The development of metropolitan areas is a natural process of urban expansion, achieved through exurbanisation and suburbanisation, whereby urban functions extend into the rural periurban environment. The expansion of the concept of the urban metropolitan area to second tier urban areas...

Nighttime lights are increasingly used by social scientists as a proxy for economic activity and economic development in subnational spatial units. However, so far, our understanding of what nighttime lights capture is limited. We construct local indicators of household wealth, education and...

The addressing to rural areas, coupled with the identification of indicators characterizing the degree of resource endowment, derives both from the size of the rural area and also from the share of employment in productive activities of social and cultural services, habitat, etc. Although the...