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Re:Tesla’s Nemesis in China Is a Tiny $5k Electric Car from GM by mjevans on Saturday September 26, 2020 @10:26PM (#24603725)
A better dividing line is:

Given the choice, how would someone living there most often visit a grocery store?

In an urban area walking might be the common mode.

In a suburban area driving is OFTEN going to be the preferred mode, and even in small cities (particularly ones still small enough to have free parking at a nearby grocery store) driving there is still going to be preferred; at least in the US. In my experience Bellevue WA is a small, still suburban like city, while Seattle has crossed the anti-car (and expensive real-estate) line to 'big city'; but is neither old enough (pre-industrial grocery store layouts) nor big enough to be a healthy big urban city.

Offhand, I would define rural as any area where a drive to the third closest typical grocery store is at least a one hour round trip (by car, at legal speeds, including delays at any traffic device or from commute volume).

Re:Tesla’s Nemesis in China Is a Tiny $5k Electric Car from GM by maxerickson on Saturday September 26, 2020 @10:53PM (#24603843)
I wasn't trying to invent a dividing line, more trying to highlight how usage/understanding can vary. Here's some discussion from government statisticians:

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rur...

Large swaths of the US are what that page calls 'micropolitan', centered around small urban clusters, which are the areas I think cause the most confusion, built up areas that are treated as urban in statistics and conversely thought about as rural by lay audiences.