So, What is Really Urban? (suburban, Detroit, population, park)
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I was reading a thread on here when I came across a post that mentioned Nebraska is 70 percent urban. That caused me to look up my state as well and others, sure enough my state is at 70 percent as well.
First of all I don't think of my state as a heavily urban state, suburban towns don't really scream urban to me in Michigan. Around the Detroit area you can see what is/was or could be, but it's just different.
When I think of urban living, Chicago, NYC, Philly and other cities come to mind as a real urban experience. Technically, the small town near me can be called urban, but it just isn't in reality. It is just a small homely town. Which there are a lot of in this country.
This subject has been beaten to death on these boards...but it's sure to be a never ending debate.
Also, that could be percent of population that lives in an urban area. That definition is more broad and generally just means a highly developed area. Usually measured by census tracts.
Well there's basically two definitions of urban. One involves dividing the country into two areas, rural and urban areas, with urban areas including cities their suburbs and I think often smaller towns (urban clusters), urban in this case more or less means the "built up area"... even though some of the least dense suburbs aren't very built up.
The other definition involves separating urban areas into suburban and urban.
The census definition uses urban to mean "not rural". They don't distinguish between urban and suburban. Urban according to the census requires a population cluster of at least 50,000 people, in contiguous census tracts of 1,000 people per square mile. If a census tract is surrounded with census tracts of that density or above on all sides it is counted as urban even if its density is lower. This is to count preserved city/suburban parkland, industrial land with low population as urban.
An urban cluster is the same but with 2500-50,000 people may get counted as small city. Usually lumped in with rural, but historically was counted as urban.
The census definition uses urban to mean "not rural". They don't distinguish between urban and suburban. Urban according to the census requires a population cluster of at least 50,000 people, in contiguous census tracts of 1,000 people per square mile. If a census tract is surrounded with census tracts of that density or above on all sides it is counted as urban even if its density is lower. This is to count preserved city/suburban parkland, industrial land with low population as urban.
An urban cluster is the same but with 2500-50,000 people may get counted as small city. Usually lumped in with rural, but historically was counted as urban.
Ah, so I see urban in this case is basically just developed. Very loose meaning then, I've always thought of urban as like the main city in a state or something along those lines.
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