exploit the workers, to the towns and cities and whole regions and even nations that embrace them all—all these are made to be broken tomorrow, smashed or shredded or pulverized or dissolved, so they can be recycled or replaced next week, and the whole process can go on again and again, hopefully forever, in ever more profitable forms. The pathos of all bourgeois monuments is that their material strength and solidity actually count for nothing and carry no weight at all, that they are blown away like frail reeds by the very forces of capitalist development that they celebrate. Even the most beautiful and impressive bourgeois buildings and public works are disposable, capitalized for fast depreciation and planned to be obsolete, closer in their social functions to tents and encampments than to 'Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, Gothic cathedrals'."

Here Berman emphasizes Marx's perception of the fragility and evanescence of capitalism's immense creative forces, and makes this apparent contradiction into one of the key explanatory figures of modernity.

In 2021, an article was published by Berman's younger son Daniel Berman in which the elder Berman's conception of creative destruction was applied to the field of art history. Entitled Looking the Negative in the Face: Creative Destruction and the Modern Spirit in Photography, Photomontage, and Collage, the essay reconsiders the modern media of photography, photomontage, and collage through the lens of "creative destruction". In doing so, the younger Berman attempts to show that in certain works of art of the above-mentioned media, referents (such as nature, real people, other works of art, newspaper clippings, etc.) can be given new and unique significance even while necessarily being obscured by the very nature of their presentation. The article was published in the second volume of Hunter College's graduate art history journal Assemblage.

Manuel Castells
The sociologist Manuel Castells, in his trilogy on The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (the first volume of which, The Rise of the Network Society, appeared in 1996), reinterpreted the processes by which capitalism invests in certain regions of the globe, while divesting from others, using the new paradigm of "informational networks". In the era of globalization, capitalism is characterized by near-instantaneous flow, creating a new spatial dimension, "the space of flows". While technological innovation has enabled this unprecedented fluidity, this very process makes redundant whole areas and populations who are bypassed by informational networks. Indeed, the new spatial form of the mega-city or megalopolis, is defined by Castells as having the contradictory quality of being "globally connected and locally disconnected, physically and socially". Castells explicitly links these arguments to the notion of creative destruction:

"The 'spirit of informationalism' is the culture of 'creative destruction' accelerated to the speed of the optoelectronic circuits that process its signals. Schumpeter meets Weber in the cyberspace of the network enterprise."

Daniele Archibugi
Developing the Schumpeterian legacy, the school of the Science Policy Research Unit of the University of Sussex has further detailed the importance of creative destruction exploring, in particular, how new technologies are often incompatible with the existing productive regimes and will lead to bankruptcy companies and even industries that do not manage to sustain the rate of change. Chris Freeman and Carlota Perez have developed these insights. More recently, Daniele Archibugi and Andrea Filippetti have associated the 2008 economic crisis to the slow-down of opportunities offered by information and communication technologies (ICTs). Using as a metaphor the film Blade Runner, Archibugi has argued that of the innovations described in the film in 1982, all those associated to ICTs have become part of our everyday life. But, on the contrary, none of those in the field of Biotech have been fully commercialized. A new economic recovery will occur when some key technological opportunities will be identified and sustained.

"Technological opportunities do not enter into economic and social life without deliberate efforts and choices. We should be able to envisage new forms of organization associated with emerging technology. ICTs have already changed our lifestyle even more than our economic life: they have generated jobs and profits, but above all they have transformed the way we use our time and interact with the world. Biotech could bring about even more radical social transformations at the core of our life. Why have these not yet been delivered? What can be done to unleash their potential? There are a few basic questions that need to be addressed."

Others
In 1992, the idea of creative destruction was put into formal mathematical terms by Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt, giving an alternative model of endogenous growth compared to Paul Romer's expanding varieties model.

In 1995, Harvard Business School authors Richard L. Nolan and David C. Croson released Creative Destruction: A Six-Stage Process for Transforming the Organization.  The book advocated downsizing to free up slack resources, which could then be reinvested to create competitive advantage.

More recently, the idea of "creative destruction" was utilized by Max Page in his 1999 book, The Creative Destruction of Manhattan, 1900–1940. The book traces Manhattan's constant reinvention, often at the expense of preserving a concrete past. Describing this process as "creative destruction," Page describes the complex historical circumstances, economics, social conditions and personalities that have produced crucial changes in Manhattan's cityscape.

