More information on Rural area (RA)

Censuses:

2006, 2001, 1996, 1991, 1986, 1981, 1976, 1971, 1966, 1961

Remarks:

The rural area of Canada is the area that remains after the delineation of urban areas which have been delineated using current census population data. Taken together, urban and rural areas cover all of Canada.

Within rural areas, population densities and living conditions can vary greatly. Included in rural areas are:

• small towns, villages and other populated places with less than 1,000 population according to the current census
• rural fringes of census metropolitan areas and census agglomerations that may contain estate lots, as well as agricultural, undeveloped and non-developable lands
• agricultural lands
• remote and wilderness areas.

Urban and rural areas may be used as variables to cross-classify census data for standard geographic areas such as census subdivisions, census metropolitan areas and census agglomerations, or census metropolitan area and census agglomeration influenced zones (MIZ).

Refer to the related definitions of census metropolitan area (CMA) and census agglomeration (CA); census metropolitan area and census agglomeration influenced zones (MIZ); population density; urban area (UA) and urban core, urban fringe and rural fringe.

Changes prior to the current census:

Prior to 2001, rural areas were the residual after the delineation of urban areas that was based on population data from the previous census.