>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.