Any map showing which Counties are Urban/Suburban/Exurban/Rural/etc?
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  Political Geography & Demographics (Moderators: muon2, 15 Down, 35 To Go)
  Any map showing which Counties are Urban/Suburban/Exurban/Rural/etc?
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Author Topic: Any map showing which Counties are Urban/Suburban/Exurban/Rural/etc?  (Read 1415 times)
America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS
Solid4096
Junior Chimp
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« on: March 24, 2019, 02:34:03 PM »

It would be interesting to see.
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ExtremeRepublican
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« Reply #1 on: March 24, 2019, 03:01:03 PM »

There are two problems with this.  First, no one can agree on definitions for these terms.  Second, within counties, there can be massive variation.  For instance, where I live (Williamson County, TN) is usually considered suburban, but the western ~40% of the county is very rural and sparsely populated and the Cool Springs area is almost starting to feel urban if you look at its "skyline" from some surrounding roads.
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Cokeland Saxton
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« Reply #2 on: March 24, 2019, 05:25:55 PM »

What Extreme Conservative said. Elkhart County is considered urban with its population of 205,032 as of 2017, although half of that is just in the northwest quadrant where Elkhart is, with another 40k in Elkhart Township, which is Goshen and its vicinity. This makes the remaining 11 townships quite rural in character. Also, Benton County, depite a population of just 8,613 in 2017, is not considered rural due to being part of the Lafayette MSA.
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diptheriadan
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« Reply #3 on: March 24, 2019, 05:55:23 PM »

I think Adam Griffin made a map about this. Someone should find it and get a mod to sticky it.
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diptheriadan
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« Reply #4 on: March 25, 2019, 03:25:03 PM »

Found it, though it doesn't appear to have been finished.

There was also a website about this.
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RINO Tom
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« Reply #5 on: March 25, 2019, 04:04:38 PM »

On this topic in general, we really need more categories than that.  Where I currently live for a few more months (Iowa City, IA) is quite literally none of these, IMO.
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RINO Tom
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« Reply #6 on: March 25, 2019, 05:23:46 PM »

On this topic in general, we really need more categories than that.  Where I currently live for a few more months (Iowa City, IA) is quite literally none of these, IMO.

A flagship university town is very much urban.

I mean, when forced to choose one of those?  Maybe.  But there should be both a "college/university town" and a "medium sized city."
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TML
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« Reply #7 on: March 26, 2019, 01:17:01 AM »

Even within one county, there could be parts of it which can fall under more than one classification. For example, in Suffolk County, New York (where I currently work and could soon be living in), there is one part (the westernmost part) which I consider suburban, another part (the central part) which I consider exurban, and another part (the easternmost part) which I consider rural.
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muon2
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« Reply #8 on: March 26, 2019, 06:12:22 PM »
« Edited: March 26, 2019, 06:16:27 PM by muon2 »

The definitive map is this one from the Census. It shows the metro areas by county and you can see where the high density urbanized areas are within the metro areas. Exurbs generally match to metro counties that lack significant urbanized areas, since they would be primarily commuters. I would guess that most people would think of the micropolitan areas as rural with a significant town within the county.

Note that there is no suburban area, and this was a huge struggle with Griffin's work two years ago. Suburban areas evolve and old ones begin to look urban, and older more distant urban centers can become suburbs as a metro area expands. The term is very subjective, so the Census avoids it.

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Roronoa D. Law
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« Reply #9 on: March 26, 2019, 09:31:43 PM »

What about this?
https://project.wnyc.org/acp/#7/32.524/-98.822
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RI
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« Reply #10 on: March 27, 2019, 05:06:07 PM »


There are many very questionable categorizations on this map.
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DPKdebator
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« Reply #11 on: March 27, 2019, 06:08:23 PM »

There was an unfinished map on that old thread classifying counties in various states, but not all of them. I decided to add New England, and I'll post it here since this thread is on the same topic but is recent.

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jimrtex
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« Reply #12 on: March 27, 2019, 07:26:41 PM »


This Brookings report based on the 2000 Census provides a formal definition. There is a list of classified counties at the end, which I would expect you to produce a map for. I'm not sure that all the data is readily available for producing a 2010 update.

Finding Exurbia: America’s Fast-Growing Communities at the Metropolitan Fringe (pdf)
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FalloutBoy97
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« Reply #13 on: March 27, 2019, 09:05:54 PM »


Interesting map, but I think it's trying to do too many things at once. Some counties are defined by population density while others are defined by race, religion, median age, etc.
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RI
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« Reply #14 on: March 27, 2019, 09:43:51 PM »


This Brookings report based on the 2000 Census provides a formal definition. There is a list of classified counties at the end, which I would expect you to produce a map for. I'm not sure that all the data is readily available for producing a 2010 update.

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

Good link.
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DINGO Joe
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« Reply #15 on: March 28, 2019, 10:51:26 AM »

The definitive map is this one from the Census. It shows the metro areas by county and you can see where the high density urbanized areas are within the metro areas. Exurbs generally match to metro counties that lack significant urbanized areas, since they would be primarily commuters. I would guess that most people would think of the micropolitan areas as rural with a significant town within the county.

Note that there is no suburban area, and this was a huge struggle with Griffin's work two years ago. Suburban areas evolve and old ones begin to look urban, and older more distant urban centers can become suburbs as a metro area expands. The term is very subjective, so the Census avoids it.



The criteria they use, seems a bit lacking  as the Charleston WV shows.  Claiming Clay and Boone counties to part of a "metro" is absurd.
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muon2
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« Reply #16 on: March 28, 2019, 10:59:23 AM »

The definitive map is this one from the Census. It shows the metro areas by county and you can see where the high density urbanized areas are within the metro areas. Exurbs generally match to metro counties that lack significant urbanized areas, since they would be primarily commuters. I would guess that most people would think of the micropolitan areas as rural with a significant town within the county.

Note that there is no suburban area, and this was a huge struggle with Griffin's work two years ago. Suburban areas evolve and old ones begin to look urban, and older more distant urban centers can become suburbs as a metro area expands. The term is very subjective, so the Census avoids it.



The criteria they use, seems a bit lacking  as the Charleston WV shows.  Claiming Clay and Boone counties to part of a "metro" is absurd.

I know jimrtex recently went through that particular example. The advantage of the Census definitions is that they are not subjective. Most suburban classifications are intrinsically subjective or fail to delineate the space of suburban counties adequately.

I think the UCC map jimrtex constructed was a useful way to eliminate the outliers like Clay and Boone WV and keep the significant contributions to metro areas. Many of the counties that got cut in the UCC exercise were ones that were really rural, but had just enough commuter population to make it by the Census definitions and appear to be exurban.

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