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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 32 / Friday, February 19, 2021 / Notices
and territory located within incorporated places with a population of 2,500 or more. That definition was easy and straightforward to implement, requiring no need to calculate population density; to understand and account for actual settlement patterns on the ground in relation to boundaries of administrative units; or to consider densely settled populations existing outside incorporated municipalities. For much of the first half of the twentieth century, that definition was adequate for defining urban and rural in the United States, but by 1950 it became clear that it was incomplete.
Increasing suburbanization, particularly outside the boundaries of large incorporated places led the Census Bureau to adopt the urbanized area concept for the 1950 Census. At that time, the Census Bureau formally recognized that densely settled communities outside the boundaries of large incorporated municipalities were just as urban as the densely settled population inside those boundaries.
Outside of urbanized areas of 50,000 or more people, the Census Bureau continued to recognize urban places with at least 2,500 and less than 50,000
persons. This basic conceptual approach to identifying urban areas remained in effect through the 1990 Census, albeit with some changes to criteria and delineation methods.
The Census Bureau adopted six substantial changes to its urban area criteria for the 2000 Census:
Defining urban clusters using the same criteria as urbanized areas.
Disregarding incorporated place and census designated place CDP
boundaries when defining urbanized areas and urban clusters.
Adoption of 500 persons per square mile ppsm as the minimum density criterion for recognizing some types of urban territory.
An increase in the maximum jump distance for linking densely developed territory separated from the main body of the urban area by intervening low density territory from 1.5 to 2.5 miles.
This recognized the prospect that larger clusters of non-residential urban uses might offset contiguity of densely settled territory.
Introduction of the hop concept to provide an objective basis for recognizing that nonresidential urban uses, such as small commercial areas or parks, create small gaps between densely settled residential territories, but are part of the pattern of urbanization.
Adoption of a zero-based approach to defining urban areas.

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For the 2010 Census, the Census Bureau adopted moderate changes and enhancements to the criteria to improve upon the classification of urban and rural areas while continuing to meet the objective of a uniform application of criteria nationwide. These changes were:
Use of census tracts as analysis units in the initial phase of delineation.
Use of land use/land cover data from the National Land Cover Database NLCD to identify qualifying areas of non-residential urban land uses.
Qualification of airports for inclusion in urban areas.
Elimination of the designation of central places within urban areas.1
Requirement for minimum population residing outside institutional group quarters.
Splitting large urban agglomerations.
The conceptual and criteria changes adopted for both the 2000 and 2010
Censuses, as well as the history of the Census Bureaus urban area classification, are discussed in more detail in the document A Century of Delineating a Changing Landscape: The Census Bureaus Urban and Rural Classification, 1910 to 2010, available at https www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/
reference/ua/Century_of_Defining_
Urban.pdf.
2 Proposed Changes for the 2020
Urban Areas Adoption of a Housing Unit Density Threshold for Qualification of Census Blocks The Census Bureau proposes adopting a housing unit density threshold of 385
housing units per square mile as the primary criterion for determining whether a census block qualifies for inclusion in an urban area, replacing the use of population density. The 385
housing units occupied or vacant per square mile density threshold utilized in the delineation of urban areas is consistent with the 1,000 persons per square mile density used in the past, based on the 2019 American Community Survey ACS 1-year data average of an estimated 2.6 persons per household for the United States.
Housing unit density provides a more direct measure of the densely developed landscape than population density. The use of housing unit density will allow 1 The central place concept was not necessary for urban area delineation and the resulting list of qualified central places largely duplicated the list of principal cities identified by the Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Area standards. There was no conceptual reason to continue identifying two slightly different lists of cities and other places that were central to their respective regions.

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the Census Bureau to more accurately account for areas with substantial concentrations of housing that are considered part of the urban landscape, but have smaller than average persons per housing unit or seasonal populations or both. This change also will provide the ability to update the extent of urban areas between censuses, based on housing unit information in the Census Bureaus Master Address File. Intercensal updates of urban areas have not been possible to date, due to the lack of population counts at the census block-level between decennial censuses. As a result, although the Census Bureau presented estimated populations for urban areas based on the ACS, these data were produced using boundaries defined based on data from the previous decennial census and did not keep pace with changes to the extent of urbanization. In addition, the Census Bureaus decision to adopt differential privacy methodology as a means for protecting the privacy of individual responses to the decennial census has been accompanied by the decision that published census block-level populations should be variantthat is, the published population count for any given census block will vary from the enumerated population count in order to protect individuals from reidentification. This will affect the calculation of population density at the census block-level. Housing unit counts, however, are invariant and will reflect the number of housing units enumerated in each block, and thus are a more consistent measure.
Qualify Urban Areas Based on a Minimum Threshold of 4,000 Housing Units or 10,000 Persons Instead of a Minimum Threshold of 2,500 Persons The Census Bureau proposes that an area will qualify as urban if it contains at least 4,000 housing units or has a population of at least 10,000. The proposed increase in the minimum population responds to calls for the Census Bureau to increase its minimum threshold for defining urban areas from the 2,500-person minimum established in 1910. The proposed 10,000-person minimum threshold aligns with thresholds used by other federal agencies to distinguish between urban and rural areas as well as with the Office of Management and Budgets minimum threshold for urban areas that form the cores of micropolitan statistical areas.
The proposal to adopt a housing unit threshold is consistent with our proposed shift to housing unit density and is proposed for the same reasons: It provides a more direct measure of settlement and the built environment
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