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Paper prepared for presentation to WG4.

5 “Rurality on the map” at the


ESRS conference 17-20 August 2009 in Vaasa, Finland

A functional approach to classifying rurality at parish level in Denmark,


combining Corine Land Cover data and administrative boundaries

Niels C. Nielsen1 and Pia Heike Johansen,

Institute for Rural Research and Development, University of Southern Denmark, Esbjerg.

Abstract

Definition of what is rural and mapping rural areas are closely related tasks, continuously of great
importance, in research as well as for administrative purposes. Typically criteria based on population
density and socio-economic parameters have been applied, but following increased availability of spatial
data on land use, classifications based on geographical information have been proposed, especially in
relation to EU agricultural and regional policy. Here, a community-based model is presented, in which
territorial units are identified and classified by a simple distance-based index. Particularly important for
determining rurality status of territorial units are firstly the presence of open land between urban
centers, secondly the size of the territorial units labeled and thirdly, the number of communities to be
passed before an urban center is reached. Application of the proposed methodology is illustrated
through use of GIS to integrate land-use and statistical data from a Danish region, showing
developments in population and establishment of knowledge intensive service activities.

1. Introduction
Seen from a geographical point of view, the question of how an area is best defined as being “rural” is
closely related to the question of where rural areas are found. Answers to such questions are of great
theoretical interest, but during recent years, also very practical applications have been found. Most of
all, this is the case in the EU system, where large funds are allocated for rural development through the
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the Regional Policy programs (Jonard et al 2007), but also globally
such as shown be the efforts of FAO’s Wye group to reach agreement on definitions of rurality at
regional level, based on population density (Wye Group 2007), in accordance with the OECD definition
(cited in Gallego 2008, p. 2), where a threshold value of 150 inhabitants per square km is applied at the
municipal (LAU-1) level, which for Denmark would mean that about 49 percent of the population lives in

1
Presenting and Corresponding author: ncn@sitkom.sdu.dk

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Paper prepared for presentation to WG4.5 “Rurality on the map” at the
ESRS conference 17-20 August 2009 in Vaasa, Finland

rural areas (Svendsen and Sørensen, 2007). As in many other national contexts the OECD definition is
too broad to make sense and therefore some additional criteria supplement the Danish definition of
rural (Kristensen et al. 2007).

A number of basic research projects with focus on territorial structure and cohesion (Bryden et al 2008,
ESPON 2004 and 2006, Hart 2004, Bryden and Hart 2001) as well as practical studies have searched for
rigid, logically coherent and relatively simple methods for delineation of rural areas and/or classification
of administrative and statistical areal units onto an urban-rural framework or some typology or ranking
system referring to the degree of rurality (Waldorf 2007, Kristensen et al 2007). The immediate
background for the study was a need for classification of parishes by type/degree of rurality, for a report
to the Danish Ministry of the Interior and Social Affairs on the regional dependency of rural areas
(Johansen 2008). Facing a similar task, but taking a rather different approach, Kristensen et al (2007)
devised a method for classifying Danish municipalities into one of four groups: Urban, Semi-urban, Rural
and Peripheral. Their approach was statistical, however the criteria for “rurality” were not deducted
from any particular understanding of the (physical/geographical) rural-urban system, rather chosen in
order to produce operational indicators, in particular a compound rurality index, to produce a politically
acceptable classification of Danish municipalities with granting of EU subsidies in mind. The criteria,
modified from the ones recommended by OECD, are derived from values at municipality level of basic
area and distance parameters (for instance describing access to motorway) and some socio-economic
and demographic parameters, describing status and trends. One advantage of using these data at
municipality level is that they are easily available from statistics Denmark, as opposed to parish-level
data, where special “runs” have to be ordered.

It is the challenges in defining and outlining the rural, along with the status of research described above,
that have inspired us to the work presented in this paper, guided by the following Working question:
How can land use information contribute to the identification of rural, in such a way that it takes its point
of departure in a community level and can be applied to a regional context?

2. Approach and methodology


The approach described here, for the practical calculations of rurality status has been carried out in an
experimental and explorative way, with manually defined operations in the GIS, later verified by
replication of the sequence of proposed operations. As it will appear, the problem of pointing out the

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Paper prepared for presentation to WG4.5 “Rurality on the map” at the
ESRS conference 17-20 August 2009 in Vaasa, Finland

rural areas in a country or region is closely related to the mapping or delineation of the “urban system”
in the same country or region. Of highest importance to the outcome is the level or scale at which the
operations are performed, a fact well known from statistics (Lilburne et al 2004, Goodchild and
Quattrochi 1997, Openshaw 1977) and ecological applications of GIS (Mackey et al 2001, Tyre et al 1997,
Jennings 1996).

