The statistical analysis of rural change is traditionally based on classifications of administrative regions, like municipalities or provinces. These classifications do not allow fine-grained interregional analysis of rural change. Especially in sparsely-populated countries, like Finland, the...

In this paper the authors first examine the concept of the rural area and the related typologies and then analyse changes in the internal structure of rural areas in Finland by using georeferenced data. Rural areas seem to have been defined on the basis of land use and population density for as...