ABSTRACT
Although intra-regional analysis provides a good deal of information about territorial units within a region, it does not offer much insight into the characteristics of the communities in which people live and carry out the social and economic activities that con tribute to local and regional development. The major sources of information about those activities in most countries are national censuses and specialized demo graphic surveys that usually do not disaggregate data to the level of discrete communities or settlements. Usually this information is only available for larger administrative units such as provinces, districts or municipalities, which may contain many settlements of different types and characteristics.
