Defining the "Rural" in a Rural Commons
Our goal is to help Members smaller rural communities
(those living in Hamlets, Villages, and small Towns)
self-organize with their neighbors to strengthen the bonds of their local community, to share long roundtrips to the
larger Towns, Cities, and Metro areas, and to find other ways to save $$$ and CO2.
But what does "Rural" mean in this context? The top light-green section of the table below gives a sense of
the size of communities for which we have
designed ourselves.
The table below outlines the (admittedly porous) definitional boundaries.
| Rural | Hamlets | pop. < 300 | Often just "named crossroads," or a micro-region, or where a village once was. May have a church, a community hall, a storefront or two. |
| Villages | pop. 500 | May have an everything-grocery-gas station, a business or two, a local cafe |
| Tiny Towns | pop. 800 | A grocery store, gas station, local businesses, a couple of restaurants |
| Small Towns | pop. 1,000+ | A grocery store, gas station, drug store, bank, hardware store, restaurants |
| Rural-Urban |
Towns | pop. 5,000+ | Lawyers/doctors/dentist offices, gas stations, strip malls, drug stores, banks, hardware stores, restaurants |
| Big Towns | pop. 10k-50k+ | Enclosed mall(s), specialty stores, coffee shops, movie theatres, taxis, buses |
| Urban | Cities | pop. 50,000+ | Enclosed mall(s), specialty stores, coffee shops, movie theatres, taxis, buses |
| Metros | pop. 250,000+ | Airport, bus/tram/subways, megamalls, concerts/theatre |
| These are very general ranges, and there are many exceptions to the above. That's why every Hub has
local humans crafting the Hub's regional boundaries, and choosing what target towns and cities make the most sense to include. |
|
