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

[Adam Griffin]

I came up with the following; I know there have to be holes here somewhere, so I need help figuring that out + just getting some opinions on it all.

Code:

URBAN               a) county with at least one city of >200k residents
		or
                        b) county with >200k residents; majority residing in one city and/or two-thirds residing in all municipalities

SUBURBAN:	        a) county with >100k residents
                        b) substantial commercial activity
                        c) <20 linear miles between urban/mini-metro & suburban largest city boundaries
		and/or
                        a) county with >50k residents
                        b) direct connections to urban/mini-metro counties
                        c) <20 linear miles between urban/mini-metro & suburban largest city boundaries
                        d) substantial commercial activity

EXURBAN:	        a) county with >50k residents
              		b) limited commercial activity
                        c) <40 linear miles between urban & exurban largest city boundaries

MINI-METRO:	a) county with >75k residents
                        b) substantial/limited commercial activity
                        c) >40 linear miles between mini-metro & urban largest city boundaries

RURAL:		a) county with <50k residents
                        b) limited/no commercial activity
		and/or
                        a) county with majority of residents residing in unincorporated areas
                        b) >40 linear miles between rural & urban largest city boundaries

                       
This was what I got with it for GA:

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I think that works for most of the country. I'd resist its application to the parts of the Northeast I'm most familiar with because the way people identify and align themselves is in general somewhat more spatially constrained.

[muon2]

I came up with the following; I know there have to be holes here somewhere, so I need help figuring that out + just getting some opinions on it all.

Code:

URBAN               a) county with at least one city of >200k residents
		or
                        b) county with >200k residents; majority residing in one city and/or two-thirds residing in all municipalities

SUBURBAN:	        a) county with >100k residents
                        b) substantial commercial activity
		and/or
                        a) county with >50k residents
                        b) direct connections to urban counties
                        c) <20 linear miles between urban/mini-metro & suburban largest city boundaries
                        d) substantial commercial activity

EXURBAN:	        a) county with >50k residents
              		b) limited commercial activity
                        c) <40 linear miles between urban & exurban largest city boundaries

MINI-METRO:	a) county with >75k residents
                        b) substantial/limited commercial activity

RURAL:		a) county with <50k residents
                        b) limited/no commercial activity
		and/or
                        a) county with majority of residents residing in unincorporated areas
                        b) >40 linear miles between rural & urban county seat boundaries

                       
This was what I got with it for GA:

This seems more workable. I have a question about the 2/3 in all municipalities for urban counties. Some states use incorporation more than others. For instance IL tends to incorporate most of its subdivisions into a muni. DuPage IL has just under 1 million pop, and is only about 10% unincorporated, yet most would call it suburban.

[JerryArkansas]

Here's one question: can a county be "suburban" without having any obvious urban anchor? Can a county be suburban despite having no obvious urban county influencing its development, but having characteristics of most suburban counties (direct road/transit connections, relatively high population density, lots of commercial activity, etc)?

I thought so, because if not that would make several counties in Arkansas completely uncategorizable.

Edit.  What I have for Arkansas right now.  Probably going to change a bit though as I look a bit more into it later on.

[muon2]

Here's one question: can a county be "suburban" without having any obvious urban anchor? Can a county be suburban despite having no obvious urban county influencing its development, but having characteristics of most suburban counties (direct road/transit connections, relatively high population density, lots of commercial activity, etc)?

I thought so, because if not that would make several counties in Arkansas completely uncategorizable.

Can you give a couple of examples?

[JerryArkansas]

Here's one question: can a county be "suburban" without having any obvious urban anchor? Can a county be suburban despite having no obvious urban county influencing its development, but having characteristics of most suburban counties (direct road/transit connections, relatively high population density, lots of commercial activity, etc)?

I thought so, because if not that would make several counties in Arkansas completely uncategorizable.

Can you give a couple of examples?

I was thinking of the Northwestern Counties.   Benton and Washington really.

Both show many of the signs of being suburban while being nowhere close to any major city.  However, that is starting to change, with both starting to go through at least some urbanisation and development of their own suburbs. 

[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.

[muon2]

Here's one question: can a county be "suburban" without having any obvious urban anchor? Can a county be suburban despite having no obvious urban county influencing its development, but having characteristics of most suburban counties (direct road/transit connections, relatively high population density, lots of commercial activity, etc)?

I thought so, because if not that would make several counties in Arkansas completely uncategorizable.

Can you give a couple of examples?

I was thinking of the Northwestern Counties.   Benton and Washington really.

Both show many of the signs of being suburban while being nowhere close to any major city.  However, that is starting to change, with both starting to go through at least some urbanisation and development of their own suburbs. 

