Classifying Your State's Counties

[Battista Minola 1616]

I'll use my region (Liguria) and its four provinces:

Metropolitan city of Genoa (GE) - Two thirds of its inhabitants live in Genoa - a city of 580,000 - so I guess urban (even though Genoa is a pretty f***ing sprawling city).

Province of La Spezia (SP) - Over 40% of people live here in La Spezia; 10% in Sarzana to the east; most of the rest in suburbanish towns of 7000 or so around Sarzana that have sprinkled in the Val di Magra, so I guess urban/suburban.

Province of Savona (SV) - Just 22-23% of people live in Savona; it has a surprising number of municipalities hovering just above 10000, so I'll go with small town.

Province of Imperia (IM) - Imperia is not even the most populous place! The honour goes to Sanremo, known for the casino and the festival of Italian music. They have respectively 20% and 25% of the province's inhabitants; the rest is basically equally divided between towns and tiny villages, so the best bet seems small town.


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Note 1. Some Americans will laugh at my use of "urban", but hey, I live in a region of 1.6 million people, with an area smaller than Delaware, and my idea of urban and rural is shaped by that. La Spezia, where I live, has 95000 people and is emphatically not a "town"!

Note 2. The term "suburban" is not used much in Italy, and the term "exurban" is close to being alien.

Note 3. Reminder that Liguria is basically a strip of coastal hills and mountains. Like, railway tunnels are f***ing everywhere. So its geography is somewhat weird.

Note 4. Italian provinces were created with the idea of having at least a midsize town as seat, not as random patches of land as American counties. Which means that true rural provinces are kind of close to impossible.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Urban - why
Suburban - does
Exurban - this
Small City/Town - topic
Rural - exist

Urban - because
Suburban - it's
Exurban - fun
Small City/Town - and
Rural - splashy

[Battista Minola 1616]

Yeah, I totally forgot about Tipton and Robertson even existing but they're for sure exurban. Washington being small city also makes sense.

Sevier was one I wasn't sure at all so I just didn't classify.

And yeah Knox and Hamilton are def "Tennessee urban" because they're like, barely what you would consider cities but in Tennessee they seem like metropolises lmao

I will never not be shocked by the existence of people who call places of 180000 inhabitants which are the largest of the respective urban areas "barely cities"...

[Battista Minola 1616]

Yeah, I totally forgot about Tipton and Robertson even existing but they're for sure exurban. Washington being small city also makes sense.

Sevier was one I wasn't sure at all so I just didn't classify.

And yeah Knox and Hamilton are def "Tennessee urban" because they're like, barely what you would consider cities but in Tennessee they seem like metropolises lmao

I will never not be shocked by the existence of people who call places of 180000 inhabitants which are the largest of the respective urban areas "barely cities"...

How? At the very least it's clearly a different typology from truly large cities with at least a million people.

They may not be large cities, but they are certainly small cities. So, still cities.