This report was produced by the OECD’s Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (CFE), led by Director Lamia Kamal-Chaoui. It summarises the findings of the project Regional Development Along the Settlement Network funded by the European Commission (EC)’s Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO).
The report was co‑ordinated and drafted by Alison Weingarden, Economist in the CFE, under the supervision of Ana Moreno Monroy, Head of the Territorial Statistics and Analysis Unit in the Economic Analysis, Data and Statistics Division, relying on the direction and guidance of Rüdiger Ahrend, Head of Division. The report benefitted from contributions from David Burgalassi and Bernhard Nöbauer (both CFE). Carsten Dölle, Talia Kauffmann (Technion – Israel Institute of Technology), Nikos Patias (ABN AMRO Bank) and Tainá Souza Pacheco (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona). Eric Gonnard and Claire Hoffmann (both CFE) provided statistical support. Lewis Dijkstra (EC-Joint Research Centre, JRC) and Paolo Veneri (Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy) contributed substantially to the conceptual and analytical frameworks. Spatial data experts at EC-JRC, especially Chris Jacobs-Crisioni and Mert Kompil, are thanked for their extensive contributions to the analysis of population changes and accessibility. Martina Fischetti, Alessandro Giordano, Juan Nicolas Ibañez (all EC-JRC) are cordially thanked for their contributions to the public transit analysis. Additional thanks go to Hyunjoon Cho (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, Korea), Rang Lee and Keizo Nonomura (both CFE) for assistance with data access and to David O’Sullivan (University of Auckland) for detailed comments. Daniel Arribas-Bel (Alan Turing Institute and University of Liverpool) and Martin Fleischmann (Charles University in Prague) kindly collaborated with the OECD for the content on spatial signatures. Further thanks to Jack Waters (CFE), who co‑ordinated the publication process.
The following country experts are warmly thanked for their engagement in the project and its two workshops: Maria do Carmo Dias Bueno (Brazil); Alessandro Alasia, Peter Murphy, Nick Newstead (Canada); Camila Caballero (Chile); Carlos Alberto Duran (Colombia); Youngshil Park and Minhee Yun (Korea); Armando Esparza Juárez (Mexico); Anne McAllister and Karl Majorhazi (New Zealand); Birkan Ergüç (Türkiye); and Vincent Osier and Michael Ratcliffe (United States). Other OECD Working Party on Territorial Indicators (WPTI) delegates are thanked for their help in locating country-specific data, particularly Judith Winternitz (Australia), Even Høydahl and Vidar Jensen (Norway) and Zeyneb Ersayin (Türkiye). For Europe, in addition to the EC-JRC team, Martijn Brons and Jorge Durán Laguna from the EC DG REGIO project co‑ordination team provided valuable feedback, along with Teodora Brandmueller from Eurostat.
The project benefitted from feedback in multiple presentations at WPTI, Regional Studies Association and European Regional Science Association conferences in 2023. Additional thanks are extended to all participants in OECD/EC workshops, including in the virtual session on transport accessibility and hybrid workshops on country experiences in applying the degree of urbanisation. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge the support from Mapbox in making their data available for our report. Data were obtained through the Development Data Partnership (datapartnership.org), a collaboration between international organisations and private sector companies to facilitate the efficient and responsible use of third-party data in international development.