Learn about population distribution. Understand urban vs. rural populations and how urbanization has affected population distribution in the United States.
Updated: 11/21/2023
Urban vs. Rural Population Distribution | Overview & Differences
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between urban and rural population?
An urban population is situated in and around city areas. It is normally very densely populated. Conversely, a rural population is found in developing regions and is widely spread over large portions of land.
Is a town urban or rural?
A town is urban. This is because of how a town is defined as a location where a population clusters together for economic reasons.
What defines an urban area?
It is an area that is characterized by a dense population of people living in and around cities. These areas commonly form around business industries like communications, finance, and other service providers.
Table of Contents
ShowPopulation distribution refers to how citizens of countries around the world are spread across different geographical areas. These distributions are generally caused by environmental and human factors and often take the form of patterns. Since population movement occurs on a large scale, the distribution of populations is practically always uneven. Significant insight about a region can be gained by establishing its population distribution. Information about populations has become all the more accessible with the rise of technology. Google Earth and countless internet websites offer extensive evaluations of populations on a global and regional level. It is nevertheless important to note that population distribution does not necessarily correlate with a region's degree of development. Highly populated areas are not always very advanced. This is evident in underdeveloped countries such as Nigeria and Bangladesh that have large population numbers that are often concentrated in small regions. This speaks to the definition of population density, which is an aspect that is closely associated with population distribution. It is defined as how tightly the individuals of an area are located together on average.
Physical elements of nature often determine a region's population distribution. Natural elements include deserts, mountains, and dense jungles. People tend to move away from deserts due to the lack of water supply and fertile ground to grow crops. Mountains are not attractive settlement locations for the limited space available for building shelter. Finally, dense jungles like the Amazon forest pose the problem of condensed vegetation that significantly hinders settlement expansion. There is also the aspect of intangible elements that can shift population distributions. Where physical elements historically played a big part in the spreading of people across areas, intangible elements like employment wages, wars, and the threat of wars tend to move people around in the modern age. Citizens have an inherent preference to locate to places where they can earn more money for their skillset. The dangers associated with war zones cause people to flee such areas.
Generally, population distribution is broken down into urban and rural areas. This is for the convenience of understanding citizen allocation across a distinguished zone.
Difference Between Rural and Urban
There is a very distinct contrast between rural areas and urban areas. This is one of the reasons why they are separately categorized as population metrics. In general, rural areas (also known as farmland) are regions that are not significantly built up with respect to infrastructure. Urban areas (also known as metropolises) are geographic zones that are comprised of dense, urban populations. Examples of rural areas are Sedona in the US, the Scottish highlands, the Australian outback, and the Amazon forest. Urban area examples pertain to cities such as New York City, London, and Cairo; however, the definition of urban can differ worldwide. The two types of population distributions are characterized in their population densities, population occupations, infrastructure, and environments.
- Population Density: Rural regions are not densely populated. Individuals are spread widely across an area. Urban zones are in fact densely populated. Elements like residential skyscrapers allow for citizens to be located very close to each other, especially compared to rural residents.
- Population Occupations: Jobs in rural regions are normally tied to the primary sector and are natural-resource-based occupations. People in these regions tend to work as farmers, miners, or hunters. Occupations in urban areas are normally more refined and sophisticated. Urban residents commonly work in service sector positions such as banking, accounting, or hospitality.
- Infrastructure: The infrastructure in rural areas is not as developed compared to urban environments. Rural infrastructure typically includes water wells, windmills, and boreholes. Urban infrastructure is far more sophisticated. In contrast to rural areas, urban regions have subway trains, street lights, and paved streets and sidewalks.
- Environments: The environments of rural zones are normally characterized as open and natural spaces of land. Urbanized regions are often tightly confined and consist of man-made concrete structures like tall buildings.
Population Distribution and the Census Bureau
The Census Bureau is tasked, among other duties, with figuring out rural and metropolitan populations through surveys, questionnaires, and simply counting individuals. Urban and rural areas at the census block level are assigned according to population density. If a region is made up of open land and is occupied by less than 2,500 people, the bureau considers it a rural region. Those areas with a minimum of 50,000 people are urban areas. The bureau further recognizes that urban areas do not always fall within a single municipal jurisdiction. The Yukon-Koyukuk county in Alaska is the most rural area in the US, housing 5,377 citizens on a landmass of 147,804 square miles. The most urbanized location in America is New Jersey, which has a land mass of 8,722 square miles and a population of 8,8 million people.
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The evolution of the United States saw a lot of urban vs. rural transitions as rural zones became towns, and towns then grew into city-sized populations. Towns are small settlements populous enough to be considered urban areas but normally a lot smaller than cities, which are large clusters of individuals and industries. The concept of urbanization was an instrumental factor in the evolution that took place between 1950 and 1990. An urbanized area (UA) refers to the location to which individuals in rural areas migrate. It is in large part driven by the fact that there is a broader number of employment opportunities available in cities. The City of Washington became a city in 1790 following tremendous expansion and industry growth. The growth of cities and towns led to the introduction of census designated places (CDP). These are designated zones where settlements are located that are established in order to keep track of population sizes in different regions.
In 1800, over 90 percent of the world's population was located in rural areas. The US's evolution is evident in that 40 percent of citizens already lived in urban zones by 1900. This trend further shows in the fact that 64 percent of Americans were situated in cities by 1950. On a global scale, this trajectory saw half of the global human population live in urban areas by 2010. This urban expansion resulted in the rise of megacities. These are cities that have more than 10 million people. Under this definition, cities like Tokyo, Mumbai, and Shanghai qualify as megacities.
