Let's build an relevant "urban/suburban/rural county" map

[RINO Tom]

I'd be very willing and interested to help (for either Illinois or Iowa), but yeah, I'd need some clarification!  Iowa and Illinois are especially good examples of where that distinction gets messy, and someone on the East Coast might consider a county rural that literally no one in our states would.  Here is Downtown Peoria, in Peoria County, IL:



Personally, I would find it crazy to call such a place rural, but if you did some arbitrary population cutoff, Peoria County might fall short (population of 185,006) ... after all, there is very significant population across the river in Tazewell County (134,385).  Even with both combined, people from the huge metro areas out east might not be satisfied, but the living experience in Peoria is clearly not rural, whatever you want to call it, at least not to the people of Illinois.

[RINO Tom]

I think one problem is that "suburban" is a moving target. What it meant in the 1960's is certainly not what it means today as those older suburbs have aged and newer suburbs have come about over the last 50 years. At the same time urban areas have grown out to meet other old smaller urban centers. For example Kane county IL is considered suburban due to its distance from Chicago. Yet both Aurora and Elgin in Kane are old cities that would be urban if not for the much larger city of Chicago. Is suburban only a subjective term. I think that's why the Census only looks at urban areas since they have to have an objective definition.

Good point.  Also, I remember you (correctly) correcting my IL population numbers a bit ago, so I decided to do it by county using 2016 estimates and got this instead:

Chicagoland: 8,488,857 (66.31%)
  Chicago: 2,720,546* (21.25%)
  Cook Suburbs: 2,482,953 (19.40%)
  Collar Counties: 3,285,358 (25.66%)
Downstate Illinois: 4,312,682 (33.69%)
  Northern Illinois: 1,182,137 (9.23%)
  Central Illinois: 1,921,129 (15.01%)
  Southern Illinois: 1,209,416 (9.45%)

* = 2015 estimate, as 2016 city estimates weren't available

Obviously the distinctions between Northern, Central and Southern are objective, but I did the best I could!  I also chose to define Downstate Illinois as everything but Chicago and not the way-more-boring South of I-80.  Slightly off-topic, but it reminded me of this.

[RINO Tom]

I think a good breakdown would be something like,

"Urban" is a county with an ANCHOR city of 200,000 or above ... that would include places like Rochester, NY and Columbus, OH on the low end but eliminates places like Aurora, IL, as they would be suburban in nature.

"Suburban" is any county that is part of a metro area involving a city of 200,000 or above, with that state's "map author" left to his/her own discretion as to what qualifies as exurban/possibly rural on the outer edges.

"Mid-Sized City" is a county with a city above 100,000 but less than 200,000, and the counties that its "suburbs" are in (assuming it is not a suburb itself) would likely be considered exurban or rural.

"Small City" would be a city above 50,000 but less than 100,000, and the counties that might be a part of its metro are almost certainly also "Small City" counties or are rural.

Anything less would be considered rural, deferring to the map author's perceived exceptions ... after all, the subjectivity is what would make this useful.  Again, these would be guidelines, but people's actual knowledge of the area would trump these.

[RINO Tom]

I think a good breakdown would be something like,

"Urban" is a county with an ANCHOR city of 200,000 or above ... that would include places like Rochester, NY and Columbus, OH on the low end but eliminates places like Aurora, IL, as they would be suburban in nature.

That's a subtle distinction. Columbus OH is the 15th largest city in the US based on 2015 estimates and has over 850K people - not really the low end. Rochester NY has 209.8K (#105 in the US) and is virtually indistinguishable in pop from Aurora IL at 200.7K (#114). Density doesn't work very well either since newer sprawling cities like Houston and Phoenix are quite low. Aurora is an old urban factory town and has about the same density as Portland OR or Norfolk VA. It also has newer suburban subdivisions on its outskirts, but within its corporate limits as do many cities that weren't locked in by other communities.

Long day yesterday, and I have no idea how I made this mistake ... but "Columbus, OH" should have been "Des Moines, IA" haha.  Oops!  And that is where the subjectivity makes this valuable.  Doing a Google Images search for "Rochester NY downtown" and "Aurora IL downtown" gives you these, respectively:





I think Rochester would clearly be a more urban experience, especially with the shadow of influence Chicago would cast over Aurora.

[RINO Tom]

Took a stab at Illinois. Struggled with Rockford vs Springfield vs Champaign-Urbana, on whether they are urban or mini metros. Mostly based on my own perceptions, I determined Rockford (Winnebago County) to be urban and Springfield (Sangamon County) and Champaign just barely miss the cut. With all the new high rises in Champaign as well as the fairly dense downtown core, I could definitely see the argument for urban though. I'm somewhat comfortable leaving Sangamon as a mini metro.

I don't have the minimum number of posts to link a photo, so here's the url:
ibb.co/e0KiyF

I know there are some arbitrary constraints with this, but it's weird to see Rockford considered urban...



... while Peoria is not: