Rural regions are being reshaped by demographic change, digitalisation, the green transition and shifting geopolitical priorities. Yet these transformations affect rural places differently, and robust international comparative evidence is often constrained by geographical definitions that are either too broad, too fragmented or based on administrative boundaries that do not reflect how people live, work and access services.
This report examines how rural territories can be organised into internationally comparable functional areas. It assesses three approaches – Labour Market Areas, France’s Bassins de Vie, and Functional Rural Areas combined with Functional Urban Areas – against common criteria and quantitative measures. It also draws on mobile phone data to examine whether the resulting areas capture daily mobility patterns beyond commuting.
The findings show that all three approaches capture meaningful functional relationships and offer distinct advantages depending on the analytical purpose, geographical scale and available data. The report is intended to inform further methodological development and complement, rather than replace, national rural delineations and definitions, which remain essential for domestic policy design.
