In both definitions, the most important component of the urban
territory is the group of incorporated places having 2,500 inhabitants
or more. A definition of urban territory restricted to such places,
however, would exclude a number of equally large and densely settled
places, merely because they were not incorporated places. Under the
old definition, an effort was made to avoid some of the more obvious
omissions by the inclusion of the places urban under special rules.
Even with these rules, however, many large and closely built-up
places were excluded from the urban territory. To improve the situa-
tion in the 1950 Census, the Bureau of the Census set up, in advance
of enumeration, boundaries for urban-fringe areas around cities of
50,000 or more and for unincorporated places outside urban fringes.
All the population residing in urban-fringe areas and in unincorpo-
rated places of 2,500 or more is classified as urban according to the
new definition. (Of course, the incorporated places of 2,500 or more
are urban in their own right.) Consequently, the special rules of the
old definition are no longer necessary.

According to the new urban definition, the 1950 urban population
of Maryland consisted of the following components: (1) The 1,215,258
inhabitants of the 31 incorporated places of 2,500 inhabitants or more;
(2) the 7,958 inhabitants of the 2 specially delineated unincorporated
places of 2,600 inhabitants or more; and (3) the 392,686 persons living
in other territory in the urban fringe of Baltimore and the Maryland
part of the urban fringe of Washington, D. C.

Under the old definition, there were two places urban under special
rule in Maryland. These places, district 12 and district 13 in Balti-
more County, had a total population of 59,360. The urban population
under the old definition, therefore, consisted of the population of the
31 incorporated places of 2,500 inhabitants or more and the 59,360
inhabitants of district 12 and district 13, a total of 1,274,618.

Under the new definition 56,469 inhabitants of the two places urban
under special rule were included in the urban population because they
were living in the urban fringe of Baltimore. The remaining 2,891
inhabitants of these places were classified as rural. The net gain in
the urban population of the State resulting from the change in defini-
tion, therefore, was 341,284.

1 Except in New England New York and Wisconsin where "towns" are
minor civil divisions of counties and are not necessarily densely settled centers
like the towns in other States.