This report was produced by the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (CFE), led by Lamia Kamal-Chaoui, Director, as part of the programme of work of the Regional Development Policy Committee (RDPC). The review was made possible by financial support from Statistics Canada.
The OECD would like to thank the members of the project’s scientific committee for their valuable comments, feedback and guidance throughout the project: Alessandro Alasia and Peter Murphy (both Statistics Canada), Luisa Franconi (Istat), Valeriya Angelova and Teodora Brandmueller (both Eurostat), Ksenia Shadrina (US Economic Development Administration) and Siiri Silm (University of Tartu).
Alessandro Alasia, Anne Munro and Peter Murphy (Statistics Canada) provided extensive feedback on an earlier draft of the report and pursued the mapping exercise based on Python in Canada and the United States. Luisa Franconi made detailed comments and provided important advice on both the methodological guidelines as well as the experience of Eurostat and Istat with functional areas. Siiri Silm generously shared the aggregated mobile phone flow data and helped draft the parts on the Estonian experience by using novel data to identify territorial linkages. Julia Schmitt-Schulte (Statistics Netherlands) provided input and data for cross-border functional areas in Europe. Finally, the OECD thanks Professor Mike Coombes for providing substantive feedback and offering detailed comments on the report.
The report was prepared by Lukas Kleine-Rueschkamp (Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6) and Milenko Fadic (Chapters 4 and 5). It was co‑ordinated by Lukas Kleine-Rueschkamp and Paolo Veneri, and overseen by Rudiger Ahrend, Head of the Economic Analysis, Statistics and Multi-Level Governance Section. Pilar Philip prepared the review for publication.