In addition to Max Page, others have used the term "creative destruction" to describe the process of urban renewal and modernization. T.C. Chang and Shirlena Huang referenced "creative destruction" in their paper Recreating place, replacing memory: Creative Destruction at the Singapore River. The authors explored the efforts to redevelop a waterfront area that reflected a vibrant new culture while paying sufficient homage to the history of the region. Rosemary Wakeman chronicled the evolution of an area in central Paris, France known as Les Halles. Les Halles housed a vibrant marketplace starting in the twelfth century. Ultimately, in 1971, the markets were relocated and the pavilions torn down. In their place, now stand a hub for trains, subways and buses. Les Halles is also the site of the largest shopping mall in France and the controversial Centre Georges Pompidou.

The term "creative destruction" has been applied to the arts. Alan Ackerman and Martin Puncher (2006) edited a collection of essays under the title Against Theater: Creative destruction on the modernist stage. They detail the changes and the causal motivations experienced in theater as a result of the modernization of both the production of performances and the underlying economics. They speak of how theater has reinvented itself in the face of anti-theatricality, straining the boundaries of the traditional to include more physical productions, which might be considered avant-garde staging techniques.

Additionally within art, Tyler Cowen's book Creative Destruction describes how art styles change as artists are simply exposed to outside ideas and styles, even if they do not intend to incorporate those influences into their art. Traditional styles may give way to new styles, and thus creative destruction allows for more diversified art, especially when cultures share their art with each other.

In his 1999 book, Still the New World, American Literature in a Culture of Creative Destruction, Philip Fisher analyzes the themes of creative destruction at play in literary works of the twentieth century, including the works of such authors as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and Henry James, among others. Fisher argues that creative destruction exists within literary forms just as it does within the changing of technology.

Neoconservative author Michael Ledeen argued in his 2002 book The War Against the Terror Masters that America is a revolutionary nation, undoing traditional societies: "Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law." His characterization of creative destruction as a model for social development has met with fierce opposition from paleoconservatives.

Creative destruction has also been linked to sustainable development. The connection was explicitly mentioned for the first time by Stuart L. Hart and Mark B. Milstein in their 1999 article Global Sustainability and the Creative Destruction of Industries, in which he argues new profit opportunities lie in a round of creative destruction driven by global sustainability. (An argument which they would later on strengthen in their 2003 article Creating Sustainable Value and, in 2005, with Innovation, Creative Destruction and Sustainability. ) Andrea L. Larson agreed with this vision a year later in Sustainable Innovation Through an Entrepreneurship Lens, stating entrepreneurs should be open to the opportunities for disruptive improvement based on sustainability. In 2005, James Hartshorn (et al.) emphasized the opportunities for sustainable, disruptive improvement in the construction industry in his article Creative Destruction: Building Toward Sustainability.

Some economists argue that the destructive component of creative destruction has become more powerful than it was in the past. They claim that the creative component does not add as much to growth as in earlier generations, and innovation has become more rent-seeking than value-creating.

Alternative name
The following text appears to be the source of the phrase "Schumpeter's Gale" to refer to creative destruction:

"The opening up of new markets and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as US Steel illustrate the process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one ... [The process] must be seen in its role in the perennial gale of creative destruction; it cannot be understood on the hypothesis that there is a perennial lull."

Impediments to Creative Destruction
Politicians often impose impediments to the forces of creative destruction by regulating entry and exit rules that make it difficult for churning to take place. In a series of papers Andrei Shleifer and Simeon Djankov illustrate the effects of such regulation on slowing down competition and innovation.

In popular culture
The film Other People's Money (1991) provides contrasting views of creative destruction, presented in two speeches regarding the takeover of a publicly traded wire and cable company in a small New England town. One speech is by a corporate raider, and the other is given by the company CEO, who is principally interested in protecting his employees and the town.

title: Creative destruction


text:
Talk:Postcodes in the United Kingdom

District?
The Postcode_district section here defines the postcode district as the end of the out code (e.g. the 19 in SW19). The List of postcode districts ... page equates the "district" with the complete out code (e.g. SW19). Being pedantic I know, but which defines "district"? -- GhostInTheMachine (talk) 11:34, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Hackney was an NE
Article includes "Some older road signs in Hackney still show the North East (NE) sector/district." Can anyone provide photographic evidence for this? Geofpick (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 12:05, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Postcodes in the United Kingdom