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But you are urban. You are near a major city, and adjacent another small one like you said. Urban versus rural is not a measure of closeness to nature, it's a m
by philistine 5y ago
But you are urban. You are near a major city, and adjacent another small one like you said. Urban versus rural is not a measure of closeness to nature, it's a measure of closeness to other humans.
- ghaff 5y agoIt depends on your definitions. A lot of people would object to defining urban as encompassing having to drive anywhere except to connect to immediate neighbors. I can basically go to my two immediate neighbors. Otherwise I have to get in a car. Is that urban?
- thoughtstheseus 5y agoSounds like a suburb. The real inefficient structures.
- briefcomment 5y agoIn what suburb do you have only two neighbors within walking distance?
- mrcartmenez 5y agoDoes America have a concept of walking distance?
- ghaff 5y agoIt's a country road. There are no sidewalks. So no. It's not something you walk along. (And hardly unique to the US.) The ESRI categorization is ex-urban. The basic point is that the census bureau categorizes areas as urban unless they're really rural, as in small and pretty far from an urban center.
- edoceo 5y agoRural is defined in USA here: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rural-classifications/what-is-rural/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rur...
- ghaff 5y agoSo that basically says that essentially no one in the state of MA is rural and that almost no one in the state of CA is rural. Which probably doesn't correspond to how average people think about rural vs. urban. So the fact that I can look off my back deck and see nothing but trees is a reasonable urban environment.
- kbenson 5y ago> and that almost no one in the state of CA is rural Kinda crazy to see the entire I-5 length between San Francisco and Los Angeles classified as "metro". Perhaps the metric they're using doesn't work so well when counties (which is what they classify) are so large, and they primarily care that some city of over 50k people exists in it "somewhere". Some of those counties appear to be as large as or larger than some of the smaller states in the Northeast.
- ghaff 5y agoI'm sure there are reasons for the current classification. But there are certainly differences between I live on a hundred acres but I have decent shopping and culture relatively accessible and the nearest Walmart is 100 miles away. As you suggest, a lot of what is classified as urban is not urban especially by the standards of someone who barely considers the South Bay as urban.
- s0rce 5y agoHuge parts of the California desert are also classified as urban as the counties are so large, some of those places are extremely remote. Even the western central valley, other than i5 cutting through it is remote and sparsely inhabited.
- deleted 5y ago
- ghaff 5y agoAnd, by the way, if you're going to go with binary definitions, it's perfectly reasonable to say that within 30 minutes of a Walmart and within a couple of hours of a significant city is a reasonable benchmark versus truly back of beyond rural. Just just don't expect that to correspond to an urban environment as many people understand that to mean. Certainly I can normally go into town for an evening of theater but most people would consider my house to be in an urban setting.
- kodah 5y agoI don't think your definition of rural matches with people who live in rural areas. Maybe that's why conversations around Urban vs Rural never make sense.