Southwark Street
Southwark Street is a major street in Bankside in the London Borough of Southwark, in London England, just south of the River Thames. It runs between Blackfriars Road to Borough High Street to the east, it connects the access routes for London Bridge, Southwark Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge. At the eastern end to the north is Borough Market; the road forms part of the A3200. In April 1856, the St Saviour's District Board petitioned the Metropolitan Board of Works to create a new street to run between the South Eastern Railway terminus at London Bridge station and the West End; the street was the first to be made by the Board and was completed in 1864. It was driven across a densely occupied part of the parish and crosses older roads and streets which created oddly shaped plots for redevelopment, its junction with Borough High Street is so curved that the transition between the streets leads to confusion and imprecision as to, which and the street numbering and lack of a street name plate compounds this, the break between them occurs at the junction with Bedale Street on the north-side but at the south-side the street does not begin until after the'fork' opposite Stoney Street, some 130 metres to the west.
Under the street, a tunnel was constructed with side passages to carry utilities such as gas and drainage pipes, together with telegraph wires for communication. This was an advanced feature for the time. During the first decade of the street's existence, many large commercial buildings were built along the street; the Hop Exchange, of 1874, is the most notable building at the northern side filling most of the quadrant formed by the street and the railway viaduct. Built in the 1870s, the former Menier Chocolate Factory factory on Southwark Street was converted to an arts complex that incorporates an art gallery and theatre, opening in 2004. In 1932 Borough Market built a formal gateway with administrative offices at Nos 6 and 8. In 1958 the Trustees erected a small office building at the junction with Stoney Street'St Margaret's House'. At No 110, the western-end of the street, is the headquarters of IPC Media at the'Blue Fin Building' completed in 2007; the building on the south-west corner of the junction with Great Guildford Street is, numbered 59½.
Another notable building is Bankside Studios at 76-80, cantilevered over the street and has multicoloured window frames. Under the railway bridge carrying trains to Blackfriars Station from the south some urban art work has been placed on the south-side, whilst on the north-side the word'Bankside' has been placed in large lettering occupying most of the wall against the pavement; this is part of the area and tourist branding as the relationship with the ancient district of Bankside is tenuous, the most that can be said is that Southwark Street defines the southernmost limit of Bankside. Ian Davenports' 2006 painting Poured Lines is displayed under the rail bridge at the western end of Southwark Street, it is the largest painting. Under the railway bridge at Southwark Street, near London Bridge — photographic 360° interactive panorama
Book
As a physical object, a book is a stack of rectangular pages oriented with one edge tied, sewn, or otherwise fixed together and bound to the flexible spine of a protective cover of heavier inflexible material. The technical term for this physical arrangement is codex. In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its immediate predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf, each side of a leaf is a page; as an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and a still considerable, though not so extensive, investment of time to read. This sense of book has an unrestricted sense. In the restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage that reflects the fact that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls, each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained.
So, for instance, each part of Aristotle's Physics is called a book, as of course the Bible encompasses many different books. In the unrestricted sense, a book is the compositional whole of which such sections, whether called books or chapters or parts, are parts; the intellectual content in a physical book need not be a composition, nor be called a book. Books can consist only of drawings, engravings, or photographs, or such things as crossword puzzles or cut-out dolls. In a physical book the pages can be left blank or can feature an abstract set of lines as support for on-going entries, i.e. an account book, an appointment book, a log book, an autograph book, a notebook, a diary or day book, or a sketch book. Some physical books are made with pages thick and sturdy enough to support other physical objects, like a scrapbook or photograph album. Books may be distributed in electronic form as other formats. Although in ordinary academic parlance a monograph is understood to be a specialist academic work, rather than a reference work on a single scholarly subject, in library and information science monograph denotes more broadly any non-serial publication complete in one volume or a finite number of volumes, in contrast to serial publications like a magazine, journal, or newspaper.
An avid reader or collector of books or a book lover is a bibliophile or colloquially, "bookworm". A shop where books are bought and sold is a bookstore. Books are sold elsewhere. Books can be borrowed from libraries. Google has estimated that as of 2010 130,000,000 distinct titles had been published. In some wealthier nations, the sale of printed books has decreased because of the use of e-books, though sales of e-books declined in the first half of 2015; the word book comes from Old English "bōc", which in turn comes from the Germanic root "*bōk-", cognate to "beech". In Slavic languages "буква" is cognate with "beech". In Russian and in Serbian and Macedonian, the word "букварь" or "буквар" refers to a primary school textbook that helps young children master the techniques of reading and writing, it is thus conjectured. The Latin word codex, meaning a book in the modern sense meant "block of wood"; when writing systems were created in ancient civilizations, a variety of objects, such as stone, tree bark, metal sheets, bones, were used for writing.
