Full Citation
Title: On the "Urbanness" of Metropolitan Areas: Testing the Homogeneity Assumption,1970-2000
Citation Type: Journal Article
Publication Year: 2009
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Abstract: In recent decades, population dynamics, have made definitions of what localities are rural or urban somewhat unclear. The vast majority of demographic work has simply used metropolitan classifications with various forms of a nonmetropolitan residual (e.g., adjacent to metro versus non-adjacent). The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) periodically redefines metropolitan areas, whichmakes temporal comparisons difficult. In fact, some demographers have offered the idea that, due to these shifting reclassifications, the so-called rural rebound is a misnomer, in that non-metropolitan counties that transitioned to metropolitan status were, in fact, already more urban than those that did not become reclassified asmetropolitan (Johnson et al 2005). This argument depends largely on the assumption of homogeneity in rural or urban character in those counties. Following argumentsby others (Wilkinson 1991; Isserman 2001; Bogue 1950), we take population and land use into account to examine whether these transitional counties were more or less urban than comparable others, all at the county level for the contiguous 48 states for 19702000. Our results show that adjacent non-metropolitan counties that were later reclassified as metropolitan were indeed characterized by a larger population and heavier urban land cover than those not making this transition. However, the results also show that metropolitan areas were also quite heterogeneous in terms of traditionally rural activities. A discussion of the homogeneity assumption in demographers conceptualization of metropolitan areas is included.
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Authors: Porter, Jeremy; Howell, Frank M.
Periodical (Full): Population Research and Policy Review
Issue: 5
Volume: 28
Pages: 589-613
Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS
Topics: Housing and Segregation
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