Cal. Code Regs. Tit. 22, div. 4.5, ch. 47, art. 1, app 1 to Chapter 47, Article 1
"Urbanized Areas"
Subdivision (ss) of section 68202 defines "Urban Area" to include urbanized areas. This Appendix further describes urbanized areas in California.
On March 9, 1992, the United States Census Bureau published in the Federal Register the list of urbanized areas that qualified based on the results of the 1990 Census. (57 Fed. Reg. 8386 (1992))
According to the United States Census Bureau, an urbanized area comprises one or more places and the adjacent densely settled surrounding territory that together have a minimum of 50,000 people. A central place and an urban fringe together make up an urbanized area. The urban fringe generally consists of contiguous territory with a density of at least 1,000 people per square mile. Additional territory may qualify as urban fringe (e.g. if there is a road connection from a densely populated area to a central place). The complete criteria are available from the Chief, Geography Division, U.S. Bureau of the Census, Washington, DC 20233.
There are 38 urbanized areas in California. These are:
| Antioch-Pittsburg | Riverside-San Bernardino |
| Bakersfield | Sacramento |
| Chico | Salinas |
| Davis | San Diego |
| Fairfield | San Franciso-Oakland |
| Fresno | San Jose |
| Hemet-San Jacinto | San Luis Obispo |
| Hesperia-Apple Valley-Victorville | Santa Barbara |
| Indio-Coachella | Santa Cruz |
| Lancaster-Palmdale | Santa Maria |
| Lodi | Santa Rosa |
| Lompoc | Seaside-Monterey |
| Los Angeles | Simi Valley |
| Merced | Stockton |
| Modesto | Vacaville |
| Napa | Visalia |
| Oxnard-Ventura | Watsonville |
| Palm Springs | Yuba City |
| Redding | Yuma AZ-CA (California portion only) |
Notes
State regulations are updated quarterly; we currently have two versions available. Below is a comparison between our most recent version and the prior quarterly release. More comparison features will be added as we have more versions to compare.