What is a suburb?

This article is inspired by the YouTube video “What is a suburb?” by City Beautiful.

There are several ways to define an area as either urban (the city), suburban, or rural; but one method that interested me was asking residents to describe the area in which they live. The YouTube video linked above introduced me to this method.

Moving Henry Forward asked our readers to label their neighborhood as either the city, suburbs, or a rural area. Thank you to the nearly three-hundred who responded and made this project happen.

The survey results closely followed my expectations, with residents along the I-75 corridor describing their area as suburbs. The two tracts labeled as the city include the Bridges Road and Willow Lane corridors in McDonough, and downtown Stockbridge, respectively.

Residents in east Henry County, including Kelleytown and Ola, described their area as rural. An unexpected result happened in northeast Henry County where three out of five respondents selected a rural area.

In Hampton, residents described the US 19 / 41 corridor as rural. The area was designated the Atlanta Speedway Megasite in Henry County’s 2018 update of the comprehensive land use plan and could be developed over the next decade. Future construction could include a casino and large-scale entertainment district; however, at the time of writing, the question of legalizing casino gambling in Georgia has not been placed on the ballot by state lawmakers.