urban

Cities are creating jobs faster than rural areas with a 13.3 percent growth rate in the past year, compared to 4.8 percent in rural counties, says a Daily Yonder analysis of Labor Department statistics. "Unemployment remains a bigger problem in rural counties than metro areas," says the Yonder, which tried to gauge local conditions in battleground states.

More than 60 percent of Iowas live in the city, yet the state is commonly pictured as a land of farms, dotted with small, industrial cities.

In Brentwood, a "para-urban" community in Contra Costa County on the eastern outskirts of San Francisco, an amalgam of groups combines to keep 20,000 acres of farmland in production and out of subdivisions, office parks and strip malls, says Kristina Johnson at Civil Eats.

Proximity to an urban center may be key for maintaining rural population, say three Iowa State University researchers.

Increasingly, veterinarians prefer to practice in cities rather than rural areas, says a paper at the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development.