The City of Edinburgh council area is divided into 17
wards, which have been combined into four operational management areas termed "localities": The localities are further divided into Neighbourhood Partnership (NP) Areas: Two of the Neighbourhood Partnership areas, Almond NP and Pentlands NP, extend into the rural hinterland in the west of the City of Edinburgh council area, taking in villages such as
Kirkliston and
Ratho which are not part of the settlement of Edinburgh (however,
Juniper Green,
Baberton,
Currie and
Balerno are considered to be contiguous and are included). For the same reason, less than 50% of the North West and the South West localities' territory is with the urban area. to the east of the city,
Musselburgh and
Wallyford in
East Lothian are considered to be contiguous with the main Edinburgh settlement and are also included in the urban area; however, other nearby localities such as
Loanhead and
Danderhall are not included (this may be adjusted in the future, particularly for Danderhall where 2020s housing developments at the former Edmonstone estate on the local authority boundary with Edinburgh will almost close the gap between the localities). ==Other definitions==