Economic and Social Development along the Urban-Rural Continuum : New Opportunities to Inform Policy
The economic and social development of nations relies on their population having physical access to services and employment opportunities. For the vast majority of the 3.4 billion people living in rural locations, this largely depends on their acce...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , |
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| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/460501629739802690/Economic-and-Social-Development-along-the-Urban-Rural-Continuum-New-Opportunities-to-Inform-Policy http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36199 |
| Summary: | The economic and social development of
nations relies on their population having physical access to
services and employment opportunities. For the vast majority
of the 3.4 billion people living in rural locations, this
largely depends on their access to urban centers of
different sizes. Similarly, urban centers depend on their
rural hinterlands. Building on the literature on functional
areas/territories and the rural-urban continuum as well as
insights from central place theory, this review paper
advances the notion of catchment areas differentiated along
an urban-to-rural continuum to capture these urban-rural
interconnections. It further shows how a new, publicly
available data set operationalizing this concept can shed
new light on policy making across a series of development
fields, including institutions and governance, urbanization
and food systems, welfare and poverty, and access to health
and education services. Together the insights support a more
geographically nuanced perspective on development. |
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