Tourists look out onto the city skyline from Christmas Tree Point on top of Twin Peaks in San Francisco, Thursday, Dec. 15, 2022. (Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)

Almost 1,000 towns, hamlets and villages in the U.S. lost their status as urban areas as the U.S. Census Bureau released a new list of places considered urban based on revised criteria. The new standards raise the population threshold from 2,500 to 5,000 people and add housing units to the definition. Around 3.5 million residents who live in the small cities, towns and villages that lost their urban designation were bumped Thursday into the rural category. The change matters because rural and urban areas often qualify for different types of federal funding for transportation, housing, health care and education.