What is your definition of rural?

36 comments

1. Population density, and the housing options within an area. That’s usually how I do it.

2. Low population density, few population centers, agrarian economy

3. No public transit at all = rural.

4. I live in a cornfield. Rural.

5. Country kid here.

   I don’t know how to describe it, but I know it when I see it

6. The US is huge and quite geographically diversified and therefore It’s quite variable by location, but if you’re supplying either/or your own water or septic system, you’re either rural or bordering rural.

   No municapal water or and/or sewers? You’re not urban or even suburban but you could be a category you’ve not noted. A rural community, where it’s small but fairly well settled, land is sometimes acreage and no municipal services are provided.

7. Where theres only two lane roads.

8. 30 minutes or more from a Target

9. How far it is to the nearest cow

10. How far is the nearest grocery store? I grew up at least 25 minutes away from any sort of commerce, a Walmart, a 7/11, a McDonald’s, etc. To me that’s what defines rural

11. If there’s no GameStop or bestbuy within 20 miles

12. If you’re within a mile or two from a large farm (i.e., one where a farmer makes their living), you’re probably in a rural area.

13. Not urban, not suburban

14. To me it’s somewhere where buildings are sparse and there’s a lot of farming or industry.

    Most would call my hometown “rural” but it was more like “suburban neighborhoods interspersed with extra long roads with no sidewalks and therefore even less walkable.” There was farming, but buildings weren’t sparse, it was just a lot of houses. Like, driving through some areas of suburbs feels way more like my hometown than other rural towns I’ve been to do.

15. Counties in which greater than 70% of the acreage is agricultural land.

16. If you have to “go into town” to grab something.

17. Houses are sparse…there are little commercial businesses…far distance from major cities

18. Where the stone walls are the property lines.

19. I would go with a neighborhood population density. Suburban being .5 to 6 households per acre. Urban being more than that, rural being less. But there would be other conditions as well. A neighborhood of huge mansions where each one takes up a several acre lot will not be rural.

    Urban I am going to define as mixed use, where people live and do business within the same physical area. Not all urban areas have neighborhoods, but typically urban neighborhoods will have densities higher than 6 homes per acre (and in some cases 200 households per acre). Ideally things you need for every day life are in your urban neighborhood. Suburban is lower density, things you need might be on the outskirts of your neighborhood but the layout is intended way to get around for nearly all tasks is a car.

    Urban areas can physically be very small. Small towns in America will frequently be very large, things will be miles apart. My friend was telling me how her kids dislike their local small town in Indiana and how it only has 15,000 people. Ok. But the town is actually about a third the size of San Francisco, its just everything is super spread out and its full of enormous parking lots and wide roads.

20. No big chain grocery store.

21. If you stand on your front porch naked and no one sees you it’s Rural

    If you stand on your front porch naked and someone calls the cops it’s Suburban

    If you stand on your front porch naked and no one cares/notices it’s Urban

22. It all depends on population density and how many buildings you see when you look around yourself.

23. I can see cows from my window. I’d call that rural

24. My definition changes depending on who I’m talking to. I live in a decent sized town, but to people who live in cities, I’m “rural.” But to people who live on farms where you have to drive 15 minutes to reach a town, I’m a city person.

    To *me*, rural is a very small town (think a place that has *maybe* one grocery store) and is far removed from any large cities. Any community smaller qualifies as rural as well (including people who live alone on farms).

    Urban is a city with with more than two lanes of traffic for at least one of their roads (meaning, two or more vehicles could be driving the same direction side by side without hitting parked cars). It’s a little hard for me to fully nail it down, but that’s the broadest definition I could think of without getting too wordy.

    Suburban is a nightmare of squiggly roads and a billion single-family houses that all look very similar, if not the same, and it’s connected to an urban city.

    Those are the only words I’m aware of and *none* of them feel right for mid to large towns, so I’ve never known how to answer when filling out a survey that asks me to pick one of those three options for where I live. Too urban to be rural. Too rural to be urban. Too far from any city to be suburban.

25. Anywhere without an IKEA, Costco and good Chinese food.

26. Large plots of farmland, a lack of sidewalks, and 2 lane roads with dotted yellow lines

27. Rural = I can stand in my back yard shooting guns and none of my neighbors will hear it

28. If my neighbors are farther than I can throw a rock and the fence dividing our properties is barbed wire, and i have to drive more than 15min to the grocery store, it’s rural.

29. Rural can be one of two things.

    It can be a dense small town, but one that it very far from a city or suburb. Like in Alaska we have a bunch of toens that are little pockets of people surrounded by wilderness and a flight or boat ride away from somewhere else. Little “islands” whether that be created by actual water, or just this like mountain passes.

    Or rural can be low density like in food producing regions.

    For me it is almost the level of concrete and driving lanes that defines what a place is.

30. In my part of the country (northern Maine) it’s fields, woods, rivers, and usually a small downtown with a grocery store, gas station, and sometimes a small diner.

31. In rural areas towns are not adjacent to other towns, there’s farmland in between.

    In urban areas the city is big enough to be broken down into neighborhoods.

    Suburbs are in between the two and are adjacent to each other and to the urban city. They ring the city.

    These are generalizations and there are exceptions.

32. Farm fields

33. Number of Farmersonly users per capita

34. I would say being an hour from a city with 100k people. Of course there are some exceptions to this, but it is sort of what I’ve noticed.

35. Cows.

36. Areas without planned housing or business developments.