It was a planned settlement, begun in 1965, and named after the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland: James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon.

[8] Craigavon was planned as a 'new city' for Northern Ireland that would mirror towns such as Cumbernauld and, later, Milton Keynes in Great Britain.

It was conceived as a linear city that would link the towns of Lurgan and Portadown to create a single urban area and identity.

[6] The M1 motorway was built to link the new city with Belfast and there were plans to replace the Lurgan and Portadown railway stations with a single high speed terminal in central Craigavon.

[6] The planners separated motor vehicles from pedestrians and cyclists wherever possible, creating a network of paths allowing residents to travel across Craigavon without encountering traffic.

The road network for motor vehicles used roundabouts instead of traffic lights at junctions, giving the planners the ability to easily increase the number of lanes if it became necessary.

"[16] Problems began to come to light when it emerged that some housing estates had been built with materials and techniques that had not been fully tested, with the result that insulation, sound-proofing and durability were lacking.

[9] The area designated as Craigavon 'city centre', for much of this time contained only the municipal authority, the court buildings and a shopping mall, surrounded by greenfield land.

The new city was an enormous playground of hidden cycle paths, roads that ended suddenly in the middle of nowhere and futuristic buildings standing empty in an artificial landscape".

The name 'Craigavon' is today used by locals to refer to the area between Lurgan and Portadown, and many citizens of those towns resent being identified with the 'new city' of Craigavon.

[7] A certain degree of integration that existed when Craigavon was first built in the 1960s crumbled in the 1970s against a backdrop of escalating violence; in one week in 1972, as a result of Loyalist intimidation, fifty families fled the Killicomaine estate: half the Catholic population in the area.

On 11 November 1982, three Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) members—Eugene Toman (21), Sean Burns (21) and Gervaise McKerr (31)—were shot dead by undercover Royal Ulster Constabulary officers at a vehicle checkpoint on Tullygally East Road.

[19][20][21] The Craigavon mobile shop killings took place on 28 March 1991, when the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) shot dead three Catholic civilians in the Drumbeg estate.

[24] On 14 November 1991 the UVF shot dead three more civilians on Carbet Road as they were driving home from work at the Hyster forklift factory: Desmond Rogers (54), Fergus Magee (28), and John Lavery (27).

[25] The Continuity IRA shot dead PSNI officer Stephen Carroll in Craigavon on 10 March 2009, the first police fatality in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

The surrounding settlements (listed clockwise) are Aghacommon (north), Lurgan (northeast), Corcreeny (east), Bleary (southeast) and Portadown (southwest).

[2] Of these: On Census Day (27 March 2011) the usually resident population of Craigavon Urban Area including Aghacommon was 64,323 accounting for 3.55% of the NI total.