A Harmonised Definition of Cities and Rural Areas: the New Degree of Urbanisation
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Working Papers A series of short papers on regional research and indicators produced by the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy WP 01/2014 Regional Working Paper 2014 A harmonised definition of cities and rural areas: the new degree of urbanisation Lewis Dijkstra and Hugo Poelman Regional and Urban Policy > Executive Summary This paper describes the new degree of urbanisation (DEGURBA) classification. This classification distinguishes three types of areas: densely, intermediate and thinly populated areas. This new approach was developed to harmonise several similar but not identical spatial concepts. The new classification is based on a new source of information: the population grid. This paper shows the benefits of this approach in terms of greater comparability and data availability. It describes the method and how it was developed. The annex contains the original and the new guidance notes on the degree of urbanisation and a section on how to update the degree of urbanisation. It also contains the United Nations (UN) recommendations on localities and urban/rural areas and the definitions of urban areas used in Europe in a recent United Nations Population Division (UNPD) report. Disclaimer: This Working Paper has been written by Lewis Dijkstra and Hugo Poelman, European Commission Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO) and is intended to increase awareness of the technical work being done by the staff of the Directorate-General, as well as by experts working in association with them, and to seek comments and suggestions for further analysis. The views expressed are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily correspond to those of the European Commission. A HARMONISED DEFINITION OF CITIES AND RURAL AREAS: THE NEW DEGREE OF URBANISATION 1 > Contents 1. Introduction 2 2. Why a new degree of urbanisation? 2 3. What is the new definition? (Short version) 5 4. What are the benefits? 7 5. How does it work? (Definition long version) 7 6. What are the changes between the old and the new degree of urbanisation? 11 7. Conclusion 14 Annexes 16 1. Original degree of urbanisation 16 2. New degree of urbanisation 17 3. How to update the new degree of urbanisation 18 4. UN principles and recommendations 21 5. Definitions used of urban areas in UNPD report (2009) 23 2 1 INTRODUCTION 2.1 Using a new tool: the population grid Urban and rural areas are two central concepts used by a wide A small but growing number of countries in the EU have created range of policymakers, researchers, national administrations and population grids based on population registers or other detailed international organisations such as the Organisation for sources of where people live (the so-called bottom-up method). Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the UN and the This provides much more detailed and accurate information about EU. These two terms are readily understood by the general public, the population distribution within a country and within LAU2s. but a clear definition at the international level has remained elusive. For example, the UN publishes data on cities, urban areas To have a population grid that covered all EU countries, including and rural areas, but relies almost entirely on national definitions those which do not have a bottom-up grid, a disaggregation grid of these areas. The UN principles and recommendations state (top-down method) was created for the countries without a bot- that due to different characteristics of urban and rural areas tom-up grid. The top-down method usually disaggregates LAU2 across the globe, a global definition is not possible. These population data according to land use or land cover information. recommendations also draw attention to the difficulty of finding data for these areas. When this method was first developed, the Joint Research Centre’s (JRC) disaggregation grid for 2006 was used for the The new degree of urbanisation provides a solution for this double countries without a bottom-up population grid. problem of data availability and lack of a shared definition. In the European Union and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) More recently, a grid combining bottom-up and top-down grids countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland), the new has been published for free download: degree of urbanisation provides access to data from a wide range of surveys, including the labour force survey and the survey on http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/gisco_ income and living conditions. Geographical_information_maps/publications/ geostat_population_grid_report This new degree of urbanisation also introduces a new harmonised city definition, which was developed in close cooperation with the OECD. Most international data collections had to rely on national 2.2 Harmonising spatial concepts definitions. This new harmonised definition captures large cities in a new and comparable way. The revision of the degree of urbanisation also created the oppor- tunity to streamline and harmonise a number of similar but not identical spatial concepts for which data was being collected. 