Is urban sprawl overrunning the countryside? To answer this question, it is important to define the difference between urban and rural. The Census Bureau is proposing to change its definition, but I don’t believe the proposed change makes sense.
Is this urban or rural? Under the Census Bureau’s old definition, it is urban, but by its new definition, it is rural. Photo by Visitor7.
In 1900, the line between urban and rural was pretty easy. If land was in an incorporated city, it was urban. If it was outside the city limits, it was rural. The main transportation of the day was streetcars, and if you couldn’t get somewhere on a streetcar, it wouldn’t be developed. If a developer built a new streetcar line outside the city and developed that area (which is how most suburban streetcar lines got built), the city would quickly annex the newly developed land.
That easy distinction changed with the availability of affordable automobiles. Anyone could drive outside of town, buy a bit of land, and put up a house. As people did so, they often resisted being annexed into the city.
In about 1960, the Census Bureau decided that any group of 50,000 or more people living at densities of about 1,000 people per square mile or more, whether in an incorporated area or not, was an urbanized area. Further, any group of 2,500 to 49,999 people at such densities was an urban cluster.
Under more recent refinements, any census tracts with 500 people per square mile or more that were adjacent to areas with 1,000 people per square mile were also considered urban. Any land outside of a cluster of 2,500 or more people was rural. Inside the urban areas or clusters, parks and other undeveloped areas would still be considered urban.
Under the new definition, the 2,500 threshold is increased to 5,000. Alternatively, the new definition also counts residences: any area with 2,000 residences at specific densities would be considered an urban cluster even if it didn’t have 5,000 people. But this also is a problem: under the new definition, urban land can have 425 residences per square mile at the core and 200 at the periphery but must have a high-density nucleus of 1,275 residences per square mile. There are some major cities, such as Oklahoma City, that probably don’t have 1,275 residences per square mile anywhere in the city.
In judging this definition, I have to go by my own experience. I’m pretty familiar with Bandon, Oregon, a town of about 3,000 people. Bandon has a thriving downtown, two supermarkets, a library, police force, city park, microbrewery, hotels, restaurants, hundreds of houses on 50×100 city lots, and other hallmarks of a city. If someone was dropped in the middle of it without being told where they were, they would have a hard time guessing whether they were in a town of 3,000 or 300,000.
Yet under the Census Bureau’s new definition, Bandon has switched from being a urban area to a rural area. The 2010 census found that the Bandon urban cluster had about 3,100 people. Today it would be a little higher but well short of 5,000. Although it is something of a resort community, and thus has many vacation homes, it has fewer than 1,600 residences, so would not pass the 2,000-residence threshold either.
I’m also familiar with Camp Sherman, an unincorporated community in the Oregon Cascade Mountains. The 2010 census classified it as a “census-defined place” and said it had about 250 full-time residents. Some of the homes are clustered in groups of 20 or so, but most of the homes and groups are well separated from one another.
Camp Sherman has one retail outlet that is open seven days a week in the summer but only three days a week the rest of the year. It mainly sells souvenirs to tourists, tackle to anglers, and a few groceries, such as milk and eggs, to campers. To me, Camp Sherman is plainly rural.
How many people does a cluster have to house before it is considered urban? My answer is more than 250, but less than 3,000. The 2,500 threshold worked for me; 5,000 seems deceptive as it incorrectly classifies places like Bandon.
Under the old definition, 2.5 percent of the land in the United States was in an urbanized area of 50,000 people or more and another 0.5 percent was in an urban cluster of 2,500 to 49,999 in 2020. The new definition will not change this much, perhaps reducing the total amount of urban land in 2010 to 2.9 percent instead of 3.0 percent. That’s not a big change.
If I’m going to use census data to argue that urban development is not paving over the country, however, I’m going to have a hard time defending the idea that cities like Bandon are not urban. Unfortunately, I missed the opportunity to comment on this new definition when it was proposed in 2021. Instead, when the Census Bureau uses this new definition, I’ll have to add in the areas of clusters of 2,500 to 5,000 people just to feel comfortable with results.
In today’s WSJ …
And Just Like That, America Becomes More Rural —
Census update of a century-old definition highlights the arbitrary nature of urban-rural distinction
https://www.wsj.com/articles/and-just-like-that-america-becomes-more-rural-11672963347?st=r8b421cec4kshps&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
The Antiplanner was first with the news.
In 1900 getting around was by foot or horse. Most of the country did not live in cities where streetcars ran. And most of those living the cities could not afford to regularly ride the trolley.
kx1781,
Actually, by 1902, every American city of more than 15,000 people and two-thirds of cities from 5,000 to 15,000 people had streetcars. Otherwise, everything you said is true, and it doesn’t change anything I said: until automobiles became affordable, there wasn’t much “urban” land outside of incorporated cities.
@Antiplanner: What do you thin is the motive behind this change in definition?
ARThomas,
The only motive I can think of is simplicity — the Census Bureau wants to save work for itself. But there could be something more sinister, though I don’t know what.
Line eh…… like some kind of urban boundary?
*curb your enthusiasm theme plays