alt Hacker News> The census designation of rural is very stringent and you basically need more cows than people to meet it.
Not true. The census actually doesn't really bother to define rural other than "not urban". So then it comes down to what the urban definition is. The urban definition is:
> To qualify as an urban area, the territory identified according to criteria must encompass at least 2,000 housing units or have a population of at least 5,000.
https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/g...
> most do not live in any sort of "city" in the colonial sense
What do you mean about "the colonial sense"?
> it may be called one on paper
Its called a city on paper because it is a city.
> The average and median american lives in some kind of suburb
Suburbs, which usually exist in cities, yes. That's how we've built our cities here in the US, as sprawling suburbs.
> But at the end of the day it is somewhere that's not walkable/bike-able without being at a severe time disadvantage to car/bus transport in the typical
I mean I agree with that, hence my first comment being "I do agree most students in the US arrive by bus or car". Is being walkable a requirement for a city to be a city?
>Not true. The census actually doesn't really bother to define rural other than "not urban". So then it comes down to what the urban definition is. The urban definition is: 2k houses/5k people
Right, and when you look at the size of these areas thats a really low bar
>What do you mean about "the colonial sense"?
Colloquial. Autocorrect
>Its called a city on paper because it is a city.
Not necessarily. The entire country is absolutely littered with small towns of say 40k population or less that are cities for administrative reasons either because they're incorporated that way or some other reason like being locally more important 100yr ago. Many of these "cities" are tens of thousands of people smaller, and way less dense, than bedroom community suburbs around major cities that are incorperated as towns and nobody would call a city.