Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, North West England. The Manchester metropolitan borough has a population of 514,417 in 2013 and lies within the Greater Manchester built-up area, the United Kingdom's second most populous urban area which has a population of 2.55 million. Manchester is located in the south-central part of North West England, fringed by the Cheshire Plain to the south and the Pennines to the north and east, and an arc of towns with which it forms a continuous conurbation. The local council is Manchester City Council, and the city's inhabitants are referred to as Mancunians.The recorded history of Manchester began with the civilian settlement associated with the Roman fort of Mamucium, which was established around 79 AD on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers Medlock and Irwell. Historically, Manchester was in Lancashire, although areas of Cheshire, south of the River Mersey were incorporated into the city during the 20th century. Throughout the Middle Ages Manchester remained a manorial township but began to expand "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century. Manchester's unplanned urbanisation was brought on by a boom in textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution, and resulted in it becoming the world's first industrialised city. The building of the Bridgewater Canal in 1761 built to transport coal triggered an early-19th-century factory building boom which transformed Manchester from a township into a major mill town and borough that was granted city status in 1853. In 1877, Manchester Town Hall was built and in 1894 the Manchester Ship Canal, at the time the longest river navigation canal in the world, opened, creating the Port of Manchester and linking the city to sea. Manchester's fortunes decreased after the Second World War due to deindustrialisation. However, investment spurred by the 1996 Manchester bombing led to extensive regeneration, particularly in the city centre.