outskirts vs. suburbs vs. exurbs
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  outskirts vs. suburbs vs. exurbs
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Author Topic: outskirts vs. suburbs vs. exurbs  (Read 4250 times)
jimrtex
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« Reply #25 on: October 22, 2017, 09:17:30 PM »

Finding Exurbia: America’s Fast-Growing Communities at the Metropolitan Fringe (PDF)

This is a report by the Brookings Institute to systematically classify exurbs of larger cities following the 2000 Census. They characterize census tracts as exurban if they are outside the Urbanize Area of a large metropolis, have high commuting to the Urbanized Area of a large MSA (> 500K), have a relatively low housing density, and high growth, compared to the rest of the MSA.

This conforms generally to my understanding of an exurban area as being outside the more densely populated suburban area, but with commuting to either the central city, or outlying factories or office parks. The USDA computes tract to tract commuting flows and provides a classification that could permit defining metropolitan areas at a tract level.

The Brookings definition requires that the commuting flow to the central urbanized area be greater than 20%.

The Brookings definition requires that the housing density for the tract be in the least dense tracts that hold 1/3 of the population. For 2000, this resulted in a threshold of 2.6 acres per housing unit. Since the target for a tract is 2000 housing units, this would be a tract of over 8 square miles. Exurbanites are likely seeking lower housing costs and/or a more rural lifestyle. A few acres is affordable, and you can put a mobile home on it, or maybe buy a farm house. Someone can buy a small farm and raise some livestock and perhaps have large garden, and lease the rest for crops or perhaps hay. They can commute to the city for income. They may prefer smaller schools for their children.

The Brookings definition may exclude some small towns that have become exurbs. If someone wants to have municipal water and sewer treatment, and an existing house, and perhaps a minimum level of commercial activity (grocery store, cafe, drug store) they can live in the town and commute to work. If they need to buy a car, furniture, clothing, entertainment, they can drive to the city. Because of the target size for census tracts, a small town might have been placed in one or two tracts, with the surrounding rural territory in another.

The third criteria is that the tract has to have a growth rate greater than the MSA as a whole. This appears to be an attempt to characterize exurbs as a trend, rather than merely a demographic type. There are also special rules, that require the exurban tract to have a growth rate of 10% (between 1990-2000) to exclude cases where the MSA as a whole was low growth (or even no growth or negative growth). In addition, tracts with a growth rate of three times the national growth rate are included even if the MSA is growing faster. For 1990-2000, 3X the national growth rate was 39.6%, for 2010-2020 it is closer to 20%. In addition exurban areas are among the slowest growing areas for this decade. That doesn't mean that they no longer exist, just that they are not expanding (as much).

The report then characterizes counties associated with each MSA.

Exurban counties have 20% or more of their population in tracts classified as exurban. Note exurban counties might or might not be parts of an MSA because inclusion in an MSA is based on commuting from the county as a whole, and not just certain parts.

The remainder of the counties of an MSA are characterized by (1) the  share of the county population in central cities greater than 50%, and (2) 95% or more of the population in Urbanized Areas.

A county that satisfies both criteria is classified as Urban.

A county that satisfies one of the criteria is classified as Inner Suburban, and county that classifies neither is Outer Suburban.

Counties such as Los Angeles, CA (Los Angeles, Long Beach); Allegheny, PA (Pittsburgh); and Hamilton, OH (Cincinnati) fail the first test and thus are classified as inner suburban. Counties such as Pima, AZ (Tucson); Guilford, NC (Greensboro); and Travis, TX (Austin) fail the second test and thus are also classified as inner suburban.
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