This work leverages globally consistent data on parks from Google Maps, in combination with the computational power of Google Maps Directions API to quantify accessibility to parks across nearly 500 metropolitan areas in six countries: Estonia, France, Greece, Mexico, Sweden, and the United...

This paper develops a methodology to define functional rural areas in the EU. It seeks feedback on the method and the results. Functional rural areas cover all the territory outside functional urban areas. They are constructed in three steps. First, we define rural centres: they are the largest...

The green energy transition and its boost to the deployment of renewable energy can offer a unique opportunity for rural areas to benefit from their natural resources. The present study aims to provide a quantitative assessment of the technical potential of renewable energy sources in the EU's...

The ever-increasing concentration of people and economic growth in the largest cities relative to the rest of the country has slowed down or even reversed in many of the developed European countries over the last decade. This trend contradicts what the global cities, urban economics and new...

This article argues that investing in a wide range of city sizes, or a portfolio of places, can be more conducive to growth than primarily investing in the largest city. A range of cities allows each firm to find its optimal city. This reduces the needed size of cities and thus congestion costs....

To account for differences among rural and urban regions, the OECD has established a regional typology, classifying TL3 regions as predominantly urban (PU), intermediate (IN) or predominantly rural (PR). This typology has proved to be meaningful to better explain regional differences in economic...