What would an American define as rural area?

26 comments

  1. Visible cows and other livestock from a given road. Lots of grass/vegetation compared to paved areas. More unfinished roads. Generally agricultural vibes.

  3. The American census bureau has a pretty specific way of defining “rural.”

    https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/geo-areas/urban-rural.html

    In fact, I just read a story in the news about how their definition of “rural” has changed slightly, so that many towns that were “urban” are now “rural.” This changes the flow of money from the federal government, and has other effects.

    https://apnews.com/article/census-bureau-urban-rural-redefining-smaller-areas-322bb1a04109bd7eda8c6994e3456bd0

    The average American probably just associates “rural” with a lot of farmland and a low population density.

    I live in a city of more than 200,000 people but you can drive 30 minutes out of town and be in an area that feels totally rural, even though it’s within the same county and even though people who live there can easily commute for work into the city.

  6. Anecdotally, it’s subjective. It’s one of those “you know it when you see it” things. Officially, there’s the census information that someone posted.

    The county I live in has about 13 people per square mile, but most of that is in the couple of towns. Remove the towns and the density is cut in half. There are 7 stoplights in the entire county, some of the adjacent ones have zero. It’s 11 miles for me to get to a store or post office. For most Americans, this is pretty rural because most Americans don’t live in places less populated than this.

  8. I’d consider rural ‘quaintish’ and generally farther away from the larger urban centres – the US generally neglects its rural areas so they tend to be a bit more backwater due to outdated/patchwork infrastructure – but it’s also a bit of a culture thing. Entire states can be ‘rural’/’urban’, especially smaller ones on the eastcoast and bigger ones in the centre where there’s a fat load of nothing.

    There’s a longstanding rivalry between urban and rural populations in the States, which traces its way back to the times in which people went out into the wilderness and set up small towns where they could live low-key lives far away from the larger cities where money and the rat race ruled all. Today that rural, anti-yuppie culture is represented in the countryside, where people make a point of living simpler, oppose government regulation, and keep guns for self-defense, etc. So while some technically ‘rural’ towns might in fact be far-flung suburbs of a central big city and therefore more urban than they appear, you can generally tell you’re in true Rural territory when the culture shifts.

  11. I always think of rural as being a place with very few people and amenities. Like, it should take at least 30 minutes to drive to the closest grocery store. I live in a county with a lot of “rural” land as defined by the USDA and some of the houses are packed so close to each other you can hear your neighbor taking a dump.

  12. I don’t think I could give a definition but I can list a series of traits that most rural areas have. Small towns. There should be enough crop or livestock fields of some kind that you have to drive through them to get just about anywhere. Usually republican dominated. Lower population and the population is spread out. Not much of local government providing things, so few public parks, education, and things like that(note that this is also common in inner city areas which are NOT in any way rural). Everyone knows everybody and there are often social rules that an entire town follows that outsiders would see as very strange, much in the way that a family would have strange habits, because of the low population.

  13. If there are people playing dueling banjos, deliverance style, while giving you a side eye.

  15. If you’ve been late for work because you had to follow a combine down the road for 20 miles, you’re in a rural area.

    If your biggest concern driving at night is hitting deer, you’re in a rural area.

    If you can see where the towns are in the distance because the grain elevators stick up, you’re in a rural area.

  16. Rural: you pee in your front yard and nobody can see you.

    Suburban: you pee in your front yard and someone calls the cops.

    Urban: you pee in your front yard and nobody cares.

  18. Not a major city or surrounding suburban/exurban area. Small towns surrounded by farms or natural landscape.

  19. When I say I lived in a rural area years ago, I lived across the street from farmland and would regularly get stuck behind tractors and other farming equipment on the two lane roads. We had a single grocery store for a town of 7k and it serviced towns more remote than ours. It was 30-45 minutes to the nearest Walmart, driving past pastures and farmland just to get to the interstate.

    For me, that’s how I picture a rural environment.

  20. Everyone has their own standards. I’ve known people who claimed to live in the country but when you visit their house it’s just a big suburban lot and they’re 5 minutes from Walmart. I also once got downvoted on reddit for pointing out that a city of 100,000 in Texas was not rural, so I think there are a lot of people who like to delude themselves into thinking they are rural, when they clearly aren’t.

    I’d like to say the main difference is that you start to get into farms, ranches, and forests, but in Albuquerque we have areas like Corrales and the South Valley that have a lot of small-scale agriculture but are totally surrounded by urban and suburban areas and are accessible by city bus, and thus hard to describe as truly rural. For me I guess it has to be culturally and governmentally separate from any city or large town.

  21. I live 40 miles north of Kansas City. The only amenities we have are a Subway, a Dollar General, a small grocery store, and gas station. We have houses all around us, yet it doesn’t feel like a suburb. It feels so isolated. That is what I would define as rural despite the lack of sprawl.

  25. It’s subjective. But, in my opinion, if you’re walking distance from a farm, you’re in a rural area.

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