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

[Gass3268]

I could certainly handle Mississippi and Alabama.

But I think we'd be making a major mistake if we did not include a "small town" type category.

What would we consider a small town? Any town over 50,000, 20,000, 10,000, 5,000? Depending on how low you get almost every county could be considered a small town county.

[Gass3268]

honestly i think going by raw population total of counties is a bad choice considering counties (and municipalities) can be radically different sizes in different parts of the country - surely population density is a better metric to go by?

example: this is allegedly an urban area just like Fulton, Dekalb, Miami-Dade, etc

https://goo.gl/maps/q2QPoVho5oD2

You do the same thing with Dane County, WI.

[Gass3268]

So I've just been messing around, applying my standard to more and more states. There are plenty of issues I'm running into, as expected.

Places like NW AR and Collin County TX being "urban" (because of the large county populations/everybody living in municipalities), the large counties out west and large distances between populated areas making too many counties "mini-metro", etc.

In addition to that, I have been running into some issues with none of my categories applying in some situations; namely, areas that are between 50-75k, have large percentages of their populations in a city but that do not qualify for suburban/exurban/mini-metro by my definitions. In these situations (for example, Pope County, AR), I've given them "mini-metro" classification.

Feel free to continue critiquing: hopefully we can refine these standards and come up with something more uniform, but I'm not confident of a standard emerging that'll deal with all areas.

Curious as to why you labeled Knox Count, TN a mini-metro? I've driven through there multiple times and it definitely looks and feels like an urban county.