Any map showing which Counties are Urban/Suburban/Exurban/Rural/etc? (user search)
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March 28, 2024, 06:04:49 PM
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  Any map showing which Counties are Urban/Suburban/Exurban/Rural/etc? (search mode)
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Author Topic: Any map showing which Counties are Urban/Suburban/Exurban/Rural/etc?  (Read 1414 times)
muon2
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« 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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muon2
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« Reply #1 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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