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Module 3

Data Classification

  1. Defining Rural & Urban Areas
    1. A Revised Classification
  2. Applying the Classification

Defining Rural & Urban Areas

Until 2010, Statistics Canada used a Rural/Urban classification scheme to describe Census unit smaller than a Province/Territory:

Rural: a population density less than 400 people per square kilometer or a total population of less than 1,000 people.

Urban: a unit with a population density at least 400 people per square kilometer and a total population of at least 1,000 people.

A Revised Classification

Statistics Canada Now uses the Population Center and Rural Area Classification. You can skim the Documentation explaining the classification scheme to get a feel for the reasoning behind updating from the old Rural/Urban method? The new classification scheme was updated to split the old Urban class into three different kinds of Population Centers:

Rural Small Population Centers Medium Population Center Large Urban Population Center
Same as old method Not Rural and
Population < 30,000		 Not Rural and
Population >= 30,000 and
Population < 100,000		 Not Rural and
Population >= 100,000

Applying the Classification

Your task is to apply the Population Center and Rural Area Classification scheme (see table above). You can watch the video below for reference, which shows you how to apply the old Urban/Rural scheme.

  • You are going to use the Select by Attribute function to help apply the classificiation.
    • Select by Attribute allows us to select rows/objects with a certain attribute.
    • It relies on something called a Structured Query Language (SQL).
  • We are selecting all rows “Where” our conditions are met.
    • You can use the And/Or commands to combine querries.
    • And: Selects whre All statements are true
    • Or: Selects whre Any statements are true

Note

  • The video is from a slightly dated version of the lab, the steps are the same but some of the file names may look a bit different, and it was recorded using an older version of ArcGIS Pro.

  • You do not need to apply the old classification scheme, I use this example as a reference. All your answers and uploads for the lab should be drawn from the New classification scheme. The general steps for classifying the data are:

1 Calculate population density.

  • You can refer to the exercise we did as part of Module 2 for help.

2 Create a field and populate it using select by attribute, following the Population Center and Rural Area Classification scheme.

  • You can reference the table above for pointers on how to formulate your SQL statements.