Rural and Urban Spaces in CMAs

Question

Students at UBC are trying to determine the area in square kilometers of the rural and urban parts of 10 census metropolitan areas for all censuses 1986-2006. All we can find in the published tables and in Geosuite is the total land area.

According to the census dictionary the rural areas of CMAs are designated the rural fringe. Is it at all possible to find the land area for the rural fringe as well as for the urban core and urban fringe?

Thanks for helping to clarify this.

Answer

I checked with our geography consultants and they indicated that this would be very difficult to do but provided provided following steps if the students wish to proceed:

"First, you would have to find the following spatial data layers. 1986, urban core, urban fringe, rural fringe (you would have to subtract urban from total CMA for this calculation); then you would have to find a water layer which was compatible with the 1986 spatial data layers in order to calculate the land area for the areas in question.

You would have to repeat this operation for 1991, 1996, 2001 and 2006 (and you would not be comparing the same area necessarily – due to changes in boundaries, scale and projection from one census to the next).

She also suggested the students could try breaking it down by CSDs. "