A tablet is a physically robust writing medium, suitable for casual transport and writing. Clay tablets were flattened and dry pieces of clay that could be carried, impressed with a stylus, they were used as a writing medium for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age. Wax tablets were pieces of wood covered in a thick enough coating of wax to record the impressions of a stylus, they were the normal writing material in schools, in accounting, for taking notes. They had the advantage of being reusable: the wax could be melted, reformed into a blank; the custom of binding several wax tablets together is a possible precursor of modern bound books. The etymology of the word codex suggests that it may have developed from wooden wax tablets. Scrolls can be made from papyrus, a thick paper-like material made by weaving the stems of the papyrus plant pounding the woven sheet with a hammer-like tool until it is flattened. Papyrus was used for writing in Ancient Egypt as early as the First Dynasty, although the first evidence is from the account books of King Nefertiti Kakai of the Fifth Dynasty.
Papyrus sheets were glued together to form a scroll. Tree bark such as lime and other materials were used. According to Herodotus, the Phoenicians brought writing and papyrus to Greece around the 10th or 9th century BC; the Greek word for papyrus as writing material and book come from the Phoenician port town Byblos, through which papyrus was exported to Greece. From Greek we derive the word tome, which meant a slice or piece and from there began to denote "a roll of papyrus". Tomus was used by the Latins with the same meaning as volumen. Whether made from papyrus, parchment, or paper, scrolls were the dominant form of book in the Hellenistic, Chinese and Macedonian culture
Hunting
Hunting is the practice of killing or trapping animals, or pursuing or tracking them with the intent of doing so. Hunting wildlife or feral animals is most done by humans for food, recreation, to remove predators that can be dangerous to humans or domestic animals, or for trade. Lawful hunting is distinguished from poaching, the illegal killing, trapping or capture of the hunted species; the species that are hunted are referred to as game or prey and are mammals and birds. Hunting has long been a practice used to procure meat for human consumption; the meat from a healthy wild animal that has lived its life and on a natural diet of plants has a higher nutritional quality than that of a domestic animal, raised in an unnatural way. Hunting an animal for its meat can be seen as a more natural way to obtain animal protein since regulated hunting does not cause the same environmental issues as raising domestic animals for meat on factory farms. Hunting can be a means of pest control. Hunting advocates state that hunting can be a necessary component of modern wildlife management, for example, to help maintain a population of healthy animals within an environment's ecological carrying capacity when natural checks such as predators are absent or rare.
However, excessive hunting has heavily contributed to the endangerment and extinction of many animals. The pursuit and release, or capture for food of fish is called fishing, not categorised as a form of hunting, it is not considered hunting to pursue animals without intent to kill them, as in wildlife photography, birdwatching, or scientific research activities which involve tranquilizing or tagging of animals or birds. The practice of foraging or gathering materials from plants and mushrooms is considered separate from hunting. Skillful tracking and acquisition of an elusive target has caused the word hunt to be used in the vernacular as a metaphor, as in treasure hunting, "bargain hunting", "hunting down" corruption and waste. Animal rights activists argue that hunting is cruel and unethical; the word hunt serves as a verb. The noun has been dated to the early 12th century, "act of chasing game," from the verb hunt. Old English had huntung, huntoþ; the meaning of "a body of persons associated for the purpose of hunting with a pack of hounds" is first recorded in the 1570s.
Meaning "the act of searching for someone or something" is from about 1600. The verb, Old English huntian "to chase game" developed from hunta "hunter," is related to hentan "to seize," from Proto-Germanic huntojan, of uncertain origin; the general sense of "search diligently" is first recorded c. 1200. Hunting has a long history, it pre-dates the emergence of Homo sapiens and may predate genus Homo. The oldest undisputed evidence for hunting dates to the Early Pleistocene, consistent with the emergence and early dispersal of Homo erectus, about 1.7 million years ago. While it is undisputed that Homo erectus were hunters, the importance of this for the emergence of Homo erectus from its australopithecine ancestors, including the production of stone tools and the control of fire, is emphasised in the so-called "hunting hypothesis" and de-emphasised in scenarios that stress omnivory and social interaction. There is no direct evidence for hunting predating Homo erectus, in either Homo habilis or in Australopithecus.
