ABSTRACT
This chapter considers some opportunities for improving definitions of urban and rural areas. The complex processes which, particularly in more developed countries (MDCs), are reshaping settlement patterns and creating urban systems make the simple framework of the traditional binary urban-rural divide seem inadequate. The chapter shows three main dimensions of settlements to provide a framework for evaluating different ways to demarcate rural from urban areas, leading on to the development of some more appropriate measures. The three dimensions are intensity of settlement, settlement size, and accessibility. The chapter focuses on options for bricks-and-mortar definitions, and deals with measures which take account of the wider context within which any rural or urban area is set. It also considers some implementation issues posed by the newer methods of definition, and especially the question of how several indicators can be combined in a multidimensional approach to representing settlement patterns.
