Classifying Your State's Counties

[RINO Tom]

I want to keep this purposely vague, as I think the whole "Rural/Urban Divide" rests on the fallacy that those are the two main categories of where people live, or that "Suburban" fits like a glove in with "Urban."  So, how would you classify the counties in your state using these categories?  Interpret them however YOU would like:

1) Urban
2) Suburban
3) Exurban
4) Small City/Town
5) Rural

These are intentionally imperfect, by the way.  Also, since many states have a ton of counties, many of them rural, feel free to just say "The Rest" once you get to rural.  Here is my opinion on Illinois:

Urban - Cook, Peoria, Winnebago ... obviously Chicago is miles ahead of anything else in the state, but Peoria and Rockford are the only other two cities that have a true, significantly sized urban core, IMO.

Suburban - DuPage, Kane, Lake, Madison, McHenry, St. Clair, Will

Exurban - Clinton, Kendall, Monroe, Tazewell, Woodford

Small City/Town - Champaign, DeKalb, Kankakee, Macon, McLean, Rock Island, Sangamon, Vermilion

Rural - The rest

I'm very curious to hear about other states (especially smaller-sized states that are easier to do) and also excited to hear different takes on Illinois!  Not having grown up in an area like the East Coast or whatever, my cutoff for "urban" is more about feel than size.

[RI]

Counties in the west are so large geographically that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to categorize most of them in this way. Several of the counties I've lived in arguably have areas representing all five of these categories (Snohomish, WA; Spokane, WA; Los Angeles, CA). Even King County, WA, which is viewed as an urban county due to Seattle, is really more of a suburban county as the majority of its population and land area reside outside of Seattle. You could even make an argument that Los Angeles County isn't even mostly urban, although that might be more of a stretch.

[lfromnj]

What about Adams?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adams_County,_Illinois

[Mr. Smith]

The state I mostly live in has 254 counties and tons of cities, so that'd be a chore.

The state where I am now has yuge counties that could be AOTA, there are exceptions like the definitively rural Northeast or Desert counties, and San Francisco is quite obviously urban...but what exactly is San Bernardino?

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

Doing California but with slightly different categories that I think fit the state better.



Truly Urban (Red): Alameda, Los Angeles, San Francisco
These areas contain the dense urban cores which anchor California's top two metro areas. I debated making San Francisco it's own category because it's a uniquely small county meaning it's 100% urban. Conversely, Alameda contains suburban Livermore, Dublin, and Pleasanton and Los Angeles contains a rural northern half and suburbs on its northern and eastern fringes. However, if I establish such a high bar then the only truly urban counties would be SF, four NY boroughs, Arlington, and an assortment of other consolidated city-counties. If Cook, IL gets to be urban, than so do these two.

Mixed urban and suburban (Purple): Sacramento, San Diego, San Mateo, Santa Clara
California's counties are big and while these contain unmistakable urban cores which would be the leading city in most other states, these four counties contain too much suburb to be placed in the previous category. In San Diego's case, literally the entire metro area is contained in the county and calling Escondido urban just doesn't sit well with me. I came very close to bumping Santa Clara up to truly urban but it's kind of an ambiguous area. Much of metropolitan California is characterized by low rise, decentralized development which still contains urban amenities and densities well above 10,000 people per square mile that defies easy categorization--and that includes the Silicon Valley.

Suburban (orange): Contra Costa,  El Dorado, Madera, Marin, Merced, Napa, Orange, Placer, San Bernardino, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Solano, Sonoma, Riverside, Ventura
This should be an easy county--pick out the suburban areas with high outbound commuter flows--but it contains nuance. Madera, Merced, and Stanislaus could easily be put in the midsized metro category, but they have little in the way of an urban core and have high commuter flows to Fresno and the Bay Area. The Inland Empire counties have massive swathes of desert and the standalone Palm Springs area but their populace overwhelmingly lives in clearly suburban areas to the far west of the county. Ventura is split between standalone Ventura/Oxnard and suburban Simi Valley/Thousand Oaks while Orange is in many ways a dense, cosmopolitan employment center which lacks an urban core.

Midsized Metro (green): Butte, Fresno, Kern, Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Yolo
This is pretty simple: these counties are dominated by a single midsized metro area which stands alone, even if most of the county's land area is rural. This can range from Hollister to Chico to Santa Barbara to Fresno, but the character of each county is dominated by a midsized city and it's suburbs. Many of these cities are college towns.

Rural (blue): The Rest (this should also include Kings and Tulare)
This is tricky because for the most part, the West doesn't do populated rural areas. Cities like Redding, El Centro, and Hanford consist of most of the population of these counties, but ultimately, the character of the counties is either wholly undeveloped or agricultural (yes, it's subjective).