The early hominid ancestors of humans were frugivores or omnivores, with a carnivore diet from scavenging rather than hunting. Evidence for australopithecine meat consumption was presented in the 1990s, it has often been assumed that at least occasional hunting behavior may have been present well before the emergence of Homo. This can be argued on the basis of comparison with chimpanzees, the closest extant relatives of humans, who engage in hunting, indicating that the behavioral trait may have been present in the Chimpanzee–human last common ancestor as early as 5 million years ago; the common chimpanzee engages in troop predation behaviour where bands of beta males are led by an alpha male. Bonobos have been observed to engage in group hunting, although more than Pan troglodytes subsisting on a frugivorous diet. Indirect evidence for Oldowan era hunting, by early Homo or late Australopithecus, has been presented in a 2009 study based on an Oldowan site in southwestern Kenya. Louis Binford criticised the idea that early humans were hunters.
On the basis of the analysis of the skeletal remains of the consumed animals, he concluded that hominids and early humans were scavengers, not hunters, Blumenschine proposed the idea of confrontational scavenging, which involves challenging and scaring off other predators after they have made a kill, which he suggests could have been the leading method of obtaining protein-rich meat by early humans. Stone spearheads dated as early as 500,000 years ago were found in South Africa. Wood does not preserve well and Craig Stanford, a primatologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California, has suggested that the discovery of spear use by chimpanzees means that early humans used wooden spears as well five million years ago; the earliest dated find of surviving wooden hunting spears dates to the end of the Lower Paleolithic, just before 300,000 years ago. The Schöningen spears, found in 1976 in Germany, are
Golf
Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games and does not utilize a standardized playing area, coping with the varied terrains encountered on different courses is a key part of the game; the game at the usual level is played on a course with an arranged progression of 18 holes, though recreational courses can be smaller having 9 holes. Each hole on the course must contain a tee box to start from, a putting green containing the actual hole or cup 4 1⁄4 inches in diameter. There are other standard forms of terrain in between, such as the fairway, rough and various hazards but each hole on a course is unique in its specific layout and arrangement. Golf is played for the lowest number of strokes by an individual, known as stroke play, or the lowest score on the most individual holes in a complete round by an individual or team, known as match play. Stroke play is the most seen format at all levels, but most at the elite level.
The modern game of golf originated in 15th century Scotland. The 18-hole round was created at the Old Course at St Andrews in 1764. Golf's first major, the world's oldest tournament in existence, is The Open Championship known as the British Open, first played in 1860 in Ayrshire, Scotland; this is one of the four major championships in men's professional golf, the other three being played in the United States: The Masters, the U. S. Open, the PGA Championship. While the modern game of golf originated in 15th-century Scotland, the game's ancient origins are unclear and much debated; some historians trace the sport back to the Roman game of paganica, in which participants used a bent stick to hit a stuffed leather ball. One theory asserts that paganica spread throughout Europe as the Romans conquered most of the continent, during the first century BC, evolved into the modern game. Others cite chuiwan as the progenitor, a Chinese game played between the eighth and fourteenth centuries. A Ming Dynasty scroll dating back to 1368 entitled "The Autumn Banquet" shows a member of the Chinese Imperial court swinging what appears to be a golf club at a small ball with the aim of sinking it into a hole.
The game is thought to have been introduced into Europe during the Middle Ages. Another early game that resembled modern golf was known as chambot in France; the Persian game chaugán is another possible ancient origin. In addition, kolven was played annually in Loenen, beginning in 1297, to commemorate the capture of the assassin of Floris V, a year earlier; the modern game originated in Scotland, where the first written record of golf is James II's banning of the game in 1457, as an unwelcome distraction to learning archery. James IV lifted the ban in 1502 when he became a golfer himself, with golf clubs first recorded in 1503–1504: "For golf clubbes and balles to the King that he playit with". To many golfers, the Old Course at St Andrews, a links course dating to before 1574, is considered to be a site of pilgrimage. In 1764, the standard 18-hole golf course was created at St Andrews when members modified the course from 22 to 18 holes. Golf is documented as being played on Musselburgh Links, East Lothian, Scotland as early as 2 March 1672, certified as the oldest golf course in the world by Guinness World Records.
