Communities are commonly divided into two general types—rural and urban. The line distinguishing these two types is not definite. Writers do not agree in the use of criterion for defining them, Often locality is regarded as rural or urban by reference to its population.
Other criterions employed are: density of population, legal limits, and legal status (i.e. whether the locality has been given the status of rural or urban). Some other writers have used occupations and social organisations, that is, the type of social and economic institutions, relationships, and folkways as criterion.
P.A. Sorokin and C.C. Zimmerman, in “Principles of Rural-Urban Sociology”, have stated that H the factors distinguishing rural from urban communities include occupation, size, and density oil population, as well as mobility, differentiation and stratification.
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However, in many countries the distinction between rural and urban communities has been made on the basis of the size of the population. In Holland, a community containing more than 20,000 people is called urban.
In Japan, the number is fixed at 30,000; in India at 5,000; and in U.S.A. at 2,500 and in France at 2000. Mark Jefferson says that a community with a density of 10,000 people or more per square mile should be considered a city.
Walter Wilcox suggested that community with a population of more than 1,000 per square mile should be regarded as a city and less than 1,000 people as ‘rural’ community.