No Satisfactory Way of Measuring Rural

From In the National Interest: Defining Rural and Urban Correctly in Research and Public Policy by Andrew W. Isserman, which appeared in the October 2005 issue of International Regional Science Review:

We presently have no satisfactory way to measure rural for the study of rural economic or the assessment of rural conditions. Key economic and demographic data are not available for urban and rural areas, and metropolitan and nonmetropolitan commingle urban and rural, leaving us unable to separate them. Yet getting rural right is in the national interest. When we get rural wrong, we reach incorrect research conclusions and fail to reach the people, places, and businesses our governmental programs are meant to serve. [emphasis mine]