The oldest surviving rules of golf were compiled in March 1744 for the Company of Gentlemen Golfers renamed The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, played at Leith, Scotland. The world's oldest golf tournament in existence, golf's first major, is The Open Championship, first played on 17 October 1860 at Prestwick Golf Club, in Ayrshire, with Scottish golfers winning the earliest majors. Two Scotsmen from Dunfermline, John Reid and Robert Lockhart, first demonstrated golf in the U. S. by setting up a hole in an orchard in 1888, with Reid setting up America's first golf club the same year, Saint Andrew's Golf Club in Yonkers, New York. A golf course consists of either 9 or 18 holes, each with a teeing ground, set off by two markers showing the bounds of the legal tee area, fairway and other hazards, the putting green surrounded by the fringe with the pin and cup; the levels of grass are varied to increase difficulty, or to allow for putting in the case of the green. While many holes are designed with a direct line-of-sight from the teeing area to the green, some holes may bend either to the left or to the right.
This is called a "dogleg", in reference to a dog's knee. The hole is called a "dogleg left" if the hole angles leftwards and "dogleg right" if it bends right. Sometimes, a hole's direction may bend twice. A regular golf course consists of 18 holes, but nine-hole courses are common and can be played twice through for a full round of 18 holes. Early Scottish golf courses were laid out on links land, soil-covered sand dunes directly inland from beaches; this gave rise to the term "golf links" applied to seaside courses and those built on sandy soil inland. The first 18-hole golf course in the United States was on a sheep farm in Downers Grove, Illinois, in 1892; the course is still there today. Every round of golf is based on playing a number of holes in a given order. A "round" consists of 18 holes that are played in the order determined by the course layout; each hole is played once in the round on a standard course of 18 holes. The game can be played by any number of people, although a typ
Magazine
A magazine is a publication a periodical publication, printed or electronically published. Magazines are published on a regular schedule and contain a variety of content, they are financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by prepaid subscriptions, or a combination of the three. At its root, the word "magazine" refers to a storage location. In the case of written publication, it is a collection of written articles; this explains why magazine publications share the word root with gunpowder magazines, artillery magazines, firearms magazines, and, in French, retail stores such as department stores. By definition, a magazine paginates with each issue starting at page three, with the standard sizing being 8 3⁄8 in × 10 7⁄8 in. However, in the technical sense a journal has continuous pagination throughout a volume, thus Business Week, which starts each issue anew with page one, is a magazine, but the Journal of Business Communication, which starts each volume with the winter issue and continues the same sequence of pagination throughout the coterminous year, is a journal.
Some professional or trade publications are peer-reviewed, an example being the Journal of Accountancy. Academic or professional publications that are not peer-reviewed are professional magazines; that a publication calls itself a journal does not make it a journal in the technical sense. Magazines can be distributed through the mail, through sales by newsstands, bookstores, or other vendors, or through free distribution at selected pick-up locations; the subscription business models for distribution fall into three main categories. In this model, the magazine is sold to readers for a price, either on a per-issue basis or by subscription, where an annual fee or monthly price is paid and issues are sent by post to readers. Paid circulation allows for defined readership statistics; this means that there is no cover price and issues are given away, for example in street dispensers, airline, or included with other products or publications. Because this model involves giving issues away to unspecific populations, the statistics only entail the number of issues distributed, not who reads them.
This is the model used by many trade magazines distributed only to qualifying readers for free and determined by some form of survey. Because of costs associated with the medium of print, publishers may not distribute free copies to everyone who requests one; this allows a high level of certainty that advertisements will be received by the advertiser's target audience, it avoids wasted printing and distribution expenses. This latter model was used before the rise of the World Wide Web and is still employed by some titles. For example, in the United Kingdom, a number of computer-industry magazines use this model, including Computer Weekly and Computing, in finance, Waters Magazine. For the global media industry, an example would be VideoAge International; the earliest example of magazines was Erbauliche Monaths Unterredungen, a literary and philosophy magazine, launched in 1663 in Germany. The Gentleman's Magazine, first published in 1731, in London was the first general-interest magazine. Edward Cave, who edited The Gentleman's Magazine under the pen name "Sylvanus Urban", was the first to use the term "magazine," on the analogy of a military storehouse.