I think your use of Griffin's mini-metro is appropriate there.  Under the jimrtex delineation Benton and Washington form the Fayetteville Urban County Cluster, and Sebastian and Crawford form the Ft Smith UCC in AR. It is interesting that most of the counties you classified as urban, suburban, or mini-metro all appear as UCCs. I think it will be interesting to compare the differences as a means of fleshing out what Griffin has put forward.

Baxter: It only has 42K in population so it falls as rural by Griffin's measure (<75K). It's a micropolitan area by the Census definition so it can't be a UCC.

Jefferson: It has 77K population so it would meet the Griffin threshold for a mini-metro. The urbanized area is large enough for the census to count it as a metropolitan area in its own right. Garland is 96K and a mini-metro. Is there an objective difference between Jefferson and Garland?

Pope: Like Baxter it has 62K population (<75) and is a micropolitan Census area.

White: It's in the Little Rock CSA, but is its own micropolitan area, so it's not a UCC, it probably fits as exurban by the UCC standards.

These are the "final" delineations of Urban County Clusters, using the 25K/40% threshold, where the urbanized area population of a county must be 25,000+ or 40% of the total population.

[JerryArkansas]

Here's one question: can a county be "suburban" without having any obvious urban anchor? Can a county be suburban despite having no obvious urban county influencing its development, but having characteristics of most suburban counties (direct road/transit connections, relatively high population density, lots of commercial activity, etc)?

I thought so, because if not that would make several counties in Arkansas completely uncategorizable.

Can you give a couple of examples?

I was thinking of the Northwestern Counties.   Benton and Washington really.

Both show many of the signs of being suburban while being nowhere close to any major city.  However, that is starting to change, with both starting to go through at least some urbanisation and development of their own suburbs. 

I think your use of Griffin's mini-metro is appropriate there.  Under the jimrtex delineation Benton and Washington form the Fayetteville Urban County Cluster, and Sebastian and Crawford form the Ft Smith UCC in AR. It is interesting that most of the counties you classified as urban, suburban, or mini-metro all appear as UCCs. I think it will be interesting to compare the differences as a means of fleshing out what Griffin has put forward.

Baxter: It only has 42K in population so it falls as rural by Griffin's measure (<75K). It's a micropolitan area by the Census definition so it can't be a UCC.

Jefferson: It has 77K population so it would meet the Griffin threshold for a mini-metro. The urbanized area is large enough for the census to count it as a metropolitan area in its own right. Garland is 96K and a mini-metro. Is there an objective difference between Jefferson and Garland?

Pope: Like Baxter it has 62K population (<75) and is a micropolitan Census area.

White: It's in the Little Rock CSA, but is its own micropolitan area, so it's not a UCC, it probably fits as exurban by the UCC standards.

These are the "final" delineations of Urban County Clusters, using the 25K/40% threshold, where the urbanized area population of a county must be 25,000+ or 40% of the total population.

On Garland and Jefferson, the difference is really the economic background of each.  Garland is much less tied to the Little Rock Area and has a functioning economy of its own based around tourism.  Jefferson is really not the best place economically.  Most industry has left the city, and it has a somewhat substantial commuter crowd to Little Rock, however, even that is dying away, with most commuters moving out to other countries which have lower crime rates.

White, I put as suburban but it could fit in more than one category truly.  It has many of the elements of both, and I made the decision to lump it with Little Rock, due to the political connections it shares.

[Seattle]

I'd have trouble with categorizing Washington. I mean, take King County which shifts from densely urban to suburban to Twin Peaks land as you travel east.

I think Pierce is even harder to characterize. It's got an old >200k urban core, Tacoma, that's both a suburb of Seattle, but also a major regional employment center, tons of suburbs, followed by exurbs, followed by farmland, followed by forest.

----


Perhaps a way to help distinguish counties with cores like Rochester and Aurora, IL is to include a non-population determinate, such as employment data. Job density or even total jobs can help differentiate a small urban county with a suburban one.

[Adam Griffin]

I think that works for most of the country. I'd resist its application to the parts of the Northeast I'm most familiar with because the way people identify and align themselves is in general somewhat more spatially constrained.

This seems more workable. I have a question about the 2/3 in all municipalities for urban counties. Some states use incorporation more than others. For instance IL tends to incorporate most of its subdivisions into a muni. DuPage IL has just under 1 million pop, and is only about 10% unincorporated, yet most would call it suburban.

And this is why I think coming up with the definitions from an objective standpoint is going to be difficult. There's going to have to be some subjectivity from place to place.

Obviously there are some individual counties that are not going to fit neatly into any category, but there are also parts of the country where it's going to be a broader issue. With regard to municipalities, I imagine the frequency at which municipalities are created/used is one of those major issues. I have a fundamentally Southern viewpoint on it (here, municipalities are generally frowned upon, with denser areas largely only creating new ones to avoid being annexed by larger, usually blacker municipalities; take a look at ATL and the surrounding areas of Fulton/Dekalb).


