Do You Live in an Urban, Suburban, Exurban, or Rural Area?

[Smash255]

I live in one of those inner suburbs that popped up right after WW2.

^^^ This

[Smash255]

the American distinction between urban/suburban/exurban

I tried to find a good definition on line.  There is of course an unconvincing entry on exurbs at Wikipedia, in an article which also defines urban sprawl, suburbs, and commuter towns.  

Urban dictionary defines Exurb as "Master Planned Communities that lay outside the ring of city suburbs. Exurbs are where people can live in big, crappily built houses on the cheap, pretend to be rich yet shop at Walmart, while they spend 2 hours a day commuting to and from their highly mortgaged cribs. A place where a trip to the grocery store is a social event that involves a 10 mile drive.Where Daddy feels pressure to lease his teen a BMW, while he makes mom drive the 10 year old mini-van."

Notwithstanding the fact that "crappily" is not an actual adverb, and overlooking the grammatical error consisting of the use of the transitive verb "lay" rather than the intransitive (and correct) verb "lie", I admit that some of this applies to me.  We live in a master planned community outside the ring of city suburbs.  On the other hand, my job is only about 25 minutes (9 miles) from my crib, and the big grocery store is only 2 miles away (smaller ones are much closer.)  There are several restaurants, a small grocery, my son's dentist, our athletic club with gym and pool, a park, auto fuel, and, significantly, a liquor store, all within 1000 meters from my crib.  Also, I don't have a BMW and my wife doesn't have a mini-van.  Moreover, we definitely do not "pretend to be rich."  Rather the opposite, in fact:  despite the many threads and posts on this forum that try to apply that term to all of us in the upper quintile, I object to the term being applied to me or to my neighbors.  Still, I have to admit that a trip to Wal-mart is definitely a social event.  

m-w.com has this to say about suburb:

1  a :  an outlying part of a city or town
    b :  a smaller community adjacent to or within commuting distance of a city

and this to say about exurb:

:  a region or settlement that lies outside a city and usually beyond its suburbs and that often is inhabited chiefly by well-to-do families

Citycomfortsblog makes the argument that the distinction between suburb and exurb is neither useful nor relevant.  Not sure I agree with that either.

I suggest the following:  If the community in the 3.14 square mile area immediately surrounding your crib has a population density of 5000 people per square mile or greater, then it is urban.  If it is less than 5000 but greater than 1000, then it shall be deemed suburban.  If it is less than 1000 but greater than 100 then it shall be deemed exurban.  If it is less than 100 then it is rural.  These numbers are arbitrary and random, of course, and someone can come up with numbers that correlate to something concrete--e.g., the population density above which you are likely not to have to walk more than a mile to the nearest McDonald's or to your child's elementary school--but I suggest making the distinction, if it is to be useful, based on wholly or primarily on population density rather than aggregate population or other factors.

I even think that is a bit subjective, because there are quite a few suburban areas with a higher density than that, (primarily the older inner-suburbs),

My community is 6,582 per sq mil,  other surrounding communities
7,134 per sq mi
6,155 per sq mi
5,962 per sq mi
6,023 per sq mi
7,700 per Sq mi

These are all in southeast Nassau County,