Founded by Herbert Ingram in 1842, The Illustrated London News was the first illustrated magazine. The oldest consumer magazine still in print is The Scots Magazine, first published in 1739, though multiple changes in ownership and gaps in publication totalling over 90 years weaken that claim. Lloyd's List was founded in Edward Lloyd's England coffee shop in 1734. Under the ancient regime, the most prominent magazines were Mercure de France, Journal des sçavans, founded in 1665 for scientists, Gazette de France, founded in 1631. Jean Loret was one of France's first journalists, he disseminated the weekly news of music and Parisian society from 1650 until 1665 in verse, in what he called a gazette burlesque, assembled in three volumes of La Muse historique. The French press lagged a generation behind the British, for they catered to the needs the aristocracy, while the newer British counterparts were oriented toward the middle and working classes. Periodicals were censored by the central government in Paris.
They were not quiescent politically—often they criticized Church abuses and bureaucratic ineptitude. They supported the monarchy and they played at most a small role in stimulating the revolution. During the Revolution, new periodicals played central roles as propaganda organs for various factions. Jean-Paul Marat was the most prominent editor, his L'Ami du peuple advocated vigorously for the rights of the lower classes against the enemies of the people Marat hated. After 1800 Napoleon reimposed strict censorship. Magazines flourished after Napoleon left in 1815. Most were based in Paris and most emphasized literature and stories, they served religious and political communities. In times of political crisis they expressed and helped shape the views of their readership and thereby were major
Art
Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts, expressing the author's imaginative, conceptual ideas, or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power. In their most general form these activities include the production of works of art, the criticism of art, the study of the history of art, the aesthetic dissemination of art; the three classical branches of art are painting and architecture. Music, film and other performing arts, as well as literature and other media such as interactive media, are included in a broader definition of the arts; until the 17th century, art referred to any skill or mastery and was not differentiated from crafts or sciences. In modern usage after the 17th century, where aesthetic considerations are paramount, the fine arts are separated and distinguished from acquired skills in general, such as the decorative or applied arts. Though the definition of what constitutes art is disputed and has changed over time, general descriptions mention an idea of imaginative or technical skill stemming from human agency and creation.
The nature of art and related concepts, such as creativity and interpretation, are explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics. In the perspective of the history of art, artistic works have existed for as long as humankind: from early pre-historic art to contemporary art. One early sense of the definition of art is related to the older Latin meaning, which translates to "skill" or "craft," as associated with words such as "artisan." English words derived from this meaning include artifact, artifice, medical arts, military arts. However, there are many other colloquial uses of all with some relation to its etymology. Over time, philosophers like Plato, Aristotle and Kant, among others, questioned the meaning of art. Several dialogues in Plato tackle questions about art: Socrates says that poetry is inspired by the muses, is not rational, he speaks approvingly of this, other forms of divine madness in the Phaedrus, yet in the Republic wants to outlaw Homer's great poetic art, laughter as well.
In Ion, Socrates gives no hint of the disapproval of Homer. The dialogue Ion suggests that Homer's Iliad functioned in the ancient Greek world as the Bible does today in the modern Christian world: as divinely inspired literary art that can provide moral guidance, if only it can be properly interpreted. With regards to the literary art and the musical arts, Aristotle considered epic poetry, comedy, dithyrambic poetry and music to be mimetic or imitative art, each varying in imitation by medium and manner. For example, music imitates with the media of rhythm and harmony, whereas dance imitates with rhythm alone, poetry with language; the forms differ in their object of imitation. Comedy, for instance, is a dramatic imitation of men worse than average. Lastly, the forms differ in their manner of imitation—through narrative or character, through change or no change, through drama or no drama. Aristotle believed that imitation is natural to mankind and constitutes one of mankind's advantages over animals.
The more recent and specific sense of the word art as an abbreviation for creative art or fine art emerged in the early 17th century. Fine art refers to a skill used to express the artist's creativity, or to engage the audience's aesthetic sensibilities, or to draw the audience towards consideration of more refined or finer work of art. Within this latter sense, the word art may refer to several things: a study of a creative skill, a process of using the creative skill, a product of the creative skill, or the audience's experience with the creative skill; the creative arts are a collection of disciplines which produce artworks that are compelled by a personal drive and convey a message, mood, or symbolism for the perceiver to interpret. Art is something that stimulates an individual's thoughts, beliefs, or ideas through the senses. Works of art can be explicitly made for this purpose or interpreted on the basis of images or objects. For some scholars, such as Kant, the sciences and the arts could be distinguished by taking science as representing the domain of knowledge and the arts as representing the domain of the freedom of artistic expression.
