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Here in Russia the urban/rural divide is defined by employment. If 50% or more or the economically active population is employed in agriculture, it's a rural locality. Of course, this alone doesn't define suburban living, but I would define it like this: 50% or more of the economically active population is not employed in agriculture and their place of employment is located in another locality.
But this definition isn't great. Imagine a small town with 49 farmers and 51 people, out of which 49 commute to a large city to work. It's not rural and not suburban, which means it has to be urban, which is a silly idea. Maybe it should be defined like this:
If 50% or more are employed in agriculture, it's a rural locality;
Otherwise, if 50% or more of those not employed in agriculture work in a different locality, it's a suburban locality;
Otherwise, it's an urban locality.
Still not perfect, but I think it's a workable definition.
I don't think that works because there's plenty of small suburban or rural towns (in a way that we would definitely recognize them as such despite definitions) that are basically supported by a single big factory. People work locally, not in agriculture, but that doesn't make those tiny towns urban. And the tiny villages around them that supply some extra workers aren't necessarily suburban.
Outside of density, which could be used to make a hard criteria for analysis, but not necessarily capture the real spirit of the word, I would define the three as what proximity people are seeking there.
In urban localities, people want to be in proximity to other people. Density is a virtue here. In suburban localities, people want to be in proximity to the urban locality, but not other people. Density is not a virtue, but it will happen as there is a limit to how far people can be and meaningfully access the urban core. In rural localities, people want to be in proximity to open spaces (for economic purposes, like agricultural activity, for recreation or as an aesthetic preference).
Isn't a rural town an oxymoron?
To me no; town I would define as a locality that has most of the services needed for day-to-day life, a core that spans a few streets rather than one, but doesn't have the businesses and services that would truly make it independant. A town would have for instance pharmacies, supermarkets, maybe some chain stores like a walmart, a few restaurants, probably a high school, medical clinics but no hospital, no mall, no airport, no nightlife outside of local bars, minimal public transport. I expect people from a town make a trip to a city in a 1-2 hours drive radius a few times a year when they want to go on real "shopping" trip, need to go to a hospital, etc... There usually aren't any higher education institutions in towns either, so the kids often end up having to move when they start studying at that level.
A village, to me, has a handful of businesses, rarely spread on more than one street: a gas station, a local diner, a very small grocery store, maybe an elementary school, maybe a bar or two but everyone there goes to the nearest town in a 15-30 minutes radius for their real actual groceries every week, and to a city as often as the townfolks do.
I would even posit that the the village/town/city distinction is sometimes completely distinct from rural/suburban/urban. There are small cities in my province that exist essentially as service hubs for the surrounding countryside. They are a bit denser than a typical suburb but the economic engine is not the city. One of them, for instance, has a large veterinary hospital, the biggest agricultural school in the province, etc...
Note that the UN definitions place the thresholds for "city" at 50,000 people, "town" at 5000, and "village" at 500. (And my aforementioned "mega-city" starts at 500,000.)
This is even worse, especially in New Jersey, where we've got weird stuff like Metutchen (pop 15,000) entirely surrounded by Edison (pop 110,000). Edison is just dense suburbia.
To clarify, both UN and US definitions operate on density-based "urban areas" rather than on legal boundaries.
Someone made maps for that here. This makes a large part of the NY metro area one enormous city of 14M. Edison is near the bottom left but I can't tell for sure if it's in or out. Might be useful for some purposes but definitely doesn't map to what Americans would consider 'a city'. (Then again, NYC itself doesn't either)
The official UN maps are here (includes basemap with labels) and here (includes per-city information pop-ups). The official US map is here.
It's in, right on the edge.
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