alt Hacker NewsFurthermore, the 80% urban stat from the US census gets routinely misinterpreted. Just going through some property line details with a couple neighbors on collectively about 75 acres plus adjacent conservation land. The census considers this urban.
And, as you say, Urban != dense city downtown.
yes, the cutoff for "urban" to not is 2000 housing units in an area. I don't consider that urban, 2000 homes is a decent "town". This is just "othering" of people who live more than 25 minutes from a metro which is what i consider "urban". i am 25 minutes from my nearest metro, and the metro population is smaller than the city i grew up in in california, population-wise.
my point is, talking about Berlin and then carrying that thought over to "americans just love cars" is silly. Germany is smaller than CA, and double the population of california. Most people "in california" live in the "san angeles" range or in the "bay capital" area. a half hour outside of any of those areas and it's either sand or farms or mountains.
and i wish i was "rural", there's ~600 houses within 6mi radius, that's not very rural. It's rural compared to Manhattan, i guess.