Rural-urban linkages

Rural-urban linkages: the flows that tie town and countryside together

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Rural-urban linkages are, in the basic definition PoliRural+ uses, flows across space that link rural and urban areas: flows of goods, people, information, finance, waste and social relations. A second, less descriptive definition sees them as the functional links between sectors (agriculture, industry, services), which drive structural change on both sides (D2.2, §1.5).

Two-way traffic

D2.2 describes the exchange as mutual. Rural areas send food, raw materials and workers to towns and cities; urban areas return goods, services and jobs. Rural areas offer cultural and natural attractions to urban visitors and space to test new technologies. Urban areas generate pollution and waste that reach the countryside, while rural areas provide the ecosystem services cities depend on.

The scale is uneven. Rural areas covered more than 341 million ha, 83% of the EU’s area, in 2018. In 2021, 38.9% of EU residents lived in cities, 35.9% in towns and suburbs and 25.2% in rural areas (Eurostat figures quoted in D2.2, Annex D). How such shares are measured is the subject of the EU’s territorial typologies and of the depth block in this chapter.

Ten linkages that matter everywhere

The Grant Agreement names ten linkages that play a significant role across the EU (D2.2, Annex D, Table 1):

Each pilot works on a few of them. Apulia builds short food supply chains between rural farms and cities; Mallusjoki links rural events with Lahti and Helsinki; the Czech-Bavarian pilot builds cross-border ties to Bavarian urban hubs (D2.3, Table 8; see the pilot network).

Functional areas, not administrative maps

Administrative divisions were designed for top-down control and revenue collection, in an era of limited mobility. Citizens now identify with functional living and working areas (D2.2, §1.4). EU cohesion policy promotes functional-area approaches under its policy objective “Europe closer to citizens”: policies for a shared territory cannot be designed separately on each side of a border. D2.2 states that this is also the approach PoliRural+ adopts (§1.5).

COVID-19 made the interdependence visible: urban-to-rural moves, strained rural services and a stronger focus on local food (D2.2, §4).

Where the flows break down is the subject of rural-urban fragmentation.

Rural-urban linkages in 120 words

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Rural-urban linkages are the flows of goods, people, information, finance, waste and social relations between countryside and town (D2.2, §1.5).

• Rural areas supply food, raw materials, workers and ecosystem services.
• Urban areas supply goods, services, jobs and, often, better infrastructure.
• Waste and pollution travel outwards; visitors travel in.

People live, work and shop across municipal borders, so PoliRural+ follows EU cohesion policy and plans for the functional area they share rather than for each administrative unit separately. The Grant Agreement lists ten key linkages, from food supply to digital connectivity. Each pilot region picks the ones that matter locally and builds a Regional Action Plan around them.

Where does rural end? Three EU ways to draw the line

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There is no universal definition of urban. Each country decides for itself, and definitions range from a cluster of five households to an administrative boundary defined by population density and built-up area (D2.2, §1.3). D2.2 sets out three EU-relevant rules for drawing the line.

1. Region types (NUTS 3)

Eurostat’s urban-rural typology sorts NUTS 3 regions into predominantly rural, intermediate and predominantly urban by the share of the population living in rural areas. D2.2 quotes the OECD thresholds:

For scale: NUTS 2021 has 92 NUTS 1, 242 NUTS 2 and 1,166 NUTS 3 regions. NUTS 2 is the level that decides cohesion-policy eligibility (D2.2, Annex C).

2. Degree of urbanisation (local units)

The degree of urbanisation classifies local administrative units as cities (densely populated), towns and suburbs (intermediate density) or rural areas (thinly populated). It uses population thresholds and contiguity on 1 km² population grid cells. The classification was introduced in 1991. Since 2012 it has used an improved methodology developed jointly by the OECD, the JRC and several Commission directorates-general. Eurostat calls an area rural when more than 50% of its population lives in rural grid cells. In 2020, almost 40% of Europeans lived in cities, a third in towns and suburbs and 28% in rural areas. The range is wide: close to 90% of Maltese lived in cities, and only 0.2% in rural areas (Eurofound, quoted in D2.2, Annex C).

3. Functional rural areas

A JRC paper (Dijkstra and Jacobs-Crisioni, 2023) defines functional rural areas for all territory outside functional urban areas. It works in three steps. First, rural centres are the largest town or village within a 10-minute drive. Second, each grid cell joins the catchment of the centre with the greatest pull. Third, catchments merge until each has at least 25,000 inhabitants or lies more than an hour’s drive from its neighbours (D2.2, Annex E). Of the three rules, this one comes closest to the linkage logic, because it follows where people actually travel for services.

Why PoliRural+ does not pick one

The Commission’s Thematic Working Group on rural areas, set up in 2009 to review the 2007–2013 programmes, found that only a minority of rural development programmes used the OECD definition. It proposed building blocks instead: physical handicap, environmental sensitivity and socio-economic disadvantage, to be weighted per region. D2.2 draws the conclusion for the project: PoliRural+ is user-driven, so it adopts the local stakeholders’ own definition of which areas are rural or urban (D2.2, §1.3 and Annex C). The statistics serve as evidence; they do not replace the local definition.

Legal definitions used in EU policy are covered in defining rural.

Watch: a day of rural-urban flows

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The animation draws the exchange that D2.2 describes in words. The countryside sends food and raw materials, workers and the ecosystem services cities depend on; the town returns goods, services and jobs, sends visitors to natural and cultural attractions, and sends its waste and pollution out to the countryside. The flows keep moving because they never stop: they are the everyday traffic of one territory.

Watch the dashed administrative border in the middle. None of the flows respects it. That is why the last thing to appear is the functional area, the shared territory that EU cohesion policy plans for and that PoliRural+ adopts as its frame (D2.2, §1.4–1.5). The full list of ten linkages is in rural-urban linkages.

If your device is set to reduce motion, you see the finished picture without movement.

Podívejte se: den toků mezi venkovem a městem

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Animace kreslí výměnu, kterou D2.2 popisuje slovy. Venkov posílá potraviny a suroviny, pracovní sílu a ekosystémové služby, na kterých města závisejí. Město vrací zboží, služby a práci, posílá návštěvníky za přírodou a památkami a vyváží na venkov svůj odpad a znečištění. Toky se pohybují pořád, protože se nikdy nezastaví: jsou to všední cesty jednoho území.

Všimněte si přerušované administrativní hranice uprostřed. Žádný tok ji nerespektuje. Proto se jako poslední objeví funkční území: sdílené území, pro které plánuje kohezní politika EU a které PoliRural+ přebírá jako svůj rámec (D2.2, §1.4–1.5). Celý seznam deseti vazeb je v bloku vazby mezi venkovem a městem.

Pokud máte v zařízení nastavené omezení pohybu, uvidíte hotový obrázek bez animace.

Zdroje:

• D2.2 Rural-urban linkages and opportunities post COVID-19, §1.4 Territorial Cohesion, §1.5 Rural-Urban Linkages, Annex D Rural-Urban Linkages — PDF

Check yourself: Which Definition of Rural Goes Into the Plan?

A county development team is starting its Regional Action Plan on local food and services. Before the first workshop it has to decide which parts of the county count as “rural” and which as “urban”. Which rule should the plan use?

A) “The Eurostat urban-rural typology” Use the NUTS 3 label: the county is “intermediate”, so treat the whole county as intermediate.

B) “The degree of urbanisation” Classify every municipality as city, town and suburb, or rural area, using the 1 km² grid method.

C) “Let the stakeholders define it, with the statistics as evidence” Ask the people who live and work in the area where they see rural and urban, and test their view against Eurostat data.

D) “Municipal boundaries” Treat each municipality as rural or urban based on its own legal status, since that is where budgets and planning powers sit.

Choose one, then read why it works or where it breaks.