Overview
Stoke-on-Trent (often abbreviated to Stoke) is a city in Staffordshire in the West Midlands region of England. The city is a federation of six older towns (Hanley, Stoke, Burslem, Tunstall, Longton and Fenton) forming a linear city almost twelve miles long with an area of 36 square miles. With the town of Newcastle-under-Lyme it forms a conurbation, whilst together with the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme it forms The Potteries Urban Area, which added with the Staffordshire Moorlands forms the North Staffordshire area. In 2001, it had a population of 240,636.

Stoke-on-Trent is considered to the home of the pottery industry in the United Kingdom and is commonly known as The Potteries. It grew from the six towns and several villages to become a unified city in the early 20th century. Formerly a primarily industrial conurbation, it is now a centre for service industries and distribution centres. The city is a unitary authority with a directly elected mayor.

Economy
North Staffordshire is a world centre for fine ceramics - a skilled design trade established in the area since at least the 12th century. In the late 1980s & 1990s Stoke-on-Trent was hit hard by the general decline in the British manufacturing sector. Numerous factories, steelworks, mines, and potteries were closed, including the renowned Shelton Bar steelworks. This resulted in a sharp rise in unemployment in the 'high-skilled but low-paid' workforce. However, at Q2 2004 the unemployment rate had recovered to almost the same as in the wider West Midlands. The city's present employment levels are currently stable and likely to grow from 2004 to 2008, according to a detailed 2003 study by Experian Business Strategies. About 9,000 firms are based in the city. Amongst the more notable are Bet365, founded by local businessman and Stoke City chairman Peter Coates, and Phones4U a large retailer of mobile phones started by John Caudwell.

KPMG's 'Competitive Alternatives 2004' report declared Stoke-on-Trent to be the most cost-effective place to set up a new UK business. The city currently has the advantage of offering very affordable business property - while being surrounded by a belt of extremely affluent areas (The Peak District, Stone, South Cheshire, Newcastle-under-Lyme) and having excellent road links via the A500 and nearby M6 and rail links.

Terraced housing is a common feature in the city.According the HM Land Registry, the annual increase in house prices over the third quarter of 2005 was 8.0%, down form 13.5% in the previous quarter. House prices were the 4th lowest in England and Wales

Around five million tourists visit Stoke each year, directly supporting around 4,400 jobs. Stoke-on-Trent shows its popularity through the number of repeat visits; around 80 percent of visitors have previously visited. Tourism to the city was kick-started by the National Garden Festival in 1986, and is now sustained by the many pottery factory-shops/tours and by the improved canal network.

A 2003/4 mapping study found 1,000 active creative businesses & artists based within a ten mile radius of the city. The survey did not include the thousands of ceramics companies.

Culture
Nightlife has boomed in recent years, with Hanley becoming increasingly popular for its nightclubs, theatres, pubs, bars and restaurants. There are also several theatres outside the city centre, and a long-established 'art-house' cinema in Shelton.

Several nationally recognised TV presenters have been born in the area including Frank Bough who presented Nationwide & Breakfast Time, Anthea Turner from Blue Peter and Nick Hancock who chaired the comedy quiz show They Think It's All Over and was host on Room 101. Bruno Brookes the former BBC Radio 1 disc jockey who hosted the station's breakfast show also presented Top of the Pops. Peter Wyngarde as Jason King in "Flamingoes only fly on Tuesdays" makes a quip about a "knicker salesman from Stoke-on-Trent".The cat in Dick and Dom in da Bungalow once sang a song about Stoke-on-Trent.

Originally through the works of Arnold Bennett, described by some as the greatest realist writer of the 20th century, the 'Six Towns' were also sometimes known as the 'Five Towns'. In his novels Bennett wrote about local events in the 19th century consistently changed all proper names and associations, thus Hanley became Hanbridge and Burslem became Bursley. It is thought that Bennett chose to write about five towns, rather than six, because he refused to acknowledge Fenton as a proper town. The six towns weren't federated until 1910 but Fenton was still relatively new by that time, it was also the smallest in terms of population and area. As well as this Bennett changed the name of the towns' newspaper from the Sentinel to the Signal, an identity that was subsequently adopted by the city's commercial radio station.

Other notable contributors to the world of literature includes Elijah Fenton (poet), Peter Whelan (playwright), John Wain (poet, critic and scholar), Pauline Stainer (poet), Charles Tomlinson (poet, graphic artist, translator, editor and critic). Stoke is also the birthplace of many artists includng Arthur Berry (also a novelist, playwright & poet), Arnold Machin (sculptor, coin & stamp designer) and Sidney Tushingham, A.R.E.

The city's main daily newspaper is The Sentinel, based in Etruria. Local radio stations are BBC Radio Stoke, the commercial Signal 1 and Signal 2 and Cross Rhythms City Radio (Community Radio). Television news is covered by Birmingham-based BBC Midlands Today, Manchester-based BBC North West Tonight, ITV Central and ITV .

Stoke has been the birthplace of many actors, including Hugh Dancy who has been in Black Hawk Down, Freddie Jones, Alan Lake (widower of Diana Dors), Adrian Rawlins, Hanley Stafford (American radio actor, born Alfred John Austin in Hanley), Jonathan Wilkes and Neil Morrissey, star of Men Behaving Badly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoke-on-Trent