TURNING TO ‘RURALITY’: PROFILING URBAN AND RURAL AREAS FOR THE EVALUATION OF REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT POLICIES

A better understanding of strength and weaknesses in rural systems through an adequate set of comprehensive and regularly updated indicators, indicates the necessary prerequisite for a flexible response to policy needs, such as policy targeting and monitoring rural development.The present study is aimed at proposing an effective methodology for defining and profiling different typologies of rural areas. A quantitative exercise has been developed in Greece, an European country showing dramatic economic changes in rural areas during the last decades. Results indicate that the optimal classification for rural areas in Greece can be derived through the combined use of the Degree of Handicap of EU Regulation 1257/99 and Degree of urbanism (using the standard OECD criterion). The methodology illustrated here constitutes an appropriate base for providing a tool informing policy measures destined to support the socioeconomic performances of rural areas in Greece.