This page is based to a great extent on the article
"Urban Identity and the Poll Taxes of 1377, 1379, and 1381" P. J. P. Goldberg - The Economic History Review Vol. 43, No. 2 (May, 1990), pp. 194-216
Goldberg's article looks (in part) at what makes a community urban or rural in terms of occupations, sex and marital status. The Howdenshire returns for 1379 are called 'outstanding' in terms of the detail they provide.
Throughout the article, Howden is regarded as a town, being compared with such places as Ripon, Canterbury, (Kings) Lynn and Pontefract. Goldberg's four identifying factors for an urban rather than a rural environment are:
Using these criteria, Howden is certainly an urban community. Compared with the other towns in the 1379 dataset, it has the second lowest marriage ratio - only Ripon is lower - 64.7 compared with Howden's 64.9. It's important to remember that the clergy are not included so this is not distorting the figure. The proportion of servants in Howden is 22.4% - the highest of the 1379 group. The sex ratio for Howden is also the lowest - 84.7 men for every 100 women.
Goldberg also has a category for the 'economically active' percentage of the population - the people who are engaged in a trade. As with the other criteria above, Howden is well in the urban category - 55.3% compared with 52% of Pontefract and 57.5% for Ripon. In the rural areas of Howdenshire this figure was often around 10% - eg Kilpin with 4 weavers and a brewer out of 36 tax payers, or Owsthorpe with 2 brewers and a 'semester'(?) out of 34. Even a fairly large village like Eastrington only had 26 out 76 households assessed at 6d or above.
However, there are two caveats. The first is the comment "only for the Howden returns does [excluding agriculture] involve any significant element within the urban tax population". Secondly, the victualing trades (principally brewers and butchers in Howden) amount to 40% of the economically active, whereas in no other town does it reach 25%.
In terms of the urban/rural divide of the population, I think it can be explained by the late conversion of the church to collegiate status. The other minsters in the region - Beverley, Ripon, Southwell - were all founded in Saxon times, and the towns would have grown around them. Until the founding of the colloge of canons, Howden would have had a (non-resident) parson. This is supposition, but I think we can imagine a small to average urban centre - possibly around the size of Driffield or Pocklington - with a periphery of agricultural workers.
The collegiate church clergy would also provide a reasonable explanation for at least part of the high level of food and drink trades. There would have been 25-30 men with money to spend, and possibly not much else to spend it on. However another factor may well be the presence of the Bishop of Durhams Manor House, with its 10 or so regular staff and occasional large groups of visitors. It would be possible to store grain and so bake bread as needed, but beer could not be brewed to order. To see if this is likely, we can look at Riccall, where the Bishop had another residence - used quite often in the 14C, less so later - and Cawood, where the Archbishop of York had his castle. We only have a fraction of the records for Riccall, but of the 11 economically active households 7 were brewers. The only tax payers in Cawood with an occupation (apart from a franklin) are 7 hostellers, all rated at 6d.
To sum up, Howden in 1379 was a town with a large rural element, primarily devoted to supplying the needs of the resident clerics and officials of the Bishop of Durham.