When I ask whether someone's living situation is rural or city, what's the category I'm asking about? Living situation includes many other things, but there's gotta be a word summarizing those two things, right?
Learn English – What’s the category name of “city” and “rural”
hypernymssingle-word-requests
Best Answer
Urbanization.
Or Population density. (Advantage: quantifiable)
The above are more often (perhaps exclusively) applied to a place rather than a person. That is, they are geographic terms, I understand you want a demographic term.
Great question. And timely as the world recently (2007) crossed into 50% urban. Some more ideas, with tongue half in cheek, for a single-word term:
Okay I'll stop. The U.N. seems to call this demographic dimension "urban/rural".
I noticed during a elementary-school research project that kid happiness seemed to increase the further I drove from D.C. (the more rural direction of your spectrum). Also increased were noise and freedom and agedness of clothing and buildings.