how can I classify each U.S. zip code as being in an urban, rural or
suburban geographic area? |
Clarification of Question by
tmac40-ga
on
23 Jun 2005 10:02 PDT
I have a file that identifies the percent of the population living in
rural vs urban settings from the 2000 Census. But how do I define
suburban?
|
Request for Question Clarification by
websearcher-ga
on
23 Jun 2005 11:23 PDT
Hi tmac:
I'm not sure whether you've asked one or two questions above.....
The best method for determining "suburban" areas that I've found is listed at:
Survey Sampling International
URL: http://www.surveysampling.com/ssi_country.jsp?country_id=TS&page_id=id_72&catID=7&subname=precisej&sub_id=0&archive=0
Quote: "What is the definition of SUBURBAN?
Any portion of an MSA county that is not in a Central City is
considered Suburban....What is a CENTRAL CITY?
MSA Central Cities are documented as such by the Office of Management
and Budget (OMB). Once a year, OMB publishes a Metropolitan Areas
booklet which displays all MSAs and their Central Cities. Most MSAs
have Central Cities, but a few do not. Many MSAs have more than one
Central City."
The information they refer to comes (as noted) from the Office of
Management and Budget (which is at the White House website). The most
up-to-date Metropolitan Areas booklet was put out in Feb. 2005:
OMB Bulletin No. 05-02 Appendix
URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/bulletins/fy05/b05-02_appendix.pdf
If you read through the first 3 pages of this report, you'll see that
they are now using the term "principal city" instead of "central
city". The first three lists (List 1, List 2, List 3) contain the
necessary data.
Does the addition of this data/process to the information you already
have allow you to do what you need to do?
If not, another tack you could take is to purchase a ready-made
dataset with zipcodes identified with urban/suburban/rural/etc. I was
able to find some the following example:
MelissaData
URL: http://www.melissadata.com/zd.html
Quote: "ZIP*Data contains the key links you need to pair the 5-digit
ZIP Codes in your list to their corresponding geographic latitude &
longitude coordinates. You can also profile a ZIP Code for demographic
variables related to five Census categories to analyze the prospective
consumers in a ZIP Code....Geographic Area - Number of people broken
down into Urban, Suburban, Farm and Non-farm areas."
If the information I've provided isn't enough for you to complete your
project, please give me/us more details as to what *exactly* you need
done.
Thanks.
websearcher
|
Clarification of Question by
tmac40-ga
on
23 Jun 2005 11:52 PDT
Yes, I know you can assume any urban setting outside a central city is
a suburb. That had been suggested to me. I guess I was hoping for a
better alternative.
|
Request for Question Clarification by
websearcher-ga
on
23 Jun 2005 12:09 PDT
Hi tmac40:
Better in what way?
websearcher
|
Request for Question Clarification by
pafalafa-ga
on
23 Jun 2005 12:36 PDT
tmac40-ga,
Take a look at the coding system defined on this page:
http://www.fammed.washington.edu/wwamirhrc/rucas/descript.html
The codes are not only quite specific in terms of the amount of
citification going on:
7. Small town Census tract
[primary flow within small Census Bureau defined Urban Place (>= 2,500
& <10,000 & >30%)]
but they even include sub-codes with still more detail:
7.1 secondary flow (30-50%) to urbanized area
7.2 secondary flow (30-50%) to large urban place
7.3 secondary flow (5-30%) to urbanized area
7.4 secondary flow (5-30%) to large urban place
7.0 otherwise
Although this page refers to codes for census tracts, the ratings are
also available on a zip code basis, and can be downloaded one state at
a time:
Some zips in Alabama, for instance, are ranked as follows:
35004 -- 2
35005 -- 1
35006 -- 2
35007 -- 1
35010 -- 4
In typical academic style, it's all a bit convoluted. Still, this is
probably the most detailed set of zip code-density information
available.
Let me know if it is of interest, and if so, I can post the full
details as an answer to your question.
pafalafa-ga
|
