Intermediary cities – with populations between 50 000 to 250 000 residents – have long been the missing link in urban and regional policy. Through their dual “bridging” role, they complement nearby large urban centres while supporting smaller cities, towns, and rural areas, helping foster more balanced and polycentric patterns of regional development. Yet despite their strategic importance, intermediary cities have often remained overlooked in urban and regional policy debates, falling between policy frameworks primarily designed either for metropolitan areas or for rural territories. They have gained specific attention in the post‑COVID‑19 context, amid emerging evidence of a possible rebalancing of spatial dynamics, driven by the expansion of remote working and a growing search for quality of life across different types of places.
Developed in collaboration with the European Commission’s Directorate‑General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO), this report “Unlocking the Potential of Intermediary Cities for Regional Development” seeks to fill this gap at a pivotal moment. Across OECD countries, governments are seeking new approaches to strengthen competitiveness, address territorial disparities and expand access to opportunity. In the European Union, these questions have gained renewed prominence through reflections on people’s “right to stay” and the potential of all places to offer residents the conditions to thrive.
To support this shift, this report draws on the OECD’s longstanding work on urban and regional development. The OECD Principles on Urban Policy, adopted by Ministers of urban and regional policy in 2019, call for a “system of cities” approach that recognises the complementary roles of cities of different sizes and the importance of stronger urban‑rural linkages. Similarly, OECD work on National Urban Policy has shown the need to support cities of all sizes for more balanced, higher quality urbanisation.
Building on these foundations, this report represents one of the first international efforts to develop a shared understanding of intermediary cities and the functions they perform within broader territorial systems. It proposes a consistent definition of intermediary cities across OECD countries, develops new indicators to better capture their functions, assesses their economic performance, and introduces an experimental typology of intermediary cities to support more tailored policy approaches. These insights are complemented by six in-depth case studies that illustrate how intermediary cities operate across diverse geographic, economic and institutional contexts.
The findings challenge conventional assumptions and show that intermediary cities are neither smaller versions of metropolitan areas nor larger rural centres. Their strengths, challenges and policy needs are distinct. The report identifies practical actions that governments can take to strengthen the bridging role of intermediary cities and includes a pilot policy toolkit designed to support implementation through a structured, step-by-step approach.
Although much of the empirical analysis presented in this report – including the quantitative assessment and the experimental typology – is grounded in the European context, the conceptual framework and definitions of intermediary cities set out in Chapters 1 and 2 draw on international evidence, with broader relevance across OECD countries and beyond. By providing a common framework, new evidence and practical guidance, this report lays the foundations for further research, which could extend the analysis to non-EU contexts and strengthen the evidence base needed to unlock the role of intermediary cities in shaping more resilient territorial futures.