Colleagues,
We had an interesting discussion a while back on urban-rural definitions and it prompted me to look at the latest Census Bureau definitions that came out in late December
https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/geo-areas/urban-rural.html
I'm looking at some of the changes -- in a nutshellf the 'urban' definition was restricted to a minimum 5,000 (up from 2,500) population OR 2,000 housing units (a new metric), causing a number of places between 2,500 and 5,000 population to change from 'urban' to 'rural' and a handful of places with low population but high housing units (they seem to be spots for vacation rentals or second homes) to change from 'rural' to 'urban'
My question since there are so many involved with grants and other funding support here -- does this make any practical difference for funding? Preliminary questioning led me to documentation like this suggesting that, at least for health care, this Urban Area definition is not considered useful for funding purposes because it doesn't follow county or municipal boundaries. BUT under certain conditions the presence of a UA can determine whether an 'outlying' county in a metro can be considered rural. "Starting in FY 2022, we’ll consider all outlying metro counties without a UA to be rural." according to this https://www.hrsa.gov/rural-health/about-us/what-is-rural
Has anybody heard of any effects of these changed 'rural' definitions on funding or anything else as a practical matter? I'm having a hard time finding specific cases, if you know of any I'd love to hear on or off the list -- Tim Henderson, Pew Stateline
oh and JamiRae i see now that your first link mentions the presence of a UA as a criteria, I think this is a source of confusion because the new changes do away with the distinction between Urban Area and Urban Cluster, so at the time these criteria were written an "Urban Area" was at least 50,000 population.
True - the definitions have changed so the link I provided is probably not yet updated. My point was just to show that there are grants and federal funding opportunities that are tied to the urban/rural definitions. Additionally USDOT/FHWA has a process that allows regions to "smooth" their Census designated urban boundaries which has not yet happened for the new definitions. Since the urban boundaries are designated based on population/housing, this provides a way to include transportation infrastructure that makes more sense to be included in an urban area (such as a high traffic corridor going to a business or employment center just outside an urban area. The revised boundaries can then be used for Federal transportation funding - there's a lot of criteria that goes into it. I'm generalizing here. Looks like they have some updated guidance on the website if you are curious to learn more: www.fhwa.dot.gov/.../page07.cfm