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

[muon2]

There are lots of definitions of urban, etc. which make it hard to sort communities into categories. I would start with the Census definition of an urbanized area (total population > 50 K) which has a core population density of at least 1000 persons per sq mi (ppsm) in a 3 sq mi area and contiguous tracts and blocks of at least 500 ppsm. Within that area I would count communities with densities in excess of 4-5K as urban and those under that number as suburban. In large municipalities one can have both urban and suburban areas, particularly when an older city became engulfed by suburbs. Outside of that are small to mid-sized towns (often represented by urban clusters in the Census) and rural areas.

Exurbs are areas that overlap between suburban and rural. I think that the Brookings Institution had a reasonably good definition in their 2006 report.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The operative phrases for me are "urban fringe" and "population growth".  By this definition suburbs on the edge can be exurbs, but are prone to lose that designation after a couple of decades once development moves further out. It's why we see posts debating whether 1980's housing still qualifies. This definition also picks up urban clusters just outside the urbanized area that have developed into growing commuter towns, but differentiates it from a rural community that historically provided some commuting workforce but is relatively stable in population.

[muon2]

Suburban although my city existed way before the suburbs but has been overtaken by them. If you go west of where I live you enter the country but with some exurban subdivisions.

That's the situation for my city as well. Since I live in the old center I get a walkscore of 75 - very walkable, most errands can be accomplished on foot. That seems accurate since I'm within a half mile of the train station, library, banks, restaurants, grocers, Ace Hardware, and Walgreens. Even so, it's definitely a suburban area.

[muon2]

Are small towns "rural" or "suburban"?

Rural, I would think -- though personally I'd argue that they should be a category of their own.

The Census Bureau identifies two types of urban areas:

Urbanized Areas (UAs) of 50,000 or more people
Urban Clusters (UCs) of at least 2,500 and less than 50,000 people.

“Rural” encompasses all population, housing, and territory not included within an urban area.

So urban clusters (=small towns) are not rural, since they are a form of urban areas.

In Europe small towns are urban, I would think that was also the case in the US. It makes little sense to call them suburban.

In the US urban has the sense of being a part of a larger metropolitan area. The Census definition of UC recognizes that there are pockets in rural areas that otherwise meet the technical definitions of urban. As I noted in my post earlier in the thread UC's that are close enough to provide significant commuters to a larger urban center could be exurbs if there's a lot of growth happening around them, but otherwise fit as rural in the urban/suburban/rural divide.

[muon2]

Small towns also have the urban and suburban divisions. Common features in a small town downtown area include a town square, a county courthouse or municipal offices, a post office, an (often unused) old single screen movie theater, the remains of an old shopping district that has long since been replaced by a suburban WalMart. And then on the fringes of the town, you have single family homes, often with large yards, and, in many cases, trailer parks.

There's no question that a small town can areas of high-enough density to meet a technical urban definition. However, I doubt many people who live in the center of a small town like the one you describe would describe their neighborhood as urban. I know realtors would not use that term when marketing a house. The best description would be a small town in a rural area, but without that choice most residents would pick rural.