Population: 277,000
Stoke-on-Trent sits in the north-west midlands area of England and was mostly built around the potteries industry. Its businesses based around ceramics, along with steelworks and collieries, suffered in the post-industrial decline of the 1970s and 1980s, however, leaving Stoke with a gap to fill. While a scaled-down pottery industry is still very much evident in the city, it has also branched out into the services sector, gambling, advanced manufacturing, engineering and logistics. Jaguar Land Rover, JCB, Michelin and General Electric are just some of the companies with operations in or around the city, which has a metropolitan population of 680,000.