Poster : Urban and rural areas in Belgium according to the Eurostat revised definition (*)

Pierre Jamagne

GIS unitStatistics Belgium

(*) : developed jointly by EC DG Agri and Rural development, JRC, DG Regio and Eurostat

EFGS 2015 Vienna Conference

1.Why did we map urban and rural areas?

2.The urban-rural typology currently used at Statistics Belgium

3.The revised EU urban-rural typology applied to Belgium

4. Comments and Conclusions

1.Why did we map urban and rural areas?

Earlier this year, in view of the DIMESA meeting of May 2015, the GIS unit was asked by the environmental statistics department to investigate the urban-rural typology used at Statistics Belgium.

DIMESA (directors meeting on regional, spatial, environment statistics and accounts) is in charge of revising the NUTS regulation by introducing territorial typologies into it (maritime, metropolitan, urban-rural, coastal, functional).

So we decided to investigate the situation and to eventually make a proposal for the typology

2.The urban-rural typology currently used at Statistics Belgium

The typology currently used at Statistics Belgium dates from 1991 and is used to classify LAU2 units into urban and rural communes.

It is based on 3 indicators : Share of the male population employed in the agricultural sector versus the occupied active population in the commune Share of the people commuting versus the occupied active population living in the communeShare of the population working in the trade sector versus the occupied active population living in the commune

33 / 589 communes were classified as rural.The population of these 33 communes makes the rural population in Belgium since 1991.

These combined indicators led to the following map

3. The revised Eurostat urban-rural typology applied to Belgium

We decided to test the revised urban-rural typology as defined in the Eurostat regional yearbook 2010 on the 2011 population 1 km² grid we had produced for the GEOSTAT project and we got the following map ……

4. Comments and Conclusions

This map shows urban and rural areas independantly of administrative units

The next step will be to classify communes into rural communes and urban communes

A commune can have rural as well as urban areas on its own territory

A commune can have rural population as well as urban population living on its own territory.

The Belgian typology is based on functional characteristics while the EU revised definition is based on population density.

The results obtained with the EU revised definition gives a more satisfactory picture of rural and urban areas in Belgium

The revised definition allows to have comparable results throughout the EU while before each country had its own definition

The exercise is easily reproductible.

Thank you for your attention

Questions?