How Has Urbanization Affected Population Distribution in the United States?
Urban population as a percentage of the total population offers significant insight into the United States' urbanization. In 1960, 69 percent of the total American population was located in cities. This was succeeded by a radical increase to 79 percent by 2000, which was followed by another increase to 82 percent in 2020. The entire world is following this trend, and it is expected that nearly seven billion people will be situated in cities by 2050. Critics suggest that the downside of this is captured in the tremendous amounts of carbon gasses that urban regions will be emitting.
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Population distribution is defined as how a group of people are spread across a designated region. This works hand in hand with population density, which looks at how tightly together or widely spread a group of people are. Population distribution is generally broken down into rural areas and urban areas. Rural areas are characterized by large, open land that houses small populations, whereas urban areas are built-up regions that are identified by concrete buildings and dense populations. Broadly speaking, the two areas are characterized by their population densities, population occupations, infrastructure, and environments.
The Census Bureau is the US's official institution that tracks statistics surrounding population and its distribution. According to its statistics, there was a significant evolution of the United States between 1950 and 1990 as a lot of citizens migrated to cities. This migration is called urbanization, and it is defined as the relocation of rural residents to urbanized regions.
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Video Transcript
Population Density
If you were to take a road trip across almost any country, you would travel through big cities and long stretches of rural towns. On your trip, you might notice that there are varying numbers of people in these different types of areas. This would be an example of a difference in population density, which is the number of people per unit of land area.
In most cases, the big cities would have more people in a small area of land and would therefore have a high population density. On the other hand, most rural areas would have fewer people over more land area and would have a lower population density.
What Are Rural and Urban Areas?
Before discussing the population trends in rural and urban areas, let's examine these terms. According to the United States Census Bureau, an urban area is a city with a population size of more than 2,500 people, and a rural area has a population of less than 2,500 people. This definition can be tricky because it does not include information about the size of the area or the density of the population.
Due to the vague nature of this definition, function is also considered when differentiating these terms. In general, an area is considered rural if most of the residents survive on agriculture or rely on natural resource-based occupations, such as logging or fishing. On the other hand, an area is considered urban when it has residents that do not directly depend on natural resource-based occupations.
Rural vs. Urban
Now that we have a better understanding of what makes an area rural or urban, let's explore the populations of these areas. Although the population density in urban areas is generally higher than in rural areas, the overall size of the population in each location has fluctuated over time. For the majority of human history, most people have lived in rural areas and have survived by hunting, gathering, fishing, farming or other occupations based on nature.
It wasn't until around 300 years ago, during the Industrial Revolution, that the population began to shift. People began to move to urban areas in search of jobs, food, housing, education, healthcare and more social activities.
Urbanization is the term used to describe the shift from rural to urban living and the increased concentration of the human population in densely populated cities. In the mid 1800s, only 2% of the entire human population lived in urban areas. By the 1950s, the percentage of the human population living in urban areas was up to around 29%, and by 2009, that number had reached 50%. This number is expected to increase rapidly and by 2050, it is predicted that over 70% of the human population will live in urban areas.
Similarly to the overall human population, the percentage of people living in urban areas has also increased in the United States. In the early 1900s, around 21% of the United States population lived in urban areas. This number has increased steadily, and in 2013, around 82% of the United States population lived in urban areas.
The Explosion of Urban Areas
As more people move to urban areas, there has been a population explosion in some cities. For example, in 1900 there were only 13 cities worldwide that had a population of over one million. In 2007, there were over 300 cities with populations over one million, and many of those cities had much higher numbers.
Due to this population explosion, a new term has been created for very large cities. Megacities is the term used to describe urban areas with a human population over 10 million people, including Beijing, Cairo and Mumbai. In the United States, the urban areas between Boston and Washington, D.C., are often referred to as a continuous megacity. The region is called 'BosWash' and has around 35 million residents.
Lesson Summary
Now let's review populations and how they are distributed between urban and rural locations. In general, an urban area is a city with a population size of more than 2,500 people and is characterized by having residents that do not directly depend on natural resource-based occupations. Rural areas are described as areas with a population of less than 2,500 people and where most of the residents survive on agriculture or rely on natural resource-based occupations.
For most of human history, the majority of the population has lived in rural areas. However, since the Industrial Revolution, there has been an increase in urbanization. Urbanization is the shift from rural to urban living and the increased concentration of the human population in densely populated cities. From the mid 1800s to 2009, the percentage of the entire human population living in urban areas has increased drastically, from around 2% to over 50%. In addition, urbanization has also been prevalent in the United States. As of 2013, around 82% of the population lived in urban areas.
The large and constant influx of people into urban areas has resulted in the creation of megacities, which are urban areas with a human population over 10 million people. It is predicted that over the coming years, the populations in urban areas will only continue to increase, and urban living will be the normal lifestyle for most people on Earth.
Learning Outcomes
Once you've completed this lesson, you'll be able to:
- Differentiate between urban and rural areas based on population size and whether the majority of occupations are natural resource-based
- Summarize the trend in urbanization starting from about 300 years ago
- Describe what a megacity is and identify examples
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Urban vs. Rural Population Distribution | Overview & Differences
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