At least one Chautauqua County municipality has lost its definition as being considered an urban area.

Westfield is one of nearly 900 areas in the nation that has been deemed rural due to the U.S. Census Bureau changing the definition. Under the new criteria, more than 1,300 small cities, towns and villages designated urban a decade ago would be considered rural.

According to the Associated Press, that matters because urban and rural areas qualify for different types of federal funding. Some communities worry the change could affect health clinics in rural areas as well as transportation and education funding from federal programs. But leaders in other communities designated to lose their urban status say it won’t make a difference.

“We are rural and we feel rural, and that’s how we already identify,” Randy Reeg, city administrator of Mauston, Wis. — a city of 4,347 residents about 75 miles northwest of Madison — told the AP.

Many here would agree with that sentiment in Westfield, which is home to just under 5,000 residents. “Westfield is located along the western shores of Lake Erie in Chautauqua County and The Seaway Trail,” the Chautauqua County Visitors Bureau notes. “It is a developmentally friendly rural community that has a strong agricultural economic base. With a reverence and appreciation for its own and the region’s history and natural resources, Westfield is a wonderful place to live, do business and visit.”

Groups like the American Hospital Association say the changes, which are the biggest being made to the definitions in decades, could cause problems for residents who need medical care in rural areas.

As part of the change, the Census Bureau is switching to housing units instead of people as the basis for calculating what should be an urban area. Bureau officials say the change will make it easier to update between once-a-decade head counts of the U.S. They also contend that it’s needed because a new privacy method introduces errors into 2020 census population numbers at small geographies to protect people’s identities. Housing counts stay accurate under the method.

A place had to have at least 2,500 people to be urban under old criteria that lasted more than a century. Now, it will need at least 2,000 housing units — the equivalent of about 5,000 people.

Places with 50,000 residents or more were considered “urbanized areas,” compared with “urban clusters” having between 2,500 and 49,999 residents in the past. But those distinctions will be eliminated and all will be called urban areas under the new definition.

Previously known as “urban clusters,” both the city of Jamestown, which has a metro population of 44,424 and takes into account portions of the town of Busti as well as Ellicott, and Dunkirk-Fredonia, with a population of 23,410, and includes a portion of the town of Dunkirk, are now referred to as “urban areas.” Interestingly, Dunkirk-Fredonia is combined by the Census despite the two keeping separate governments and school districts.

Separately, according to the most recent numbers, Dunkirk has 12,614 residents and Fredonia has 9,801. About 3,000 State University of New York at Fredonia students are counted in the village total.