Dundee (Scottish Gaelic: Důn Dčagh) is the fourth-largest city in Scotland, and is sited on the north bank of the River Tay's estuary, near the east coast and the North Sea. It is known as the City of Discovery, in honour of Dundee's history of scientific activities and of the RRS Discovery, Robert Falcon Scott's Antarctic exploration vessel, which was built in Dundee and is now berthed there.

Until the industrial revolution the current City Centre represented the full extent of the City of Dundee. Now roughly encircled by the Marketgait dual carriageway, the city centre is now the main shopping and commercial district. Unlike the city centre of Glasgow many of the city centre’s (especially in the southern and eastern quarters) streets are not built on a grid plan and in that way have more in common with street plan of the Old Town of Edinburgh (although most buildings in Dundee’s city centre date from the 19th Century or later). The modern city centre is still divided into the six medieval thoroughfares: the Seagait, Murraygait, Nethergait, Overgait, Wellgait and the Cowgait (“Gait” being an old Scots word for street) which all remain today, although the “Overgate” and “Wellgate” are now an enclosed shopping centres. Many of the medieval closes were demolished in the late 19th Century to make way for larger and grander Victorian streets. However the area to the north of the city centre between Meadowside, Ward Road and the Marketgait is mostly based on a grid system with wide avenues and crescents, due to much of this area being planned and designed in the Victorian era.