Leeds is the largest city in the county of West Yorkshire in Northern England, approximately 170 miles (270 km) north of central London.[6] Leeds has one of the most diverse economies of all the UK’s main employment centres and has seen the fastest rate of private-sector jobs growth of any UK city. It also has the highest ratio of private to public sector jobs of all the UK’s Core Cities, with 77% of its workforce working in the private sector. Leeds has the third-largest jobs total by local authority area, with 480,000 in employment and self-employment at the beginning of 2015.[5] Leeds is ranked as a High Sufficiency level city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network.[7] Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial heart of the West Yorkshire Urban Area.[8][9][10] Leeds is served by five universities, and has the fourth largest student population in the country and the country’s fourth largest urban economy.[11]
Leeds was a small manorial borough in the 13th century, and in the 17th and 18th centuries it became a major centre for the production and trading of wool, and in the Industrial Revolution a major mill town; wool was still the dominant industry, but flax, engineering, iron foundries, printing, and other industries were also important.[12] From being a market town in the valley of the River Aire in the 16th century, Leeds expanded and absorbed the surrounding villages to become a populous urban centre by the mid-20th century. It now lies within the West Yorkshire Urban Area, the United Kingdom’s fourth-most populous urban area, with a population of 2.6 million.[13]