Rural–Urban Commuting Areas

Rural–Urban Commuting Areas (RUCAs) represent a relatively new categorization of rural areas based on research at the Economic Research Service (ERS) of the United States Department of Agriculture and the University of Washington. RUCAs are a Census tract-based classification scheme that use the standard Census Bureau urban area definitions in combination with commuting information to characterize all of the Nation’s Census tracts regarding their rural and urban status. The RUCAs are based on measures of urbanization, population density, and daily commuting. Census tracts are used to establish RUCAs because they are the smallest geographic building block for which reliable commuting data are available.