The main lesson from this is that for California, along with much of the West, blocking things out at the sub-county level is probably more informative.

[Tender Branson]

Pretty easy:

Salzburg City: urban
Flachgau: suburban, slightly rural
Tennengau: suburban, moderately rural

Pinzgau/Pongau/Lungau: rural, with some urban centers

[Gracile]

Counties in the west are so large geographically that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to categorize most of them in this way. Several of the counties I've lived in arguably have areas representing all five of these categories (Snohomish, WA; Spokane, WA; Los Angeles, CA). Even King County, WA, which is viewed as an urban county due to Seattle, is really more of a suburban county as the majority of its population and land area reside outside of Seattle. You could even make an argument that Los Angeles County isn't even mostly urban, although that might be more of a stretch.

What you described doesn't just apply to counties in the west.

[HillGoose]

1) Urban - Davidson, Knox, Hamilton, Shelby
2) Suburban - Rutherford, Williamson, Wilson, Sumner, Loudon
3) Exurban - Maury, Cheatham, Marshall, Cannon
4) Small City/Town - Putnam, Montgomery, Madison, Sullivan
5) Rural - everything else lmao

[It’s so Joever]

True Urban: (Actually feels like a city)
Denver

Mixed Urban/Suburban:
El Paso, Arapahoe, Boulder

Suburban: Adams, Jefferson, Brookfield (why does this county exist anyways?)

Exurban: Elbert, Douglas, Teller

Regional Town: Larimer, Pueblo, Mesa, Alamosa, Weld

Everything else is rural, but I’m convinced some of the Eastern counties in Colorado don’t actually exist.

[Boobs]

The state I mostly live in has 254 counties and tons of cities, so that'd be a chore.

Well..



My personal take. Texas needs more categories than just the five listed, although I guess you could consolidate some of these to meet the original criteria. I cut off the Small Town from Rural at at about 20K - the smallest Small Town here is Brownwood in Brown County. If you've ever been to the Rio Grande Valley, you'd never be able to describe it as truly "urban" so an Urban-Suburban definition is more applicable; the distinction between Urban-Suburban and Suburban-Exurban is kinda used by whether the county is accessible by a looped highway or merely a straight highway. A little arbitrary overall, perhaps, but it makes sense to me. 

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Doing California but with slightly different categories that I think fit the state better.



Suburban (orange): Contra Costa,  El Dorado, Madera, Marin, Merced, Napa, Orange, Placer, San Bernardino, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Solano, Sonoma, Riverside, Ventura
This should be an easy county--pick out the suburban areas with high outbound commuter flows--but it contains nuance. Madera, Merced, and Stanislaus could easily be put in the midsized metro category, but they have little in the way of an urban core and have high commuter flows to Fresno and the Bay Area. The Inland Empire counties have massive swathes of desert and the standalone Palm Springs area but their populace overwhelmingly lives in clearly suburban areas to the far west of the county. Ventura is split between standalone Ventura/Oxnard and suburban Simi Valley/Thousand Oaks while Orange is in many ways a dense, cosmopolitan employment center which lacks an urban core.

Midsized Metro (green): Butte, Fresno, Kern, Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Yolo
This is pretty simple: these counties are dominated by a single midsized metro area which stands alone, even if most of the county's land area is rural. This can range from Hollister to Chico to Santa Barbara to Fresno, but the character of each county is dominated by a midsized city and it's suburbs. Many of these cities are college towns.

(Partially snipped by FS)

I agree with this in general, but I would consider Yolo to be a suburban county. I have no doubt that there would be a continuous urban stretch if it wasn’t for the Causeway.

[Dr. MB]

It’s pretty hard to break down by county when almost every county has both urban and rural parts but here’s my best shot. Like even Multnomah county has some very very rural areas. So this really isn’t a great measure.

[Hope For A New Era]

Not as easy as it seems.

Please pardon the yuuuuuge images.

I've done both MO and UT:

[ON Progressive]

I decided to use Ontario's 49 census divisions (we don't have the county system of the US). There's actually 51 administrative divisions in the province, but there's two differences between the administrative divisions and census divisions (County of Brant/City of Brantford are one census but two administrative divisions, same with Haldimand County/Norfolk County). Amusingly, neither Haldimand or Norfolk are actually counties but that's not the topic of this thread.

Urban - Toronto, Hamilton, Greater Sudbury, Ottawa, Brant (including Brantford), Waterloo, Essex, Middlesex
GTA Suburbs - York, Peel, Halton, Durham
GTA Exurbs - Dufferin, Simcoe
Middle-sized cities - Lambton, Algoma, Thunder Bay, Nipissing, Peterborough, Hastings, Frontenac
Small cities - Oxford, Perth, Elgin, Prince Edward
Rural - everywhere else (including the aforementioned Haldimand/Norfolk)

[SevenEleven]

It's weird. If you put California up to the same standards as most other states, almost every county could be considered urban.

