Anyone who has written a Federal or State grant of any size has had to deal with the not well defined geographic realities of explaining where your marvelous project will have impact. A favorite ambiguity of mine has been how to define counties in Michigan as either urban or rural. After all, every Michigan county has cities. At the same time there are some sort of clear differences between Detroit and Houghton. (For example, Houghton doesn't have a cop show named after it.)
Well, I ran across a solution from the Office of Management and Budget a few days ago, and thought I would pass on this illumination to all of you.
They have divided Michigan counties into three categories:
- Rural: Anything not defined under the other two categories. Rural is the throw-away category.
- Micropolitan: Contains at least one urbanized cluster of a least 10,000, but not more than 50,000, population, and an adjacent territory that has a high degree of economic integration with the core, as measured by commuting ties.
- Metropolitan: At least one urbanized area with at least 50,000 population, and an adjacent territory that has a high degree of economic integration with the core, as measured by commuting ties.
All clear, now?
In a recession like ours, I think economic integration is more of a hope than a reality.
Commuting is becoming a thing of the past.
Does this expansion of geographic reality also lead us to the cultural concept of microsexual?