Overview
Methods of designating the urban periphery range from the use of
municipal boundaries to definitions based on counties. Definitions
based on municipal boundaries may classify as rural much of what
would typically be considered suburban. Definitions that delineate
the urban periphery based on counties may include extensive
segments of a county that many would consider rural.
We have selected a representative set of nine alternative rural
definitions and compare social and economic indicators from the
2000 decennial census across the nine definitions. We chose
socioeconomic indicators (population, education, poverty, etc.)
that are commonly used to highlight differences between urban and
rural areas.