An urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.

Urban areas are created and further developed by the process of urbanization. Measuring the extent of an urban area helps in analyzing population density and urban sprawl, and in determining urban and rural populations.^{[citation needed]}

Unlike an urban area, a metropolitan area includes not only the urban area, but also satellite cities plus intervening rural land that is socio-economically connected to the urban core city, typically by employment ties through commuting, with the urban core city being the primary labor market. In fact, urbanized areas agglomerate and grow as the core population/economic activity center within a larger metropolitan area or envelope.

In the US, Metropolitan areas tend to be defined using counties or county sized political units as building blocks of much larger, albeit more condensed population units. Counties tend to be stable political boundaries; economists prefer to work with economic and social statistics based on metropolitan areas. Urbanized areas are a more relevant statistic for determining per capita land usage and densities.^{[citation needed]}

Tuomas Rantanen (born 1 January 1972) from Tampere, Finland is a musician creating hard, monotonous and percussive techno music. Outside music, Tuomas Rantanen is specialized in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger.

Rudy Reyes Erice (born November 5, 1979 in Arroyo Naranjo, Havana, Cuba) is an infielder for Industriales of the Cuban National Series and the Cuban national baseball team. He was part of the Cuban team at the 2006 World Baseball Classic.

Reyes, who hit .308 for Industriales during 2005-06, split his time between second base (38 games), third base (25 games) and shortstop (21 games).

Baseball Reference