The constituency comprises two thirds of the city of Oxford, including Cowley, Headington and South Oxford. It is made up of mixed residential areas, large social housing estates, with areas of multi-occupation, and some affluent suburbs. The constituency also contains significant ethnic minority communities.
Major employers in Oxford are the new BMW Mini factory, Oxford teaching hospitals, Oxford Brookes University, high tech, pharmaceutical and bio-tech companies; light engineering, printing and publishing companies.
The pre-1997 boundary changes took out a couple of rural polling districts on the edge of Oxford, and added the Labour leaning council seat of Oxford South. Labour has the most councillors in the wards in this seat with 16, but the LibDems have a strong presence with 10 councillors, the Greens have five, the Tories one and one independent.