2 WHY A NEW DEGREE 2.2.1 Spatial concepts used OF URBANISATION? by the European Commission Four urban-rural spatial concepts were being used: The original degree of urbanisation was introduced in 1991 to 1 rural areas as defined by the OECD methodology; indicate the character of the area where the respondent lives. 2 thinly populated area (original degree of urbanisation); It distinguished three types of areas: densely populated, 3 densely populated area (original degree of urbanisation); intermediate and thinly populated areas. This definition was 4 Urban Audit city. based on the population size, density and contiguity of local administrative units level 2 (LAU2, see annex 1 for the official As part of the OECD method to identify predominantly urban, names of this level in each country in the original language). intermediate and predominantly rural regions, all LAU2 with As this method is based on LAU2s which vary considerably in a population density below 150 inhabitants per km2 were clas- area size, the results are distorted and reduce the comparability sified as rural. between countries with large LAU2s and small LAU2s. The original degree of urbanisation method used a lower den- To ensure that cities in LAU2s with a large area are still above the sity threshold (100 inhabitants per km2) for thinly populated density threshold of the densely populated category, the original areas but in combination with population size and contiguity. degree of urbanisation had to use a relatively low threshold For example, a single LAU2 with a density above 100 inhabit- (500 inhabitants per km2). This low threshold meant that for ants per km2 but with less than 50 000 inhabitants would still countries with large LAU2s, the cities were still identified as be classified as thinly populated. densely populated, but in other countries it meant that too many LAU2s were included in the densely populated category. Both the OECD method and the original degree of urbanisation led to several large cities (although not always the same ones) To avoid this distortion, the method had to find a way of looking being classified as thinly populated or rural. at the population distribution inside LAU2s and using smaller units with the same size. The population grid with a resolution The densely populated areas had to have a density of 500 inhab- of 1 km2 solved this problem. itants per km2 and a minimum population of 50 000 inhabitants. A HARMONISED DEFINITION OF CITIES AND RURAL AREAS: THE NEW DEGREE OF URBANISATION 3 This method identified the vast majority of cities, but it also The UNPD only publishes figures using a two-way split in urban included LAU2s which were more suburban than urban or and rural. Therefore, the degree of urbanisation needs to be included several smaller towns but no single centre of at least simplified to a two-way split. Urban areas would equal densely 50 000 inhabitants. populated and intermediate density areas. Rural areas would equal thinly populated areas. The alternative names as defined The Urban Audit covered a large sample of cities with at least in the new degree of urbanisation anticipate this two-way split. 50 000 inhabitants. These cities were not selected in a harmonised Intermediate or small urban areas and densely populated or manner. The Urban Audit was not identical to the densely popu- large urban areas are clearly intended to be combined into lated areas identified by the original degree of urbanisation. ‘urban areas’. Figure 1: Four conflicting spatial concepts Despite the variety of definitions used, the population in rural areas in the EU has hovered around 29 % for the past decade. Urban-Rural Degree of Urban Audit Typology urbanisation The differences for individual countries, however, are some- times quite substantial. Rural LAU2 Thinly populated Intermediate Figure 3: Harmonising with UNPD data density Densely populated Cities UNPD reports Degree of urbanisation Name Alternative name rural areas Thinly populated Rural areas In 2010, the European Commission published a new definition Urban Areas Intermediate density Town and Suburbs of urban and rural regions, which was similar in approach to the Densely populated Cities OECD method but relied on population grids instead of LAU2s (for more information see Eurostat Regional Yearbook 2010). This definition introduced the concept of rural grid cells. They are used to define rural regions and rural LAU2s. This ensures 2.2.3 Urban Morphological Zones, that rural areas and rural regions are defined based on the Urban Clusters and Centres same concept (rural grid cells). It also meant that rural areas and thinly populated areas were now identical (1). A last spatial concept which could be harmonised is the urban mor- phological zone (UMZ) as used by the European Environmental The new degree of urbanisation uses urban centres to identify Agency (2).