To account for differences among rural and urban regions, the OECD s established a regional typology, classifying TL3 regions as predominantly urban (PU), intermediate (IN) or predominantly rural (PR) (OECD, 2009). This typology, based essentially on the percentage of regional population living in urban or rural communities, has proved to be meaningful to better explain regional differences in economic and labour market performance. However this typology does not take into account the presence of economic agglomerations if they happen to be in neighbouring regions. For example, a region is classified as rural or intermediate regardless its distance from a large urban centre where labour market, access to services, education opportunities and logistics for firms can be wider. Previous work reveals great heterogeneity in economic growth among rural regions and the distance from a populated centre could be a significant factor explaining these differences. For the latter, the OECD regional typology is extended to include an accessibility criterion. This criterion is based on the driving time needed for at least half of the population in a region to reach a populated centre of with 50 000 or more inhabitants. The resulting classification consists of four types of regions: Predominantly Urban (PU), Intermediate (IN), Predominantly Rural Close to a city (PRC) and Predominantly Rural Remote (PRR). For the time being, the extended typology has only been computed for regions in North America (Canada, Mexico and the United States) and Europe.

The objective of this paper is to understand, from an international comparative perspective, how population growth in rural regions is affected by the relationship with their nearby urban centers. By means of a cross-sectional analysis on OECD small regions (Territorial Level 3), the paper distinguishes spread effects-positive spillovers arising from urban growth-from the net effect of distance to nonrural places. The results show that spread effects outweigh backwash effects, so that rural regions benefit from growth in urban places. A rural region's distance from urban and intermediate regions has a negative effect on its population growth rate. Nevertheless, both the strength of this effect and the growth spillovers decline with distance, and this occurs relatively faster in Europe. The results further suggest that proximity to large urban areas has a higher positive influence than proximity to intermediate areas, but only outside Europe.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract