Where Do We Live - Town And Country, Now And Then

Rural and Urban Population 1790 to 2000

The graphic depicts how we have lived for most of the history of the United States. Until somewhere in the late 1910s, we were predominantly a rural country living on farms or in small towns. Since 1920, we've become ever more urban. In 2000, 80% of us lived in large metropolitan areas. Within those areas, the majority of us (62.2% — just shy of two-thirds) lived in areas classified by the government as suburbs. A more exact subdivision is shown in the following table:

Where the Population Lived (% of total population)

The table shows that the population is growing in the urbanized areas (or moving there) and that within the metro areas, the growth is in the suburbs, whether by increase or by relocation.

While these data show "share of the living space," and two of the categories show losses in "share," all of these sectors had positive population increase as shown in the next table.

Annual Rate of Population growth, 1970 to 2000 -%

Population grew at a faster rate in the nonmetropolitan areas than in central cities. The strongest growth was experienced in the suburbs.

Note, please, that the concept "metropolitan area" first came to be officially fixed in 1949 by the Bureau of the Budget, predecessor of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (part of the Office of the President) an office that still defines the standards for city designations. Since that time, the definition of an urban area has changed at regular intervals. The last change was made in 1999.

Under the current definition, a Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) must be a city with 50,000 or more people or an urbanized core area, e.g., a county, of the same size and a total area population of 100,000 (75,000 in New England). Within these areas, the central city or county is the densely urbanized core; areas beyond it are suburbs. The suburbs, of course, are usually incorporated places with distinct names of their own.¹

We make these necessary distinctions by way of indicating that the "nonmetropolitan" areas should not be visualized as lonely farms in the country. They are sometimes that. They are also small towns with small-to-moderate-populations.

In the next panel we look more closely at recent years in the context of population density.

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1990 Census Tabulations, "Population and Housing Unit Counts," and "Population Change and Distribution," Census Bureau 2000 Brief, April 2001 for historical and 2000 population data. Data on suburbs from the SOCDS database, distributed by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Online. Available: socds.huduser.org/index.html and from Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2001, 121^st ed. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2001, Appendix II, p.892.