Synthesis of comments on the final report ESPON 1.1.2, “Urban-rural relations in Europe”

In the heart of the report is the definition between what is rural and what is urban. This is a challenge as the difference between the two is increasingly blurred, at various paces across Europe. The authors characterise then the urban-rural relations following two strands: their structural properties (established land use patterns, settlement structure and the distribution of population) and their functional properties (factual use of the physical environment such as various forms of production, consumption and communication). - This distinction leads to the so-called “harmonised typology” crossing the degree of human intervention (in terms of land cover) with the degree of urban influence (in terms of density and belonging to a functional urban area), which provides an unusual picture of Europe. This typology also presents the interest to be adaptable at NUTS 5. Furthermore, through diverse case studies, urban-rural relations are expressed in more qualitative terms: conflicts between “urban” and “rural”, for example with the pressure from the urban areas to locate resource facilities such as water treatment plants in the rural areas; complementary practices, for example when both rural and urban actors stand to gain by a more effective use of rural resources, like the biomass.peer-reviewe