If the skill is being used in a common or practical way, people will consider it a craft instead of art. If the skill is being used in a commercial or industrial way, it may be considered commercial art instead of fine art. On the other hand and design are sometimes considered applied art; some art followers have argued that the difference between fine art and applied art has more to do with value judgments made about the art than any clear definitional difference. However fine art has goals beyond pure creativity and self-expression; the purpose of works of art may be to communicate ideas, such as in politically, spiritually, or philosophically motivated art. The purpose may be nonexistent; the nature of art has been described by philosopher Richard Wollheim as "one of the most elusive of the traditional problems of human culture". Art has been defined as a vehicle for the expression or communication of emotions and ideas, a means for exp
Rural area
In general, a rural area or countryside is a geographic area, located outside towns and cities. The Health Resources and Services Administration of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services defines the word rural as encompassing "...all population and territory not included within an urban area. Whatever is not urban is considered rural."Typical rural areas have a low population density and small settlements. Agricultural areas are rural, as are other types of areas such as forest. Different countries have varying definitions of rural for administrative purposes. In Canada, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development defines a "predominantly rural region" as having more than 50% of the population living in rural communities where a "rural community" has a population density less than 150 people per square kilometre. In Canada, the census division has been used to represent "regions" and census consolidated sub-divisions have been used to represent "communities". Intermediate regions have 15 to 49 percent of their population living in a rural community.
Predominantly urban regions have less than 15 percent of their population living in a rural community. Predominantly rural regions are classified as rural metro-adjacent, rural non-metro-adjacent and rural northern, following Ehrensaft and Beeman. Rural metro-adjacent regions are predominantly rural census divisions which are adjacent to metropolitan centres while rural non-metro-adjacent regions are those predominantly rural census divisions which are not adjacent to metropolitan centres. Rural northern regions are predominantly rural census divisions that are found either or above the following lines of parallel in each province: Newfoundland and Labrador, 50th; as well, rural northern regions encompass all of Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Statistics Canada defines rural for their population counts; this definition has changed over time. It has referred to the population living outside settlements of 1,000 or fewer inhabitants; the current definition states that census rural is the population outside settlements with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants and a population density below 400 people per square kilometre.
84% of the United States' inhabitants live in suburban and urban areas, but cities occupy only 10 percent of the country. Rural areas occupy the remaining 90 percent; the U. S. Census Bureau, the USDA's Economic Research Service, the Office of Management and Budget have come together to help define rural areas. United States Census Bureau: The Census Bureau definitions, which are based on population density, defines rural areas as all territory outside Census Bureau-defined urbanized areas and urban clusters. An urbanized area consists of a central surrounding areas whose population is greater than 50,000, they may not contain individual cities with 50,000 or more. Thus, rural areas comprise open country and settlements with fewer than 2,500 residents. USDA The USDA's Office of Rural Development may define rural by various population thresholds; the 2002 farm bill defined rural and rural area as any area other than a city or town that has a population of greater than 50,000 inhabitants, the urbanized areas contiguous and adjacent to such a city or town.
The rural-urban continuum codes, urban influence code, rural county typology codes developed by USDA’s Economic Research Service allow researchers to break out the standard metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas into smaller residential groups. For example, a metropolitan county is one that contains an urbanized area, or one that has a twenty-five percent commuter rate to an urbanized area regardless of population. OMB: Under the Core Based Statistical Areas used by the OMB, a metropolitan county, or Metropolitan Statistical Area, consists of central counties with one or more urbanized areas and outlying counties that are economically tied to the core counties as measured by worker commuting data. Non-metro counties are outside the boundaries of metro areas and are further subdivided into Micropolitan Statistical Areas centered on urban clusters of 10,000–50,000 residents, all remaining non-core counties. In 2014, the USDA updated their rural / non-rural area definitions based on the 2010 Census counts.
National Center for Education Statistics revised its definition of rural schools in 2006 after working with the Census Bureau to create a new locale classification system to capitalize on improved geocoding technology. Rural health definitions can be different for establishing under-served areas or health care accessibility in rural areas of the United States. According to the handbook, Definitions of Rural: A Handbook for Health Policy Makers and Researchers, "Residents of metropolitan counties are thought to have easy access to the concentrated health services of the county's central areas. However, some metropolitan counties are so large that t
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