| A perennial concern of census agencies is "how does one differentiate urban versus rural population." At first glance, the concern may be dismissed by a casual observer because all nations have legally defined cities, thus one could simply tabulate the population within and outside of cities. However, the problem is much more complex because legally defined cities are often arbitrary with respect to the placement of their boundaries.;Since the 1950 U.S. census the Census Bureau has delineated urbanized areas. The criteria for carrying out this process underwent a major overhaul in the 2000 census, and the delineation of the 2010 urbanized areas was subject to criteria that were much more spatially explicit and GIS oriented than any previous censuses. The exact GIS methods, however, have not been made public. This paper serves as an assessment of the current urbanized area delineation process as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau. After converting all phrased criteria into executable GIS methods they were applied to both the 2010 data and 2000 data. By retroactively applying the new criteria to the 2000 data, one is be able to assess if the criteria changes for 2010, including the introduction of land cover data, have improved the urbanized delineation process. Recommendations regarding further improvements are also addressed with the goal of allowing the process to better capture the urban footprint. |