I also added a clarification/correction to "mini-metro" (criteria c); they must be at least 40 linear miles from an urban county's largest city. I'm pretty sure I operated under that assumption with my GA map but forgot to add the text to the list.

I also added another clarification to "suburban" (criteria c); they must be within 20 linear miles of an urban county's largest city when larger than 100k. I'm going to test this out on TN but I'm pretty sure that any county not within that range would be classified under the "mini-metro" category.

[Adam Griffin]

Here's what I've come up with so far. There are several counties where I'm not particularly happy (lots of the exurbia in NE AL; Tuscaloosa, AL; some county on the MS Gulf Coast I already forgot; FL was quite frustrating, etc), but this was the output:

[Bacon King]

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?

[Adam Griffin]

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?

Here's one I made a few days ago, using approximate population density. It used 2000 numbers, though, so some counties may have shifted.

Red = <100 people/sqmi
Purple = 100-1000 people/sqmi
Blue = >1000 people/sqmi

[Bacon King]

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

[muon2]

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

Alachua has a large urban center, Gainesville, but the city has not really expanded to fill the county. Gainesville is a lot bigger than the mini-metros described in the definition, but it isn't big enough to spill suburbs into neighboring counties. There are lots of counties like that around the country. In Alachua's case it might not be able to grow to reach high density since there is a lot of wetland interspersed with farms in the east and south of the county, including the area around Waldo where the link points.

[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.

[jimrtex]

I hope I'm not the only one, but virtually every county map I have ever looked at that tries to delineate rural/suburban/urban counties makes me chuckle. Whether it's from the Census (way too generous to "urban/suburban") or maps based on other categories (like population density), I just find myself nitpicking.

So, I thought it'd be a fun project if we crowdsource the creation (I think, at least in part, the faults I find in various maps are a result of people trying to classify areas with which they have no actual familiarity) for more relevant, accurate results. We would first need to agree on some standards for what constitutes the three categories - though I'm not entirely convinced that people going on their personal knowledge of areas combined with their own impressions wouldn't be as accurate as some of the maps out there.

One example I've pondered is whether the standards should be relative: would the definition for "suburban", for instance, apply uniformly to areas in North GA and North NJ, or would it be something that takes into account the population density and level of development in areas surrounding it?

As far as contributions go, I'd like for this to be something that is built entirely off of posters' intimate familiarity with the states/areas; in other words, nobody makes a map for a state or area where they haven't lived or spent a lot of time in recently.

What is your subjective understanding of the terms? Are counties classified based on land areas or population. (i.e. if you were driving around and saw a lot of cows, is it rural; or if you randomly visited residents and spent a lot of time driving through tract homes looking for Harvest Circle, is it suburban?)

[VPH]

It would be interesting to have one map set by a delineation we all decide on, but another based entirely on perception of people from those states. Just pure perception.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It would be interesting to have one map set by a delineation we all decide on, but another based entirely on perception of people from those states. Just pure perception.

I'd be in favor of having both, yeah.

[SoLongAtlas]

Didn't have a county fillable template from the OP for his design for all states so I grabbed these from Google to use as a baseline. The first gives population per sq. mile and the second is more akin to the OP's map based on counties.

[publicunofficial]

Having tried to tackle Washington, ran in another snag. Thurston county has over 200k residents, about 90k of which live in Olympia. Roughly 40% of the population lives outside of municipality boundaries. Olympia is roughly 36 miles from Tacoma, which under BK's guidelines is too far to be a suburb and too close to be a mini metro.

The only other category is exurb or rural, neither of which feel right.

[muon2]

Having tried to tackle Washington, ran in another snag. Thurston county has over 200k residents, about 90k of which live in Olympia. Roughly 40% of the population lives outside of municipality boundaries. Olympia is roughly 36 miles from Tacoma, which under BK's guidelines is too far to be a suburb and too close to be a mini metro.

The only other category is exurb or rural, neither of which feel right.

I think it could fit as either mini-metro (no distance requirement there) or suburban (first set of guidelines without distance requirements). Both are consistent with the Census classification of Thurston as its own MSA but also part of the Seattle-Tacoma CSA. Probably Griffin's two pronged definition of suburban needs to be clarified to avoid confusion in cases like this.

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[Miles]

Added LA to Adam's map, mostly following the criteria he posted:

[Tekken_Guy]

Yeah a few problems here I think...

St. Tammany is definitely not Urban, it's outer NOLA suburbs, kind of like Montgomery County TX to Houston.

Calcasieu with Lake Charles is too small to be considered urban.

In Tennessee:
Why is Hamilton "Urban" and Knox a "Mini-Metro"? They're rougly equal in status.
In Florida:
Why is Broward "Urban" and Palm Beach "Suburban"? Also seemingly equal.