The need for grids Lewis Dijkstra Deputy Head of the Economic Analysis Unit, DG for Regional and Urban POlicy

Three main points Regional and local typologies Analysis Future uses/benefits

1. Typologies Cities and commuting zone Degree of urbanisation Urban-rural regional typology Metro regions Coastal regions Future border regions

Benefit of the population grid

New degree of urbanisation Type of Area Criteria Cities > 50% pop. in urban centres Towns and suburbs < 50% pop. in urban centres > 50% pop. in urban clusters Rural area > 50% pop. in rural grid cells

Three degrees of urbanisation Three grid concepts in Cork (IE) Three types of municipalities

The EU-OECD FUA definition in 3 steps Define an urban centre of 50 000 or more Define a city based on this urban centre (LAU2 or groups of LAU2s) Define a commuting zone based on this city (including check for polycentric cities) IMPORTANT! Cities are selected based on the population of their centre, not total population

One, two, three

Urban-rural regional typology Predominantly urban: population share of rural raster cells < 20% (> 80% in urban clusters) Intermediate: population share of rural raster cells between 20% and 50% Predominantly rural: population share of rural raster cells > 50% Presence of a city may lead to a shift to predominantly urban or intermediate

Other typologies Metro regions Coastal regions Remote regions Cohesion Policy funds territorial cooperation (9 billion EUR). Population grid could be used to identify border regions more accurately (i.e. regions with a high share of their population living close to a national border).

Use cases Access to flights Exposure to air pollution Access to public transport Land use modelling (LUISA) Flood risk Access to green urban areas …

Chapter 1

Stockholm: areas and population by access to public transport and its frequency 844,000 1,135,000 1,542,000 2,042,000 inh. inh. inh. inh.

Density drops away from the centre

Future Geocoded statistics NUTS Region changes Data for grid concepts (instead of LAU-2?)

Geocode everything With more geocoded addresses, buildings, registers, survey respondents, census respondents… it will become easier to produce statistics in variable geographies: labour market areas, remote rural areas, metro regions…

Region changes Regions change frequently in some Member States. Geocoding (or gridding) of micro data can help to re-produce data for new regions

Data for grid concepts Local administrative units change every year in some Member States As a result degree of urbanisation methodology has to be reapplied annually Producing data for urban centres, urban clusters and rural grid cells would be more comparable over time and require less effort