My parents have a 768kbps connection to the internet and I consider that broadband. However, I would prefer a minimum of 1mbps.

Sorry, I really need to reread stories that surprise me to make sure I’m surprised for the proper reasons.

You can’t really go by people per [city/town/village]. If anything you need to do people per sq mile. It’s a relative term.

“Urban” is defined by Wikipedia as : An urban area is an area with an increased density of human-created structures in comparison to the areas surrounding it.

A town with 30,000 people likely isn’t considered urban. Maybe if it’s in a small enough area. Many office complexes hold more than 30,000 workers. Most sports stadiums hold in excess of 40k. 30,000 people is not much. If it’s in a few city blocks, then yes it’s urban. If it’s spread over vast farmland, then no, it’s not urban.

Otherwise why not say Wyoming is urban with it’s 522,830 (2007) population. Wyoming is a geographically and politically a specific location with a population. No different than a municipality, or providence in another country.

It’s about density.

The other problem you run into is where does the urban area around a city end. Is NJ a suburb of New York City or Philadelphia? Where do you draw the line. Where does the population fall? In the map I included it’s one solid urban block. In reality some parts are very rural, but the map’s resolution doesn’t show that.

One can also say if NYC is urban, you can’t possibly consider places like Cleveland, Houston, and Jacksonville to be “urban” or even true cities because by comparison they are just too small, sparsely populated and spread out.

The UN collection of census data is really about as good as you’ll get. That’s why it’s cited pretty much everywhere.

For the purpose of the discussion, what really matters is how the country views it’s population density, and how it addresses the deployment of broadband.

It’s obviously relative.

So I did a little research and first some of your numbers not what I find myself, the official number for Japan is 78%, second you’d better be wary even of those official numbers ! Every country has a very different way of counting.
Japan cheats to lower it’s percentage by saying that if your town has less than 30 000 residents, then you’re not living in an urban environemment.
But Denmarks cheats the very opposite way by saying that if your village has 200 inhabitants, hey, hey it’s definitively urban you know !
See the reference to this here :
http://geography.about.com/lib.....060997.htm

But we’re still left with the Belgian case which sets the minimum at a quite honest 5000, but somehow gets an almost world record 97% urban population. I know the country and there’s *no* *way* it’s possible.
Well I think I can guess how they get that non-sense number. It’s that the whole country is divided in only 589 municipalities.
So very likely as soon as the village you live in has been administratively merged to a municipality of more than 5000 people, Belgian counts you as urban population !

“Lies,damned lies and statistics”, that saying hasn’t aged a little !