Urbanized Areas Released by Census Bureau for 2010 Census

Every decennial census, the Census Bureau releases reconfigured maps showing the new urban areas across the country. Urban areas, and especially urbanized areas which are a subset of the urban area, are especially important to local and regional governments since a HUGE amount of federal funding is based on this designation. Many federal resources have an urban component geared toward basing its funding awards on the size of the urbanized area being served. This is especially true of many highway and traffic safety programs.

In the Census 2000, the Herkimer Oneida Counties region lost two major parts of its "urbanized area" due to changes in the definitions at that time. Rome got excluded from the urbanized area and was re-categorized as an "urban cluster", while the main swath of villages in the valley in Herkimer County were eliminated from either category. While they remained "urban" they were deemed neither part of the "urbanized area" or part of any "urban cluster".

This exclusion of population from the region's urbanized area resulted in considerable loss of federal aid that otherwise would have been available. Simply put, fewer people in the redefined urbanized area resulted in access to less funding.

For the Census 2010, the main concepts of the "urbanized area" definitions in the Census 2000 were kept, with a few tweaks added. The result for our region is a similar looking urbanized area - one that shows a slight increase of roughly 4,000 people over the population found inside of its boundaries during the Census 2000.

Below, then, are three maps worth looking at - the NEW urbanized areas and clusters for 2010, the OLD urbanized areas and clusters from 2000, and a map showing the old areas imposed on top of the new ones for comparison sake.

2010 Urban Areas	2000 Urban Areas	2010 and 2000 Comparison

A Brief History of What It Is to Be Urban or Rural

Statistics have been split into urban and rural categories in decennial census publications for over a century. The definition of "urban" has changed over time in response to changes in settlement patterns, data use needs, and technology available for use in defining urban areas. The Census Bureau has continued to define "rural" as all territory, persons, and housing units not defined as urban. In the censuses of 1880, 1890, and 1900, places were deemed urban based on minimum population sizes of 8,000, 4,000, and 2,500 inhabitants respectively.

Beginning in 1910, the minimum population threshold to be categorized as an urban place was set at 2,500. "Urban" was defined as including all territory, persons, and housing units within an incorporated area that met the population threshold. The 1920 census marked the first time in which over 50 percent of the U.S. population was defined as urban.

The Census Bureau revised the urban definition for the 1950 census by adopting the urbanized area concept, to better account for increased growth in suburban areas outside incorporated places of 50,000 or more population. This change made it possible to define densely-populated but unincorporated territory as urban. The Census Bureau continued to identify as urban those places that had populations of 2,500 or more and were located outside urbanized areas. The Census Bureau also officially identified unincorporated places (referred to as census designated places (CDPs) starting with the 1980 census) located outside urbanized areas for the first time in 1950, and designated as urban any that contained at least 2,500 people within its boundaries. In 1960, the Census Bureau also adopted a population density threshold of at least 1,000 people per square mile for urbanized areas.

In the Census 2000, the Census Bureau adopted the urban cluster concept, for the first time defining relatively small, densely settled clusters of population using the same approach as was used to define larger urbanized areas of 50,000 or more population, and no longer identified urban places located outside urbanized areas. In addition, all urbanized areas and urban clusters were delineated solely on population density, without reference to place boundaries (for the 1950 through 1990 censuses, places were included in, or excluded from, urbanized areas in their entirety; exceptions were made for incorporated places containing substantial amounts of sparsely populated territory).

For the 2010 Census, the Census Bureau will be relying largely on what was established in the 2000 Census. An urban area will comprise a densely settled core of census tracts and/or census blocks that meet minimum population density requirements, along with contiguous territory containing nonresidential urban land uses as well as territory with low population density included to link outlying densely settled territory with the densely settled core. To qualify as an urban area on its own, the territory identified according to the criteria must encompass at least 2,500 people, at least 1,500 of which reside outside institutional group quarters. Urban areas that contain 50,000 or more people are designated as urbanized areas (UAs); urban areas that contain at least 2,500 and less than 50,000 people are designated as urban clusters (UCs). The term "urban area" refers to both UAs and UCs. The term "rural" encompasses all population, housing, and territory not included within an urban area.