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rurality 0.1.1

Data-correctness patch (2026-04-13).

Bug fixes

• county_rurality: distances to the nearest large/medium/small metro were computed against an incomplete metro list (15 large / 9 medium / 5 small). Counties near any large metro outside the top 15 — Denver, Minneapolis, Portland, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Kansas City, Austin, San Antonio, Nashville, Jacksonville, Oklahoma City, Memphis, Louisville, and others — were being measured to New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles and classified as “Suburban” rather than “Urban”. Example: Denver County shipped with dist_large_metro = 591, classified Suburban.
• Rebuilt with a full metro list shared with the rurality-app web project (52 large / 57 medium / 36 small). After this patch the major urban-core counties (Denver, Hennepin, Multnomah, Mecklenburg, Cuyahoga, Marion-IN, and similar) classify as Urban.

Data

• county_rurality: 3,235 rows, unchanged schema. Score distribution (Urban / Suburban / Mixed / Rural / Very Rural): 184 / 908 / 669 / 976 / 498.

rurality 0.1.0

Initial CRAN release (2026-04-10).

Core

• get_rurality() returns the composite rurality score, classification, and RUCC code for a U.S. county identified by 5-digit FIPS.
• get_rucc() and rurality_score() return their respective scalar values for one-off lookups.
• get_ruca() returns the primary RUCA code for a ZIP code tabulation area.
• classify_rurality() converts a numeric rurality score (0-100) into an ordered classification: Urban, Suburban, Mixed, Rural, Very Rural.
• add_rurality() joins rurality variables onto an existing data frame by FIPS column, with optional selection of the full variable set.

Data

• county_rurality: all 3,235 U.S. counties with 24 variables, including composite score, classification, RUCC 2023, population density, distance to nearest large metro, and ACS 2022 demographics.
• ruca_codes: USDA RUCA 2020 codes for 41,146 ZIP code tabulation areas.

Methodology

Composite score is a weighted average of RUCC code (55%), population density (28%), and distance to nearest large metro (17%), rescaled to 0-100.

These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.