[vel0city]

> that's where the majority of industry happens to be.

The majority of certain kinds of industry. Finance, software, fashion, marketing, sure. I grew up surrounded by people working at chemical plants, rotating shifts at off-site drilling platforms, dock workers, etc. The other side of town, ranchers. Another side of town, sugar processing and sugar farms. Other than the dock workers and offside drillers (on their off-times) potentially being more urban-adjacent, neither of these two industries are really dense urban area kinds of industry.

Then, up the highway a bit, was Houston.

I don't see many car manufacturing plants deep in dense urban areas in the US. Loads of large manufacturing in the US happens well outside those dense urban areas. Living in most dense US cities is expensive. Real estate is way more expensive. Imagine trying to build commercial airliners in Manhattan or San Francisco.

[nrr]

I think you might be reading stricter definitions into some words than I intended.

If Everett, WA; Renton, WA; and North Charleston, SC, are not urbanized areas, what are they?

If a factory with a ZIP code in San Antonio, TX, isn't in a city, where is it?

Going closer to home for me: is Red Bud, IL, not a city? Hecker? Freeburg? Mascoutah? Belleville?

That city job I wrote about was not in St. Louis.

[vel0city]

I can see our miscommunication here. I feel we need more resolution between the binary of urban and rural.

Where I grew up we'd have the neighbors cows wander into our yard and eat our plants when they got out. The Census defined it as urban.

So when I see Renton, WA and you ask if it's "urban", well yeah I'd agree it's urban by the census and limited binary choices. Is it "urban" like San Francisco or Manhattan or even Seattle? Not even close, it's far from that still. It's almost all single family detached homes.

[nrr]

I don't disagree that more resolution is needed, but we do need to start somewhere when it comes to what truly is rural.

For me, the occasional farm interspersed between single-family homes (or the occasional subdivision of single-family homes interspersed between farms, same deal), strip malls, and Boeing Field (or, in my case, Scott AFB) isn't it. That's merely the outskirts of town.

Alternatively, if you have any chance at all of being reached by anything other than a 50 kW AM radio station from a major city like KMOX, you're probably some semblance of urban.

Similarly, if you can have mail delivered to your street address and not merely a shared delivery point, you're probably some semblance of urban.

Densely urban? No, absolutely not.