Rural-urban connections: taking stock from the OECD Latin American Rural Development Conference

The Regional Development Policy Committee’s (RDPC) body of work has underlined the importance of considering functional geographies, recognising that urban and rural areas are interconnected through different types of interactions that often cross traditional administrative boundaries.

In 2019, the RDPC and its subsidiary bodies, the Working Party on Rural Policy (WPRUR) and the OECD Working Party on Urban Policy (WPURB), elaborated and adopted the OECD Principles on Rural Policy and Urban Policy, which have a common principle: supporting interdependencies and co-operation between urban and rural areas.

Drawing on the discussions from the OECD Latin American Rural Development Conference, this workshop was subdivided into the following three sessions:

• Understanding and leveraging mutual benefits: new ways to measure rural-urban connections
  The Rural Development Conference in Brazil highlighted a clear agenda for better understanding the mutual benefits between rural and urban areas. Speakers identified two connected priorities: rethinking how we measure rural–urban relationships and expanding what we measure. The discussions noted that administrative borders and distance to city do not fully account for how rural and urban regions interact. Measurement should move beyond flows of people to incorporate flows of goods, services, capital, and knowledge, as well as supply chain linkages, digital connectivity, and investment patterns.

• How agrifood, tourism, bioeconomy and circular systems provide prosperity in urban and rural places
  The Rural Development Conference in Brazil examined how agrifood, tourism, bioeconomy, and circular systems generate value across rural and urban places and how that value is distributed. A recurring theme was the territorial mismatch between where productive assets are located and where returns are captured: rural areas hold the land, forests, water, and ecosystems that underpin these sectors, but market access, logistics, and institutional capacity often concentrate benefits elsewhere. These sectors depend on rural-urban connections, including value chains, labour markets, and natural systems. However, governance often treats them in isolation, framing food as an agricultural issue, forests as an extractive issue, and water as a utilities issue, thereby missing the opportunity for a more integrated approach.

• Leveraging AI, innovation and investment to build rural-urban connected systems
  The Rural Development Conference in Brazil examined how AI and innovation investment can either widen rural and urban gaps or help close them. A central concern was uneven uptake, with weak connectivity and limited local capabilities preventing rural areas from accessing productivity and service gains enabled by AI. At the same time, investment pipelines centred on cities often leave rural entrepreneurs outside the networks and capital flows they need. The discussions stressed that rural innovation depends on linkages, including partnerships with universities, research centres, and firms, but that these require structured, sustained mechanisms, not ad hoc projects. A broader shift is needed from project-by-project support to ecosystem development, with rural–urban innovation and investment pipelines that enable rural entrepreneurs to participate in emerging sectors such as agri-tech, green energy, and creative industries, while allowing urban economies to benefit from rural talent, resources, and ideas.