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

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In Australia, absolutely every part of a metropolitan area bar "downtown" is classified as a suburb - ranging from historic neighbourhoods to the exurbiest exurb - so the American distinction between urban/suburban/exurban is a bit hard to apply.

The area I live in is sort of on the cusp between urban and suburban. Probably the best American term to describe it would be a "streetcar suburb". I voted urban since I don't really feel that I live in suburbia with all that implies -- but, really, I don't feel I have the "big city" experience that urban implies either.

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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.

Thanks for the definitions! It sounds like I was pretty much right in what I imagined an exurb to be - though of course here that would be simply a "suburb". I'd never presume to stereotype people based on where they live quite so much, though, haha. Nor do I think that anyone in the upper quintile is "rich" - I'd say that term only applies to people who are significantly better off than the average income, personally.

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.

Based on this definition (and my suburb's wikipedia page), it has a population density of 7,200/sq mi (2,800km2), which I guess makes it fairly solidly urban. It falls short though on your other definitions - McDonald's and elementary schools - and it really isn't all that walkable, for some reason.

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...it really isn't all that walkable, for some reason.

Red posted a "walkscore" map at some point.  Or maybe it was someone else.

Yeah, that pretty much hits the nail on the head wrt Walkscore's limitations. 

Thanks for the link - I'd been on that bikescore website, but I didn't know it extended to neighbourhoods here. My neighbourhood scored 88 (very walkable) and 63 (good transit). I think though, the criticisms you and traininthedistance raised of the site are spot on. Looking at that map made me realise just how many shops/restaurants etc. were in my area but I don't walk to them all that much - in my case, not because walking is that unpleasant, but because the commercial things here just aren't that appealing - the supermarket is tiny and the restaurants (bar one) just aren't all that good. In part, that's because there are lots of commercial streets nearby by car but out of walking distance. Pretty much all the streets in my suburb are either quiet and residential, or get a lot of heavy traffic leading out of the city, meaning that there's just no naturally pleasant environment for shopping, dining, etc.

The suburb next to mine is a similar instance of this - it was a commercial centre in the 19th century and it has some great Victorian housing - but it was bisected by a freeway in the 1970s (due to some really poor urban planning) and hence it's really unpleasant to walk anywhere.

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Are small towns "rural" or "suburban"?

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

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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.

I meant more in terms of the options listed in the poll - it just seemed like the best fit that was available. Of course you're right that a small town is really an urban area - I'm not sure about the US, but in Australia, anywhere with a population of over a 1,000 and a density of over 200/km squared is considered urban - and I'd say that makes sense in terms of official designations. I just meant though, that in a more casual, general sense, people tend to view small towns as being "country" or "rural", at least in my experience.