[S019]

Urban: Hudson
Mixed Urban/Suburban: Essex, Passaic, Camden, Mercer, Middlesex
Suburban: Bergen, Morris, Burlington, Union, Somerset
Exurb: Ocean, Monmouth, Gloucester
Small City: Atlantic
Rural: Sussex, Warren, Cape May, Salem, Hunterdon

[SevenEleven]

Urban: Hudson
Mixed Urban/Suburban: Essex, Passaic, Camden, Mercer, Middlesex
Suburban: Bergen, Morris, Burlington, Union, Somerset
Exurb: Ocean, Monmouth, Gloucester
Small City: Atlantic
Rural: Sussex, Warren, Cape May, Salem, Hunterdon

If over 60% of Sussex County residents work in another county or state, it's probably exurban IMO.

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

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

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

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.


---


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.

[Former President tack50]

Well, living on an island roughly shaped like a circle with a 24km radius that has radically different patterns from the average US state means this is extremely debatable but here would be my take:



Urban: This comprises simply the capital of the island, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. This obviously as a whole is mostly urban in character. However really I would argue that only the most northeastern parts of the municipality are purely urban. Areas like Tafira in the south, Tenoya in the west or even Tamaraceite (also in the west but closer to the centre) are more suburban.

Suburban: This is comprised of 3 municipalities close to the capital of Gran Canaria and that have relatively high commutes to it and what not. The municipalities in question are Arucas in the north, Santa Brígida in the interior and Telde in the east. Telde is the 2nd largest municipality in the island and has lots of housing developments and what not. While there is a core town of Telde, this is probably the most suburban feeling municipality. Santa Brígida is also quite suburban feeling although some areas at the edge can be rural though most of it I think feel suburban. Arucas is probably the hardest to categorize and you could qualify it as exurban or "small town" but I still think it is enough for suburban.

Medium Town: This is really the Vecindario area, which is covered by 2 municipalities. Santa Lucía de Tirajana and Agüimes. The southeastern part of the island forms kind of a conurbation that forms its own thing separate from the Las Palmas "metro area". If dividing this, this would really only include the coastal parts of these municipalities as the interior parts do indeed get quite rural. The population here should be around 90k

Small Town: There are 2 areas I have decided to classify as "small towns". First of all, there is the small town in the northwest, which is basically the Gáldar area. This is a 30k inhabitant town that is the biggest in the area by far as the northern coast is more sparsely populated than the east one. The 2 municipalities here would be Gáldar and Santa María de Guía, which combined would have around 35k people.

The other small town is the municipality of Ingenio, which is really 2 small towns: Carrizal in the coast near the airport and Ingenio in the interior. I think they can be considered a separate thing from both the Vecindario area and the suburban areas of Telde and what not, meaning they are a small town.

Rural: This basically takes in the western and central parts of the island. As you may expect, the center of the island is very mountainous which means it ends up being quite rural in character. There aren't really any big settlements here or anything. I will say that some areas characterized as rural are still very easy commutes from/to Las Palmas of around 30 minutes by car. The only areas I would characterize as hard to get to really are the deep interior municipalities of Artenara and Tejeda; and the western coastal town of La Aldea.

Tourist Area: I saved the best category for last. This includes the 2 very touristy municipalities of San Bartolomé de Tirajana and Mogán. Now, there are certainly rural parts in here, most of the interior of these 2 municipalities is very much super rural.

However I decided to create a special category for them as, while you could characterize them as small towns, they are best known for all their hotels and tourist facilities, with beaches and what not. There are certainly also plenty of locals living here, most notably in places like Arguineguín, El Tablero or San Fernando. However I think their character is different than that of a place like Ingenio or the Vecindario area.

If you want, you could characterize Mogán as "small town" or even rural (population 20k), and San Bartolomé de Tirajana as small town (population 50k).

[Former President tack50]

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

Because this is Atlas and it is fun to overanalyze every detail from every county?

[Del Tachi]

Urban (1) - Hinds
Suburban (2) - Madison, Rankin
Exurban (3) - DeSoto, Hancock, Pearl River
Small Town (19) - Alcorn, Bolivar, Coahoma, Forrest, Harrison, Jackson, Jones, Lafayette, Lamar, Lauderdale, Lee, Lincoln, Lowndes, Panola, Pike, Oktibbeha, Warren, Washington, Yazoo
Rural (57) - the rest of 'em

[SWE]

All are suburbs (centrist)

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

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

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

All of Buenos Aires City is urban, unsurprisingly