Two basic methodological questions occur even before our analyses can begin: namely first, how are
communities delineated and second, how is “land use” (possibly an activity by the community or
members thereof) mapped? We have found some rather pragmatic answers to these, and decided to
use them for the studies described here. It should be noted, that when we claim our conceptual model
to be “functional”, it is in the sense, that we consider the function parish boundaries in segmenting the
landscape in a meaningful way, and of open land to separate coherent urban elements from each other
– and not as when amongst others Caffyn and Jones (2005) use “functional regions” to describe an
assemblage of urban and rural area units.

2.1 Local communities and administrative units


The physical and thus geographical manifestations of communities can be hard to delineate in practice,
especially if seen in a networks perspective (Murdoch 2000). For the Danish study (Johansen and Nielsen
2009, Johansen 2008) however, it seemed obvious to look at the parish level – especially since that was
the smallest unit for which socio-economic statistics are available. At the same the very precise GIS-data
can be acquired cheaply or for free in Denmark and neighboring counties (KMS 2008, Landmäteriet
2009). The use of the parish as basic building block for our model of regional landscape structure is
justified by the deep historical roots of the Danish parish structure, large parts unchanged since the 12th
century (Etting 2000), and thereby the local framework within which settlement and landscape patterns
have developed thereafter. The Danish parish level corresponds to the Local Administrative Unit (LAU) 2
as defined by Eurostat (formerly also known as NUTS-5), see Eurostat (2009). Common for the
overwhelming part of the LAU 2 units is that they have a long shared history which is reflected in for
example building, places and self-image, and sometimes even the boundaries can be recognised in the
landscape (Porsmose 2008, Frandsen 2007, Etting 2000). Such features are all central to local
development, in the sense of ability of activating local resources and amenities like nature, landscape
and cultural heritages (Johansen and Eskildsen 2008, Bryden and Hart 2004).

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Paper prepared for presentation to WG4.5 “Rurality on the map” at the
ESRS conference 17-20 August 2009 in Vaasa, Finland

2.2 Land use and Land cover mapping, data and interpretation
Land use is a human activity, affecting the physical state of the surface of the Earth, in the framework of
this study seen as the landscape (Rindfuss et al 2004). Land use is inevitably related to the Land cover,
i.e. vegetation, bare soil or artificial surfaces that can be observed on the ground or from above, and
often the combined term Land Use/Land Cover (LULC or LUC) is used in environmental and climate
studies (Verburg et al 2006, Lambin et al 2001). Mapping and inventory of Land Use, with the
opportunities it offers for is of great value for monitoring of landscape structure, state and
development, which, since the early 90’es has been issues of growing importance to EU’s Common
Agricultural Policy (CAP), with the shifting focus towards regional development, argi-environmental and
landscape issues, as illustrated by Jongman (1994). A central incentive for the Corine Land Cover data
project was indeed provision of timely and reliable data for agricultural and environmental policies
within the EU (EU-DG Agri et al 2000). CORINE is an acronym for ‘Co-ordination of Information on the
Environment’ which is a European data collection program initiated in 1985 by the European
Commission, aimed at gathering information relating to the environment on certain priority topics for
the European Union (air, water, soil, land cover, coastal erosion, biotopes, etc.). Since 1994, the
European Environment Agency (EEA) integrated CORINE in its work program. The integrated and
continuous Corine Land Cover (CLC) project is a joint European effort to provide comparable land cover
information for statistical and environmental purposes at continental level.

The CLC has been created through manual interpretation of satellite imagery, mostly from the Landsat
Thematic Mapper and SPOT XS sensors, using what was originally termed high resolution imagery. Some
ancillary data (aerial photographs, topographic or vegetation maps, statistics, local knowledge) has been
used to refine interpretation and assignment of the territory into the categories of the CLC
nomenclature. Still, the classification approach is physical and visual, based on observed land cover, thus
providing the most unbiased image of landscape structure available. Vard et al. (2005) and Jonard et al.
(2007) use the database intensively in their suggestions of criteria for rurality.

CLC data are available in vector (lines, polygons) and raster (pixel) format, to be used depending on the
type of analysis or illustration in case. The CLC dataset has a nomenclature of 44 land cover classes,
organised hierarchically at three levels. This makes the dataset a strong tool for investigation of man-
made structures at landscape level, with selection and combination of classes depending on the
analytical objectives. The smallest surfaces mapped (mapping units) correspond to 25 hectares. Linear

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Paper prepared for presentation to WG4.5 “Rurality on the map” at the
ESRS conference 17-20 August 2009 in Vaasa, Finland

features less than 100 meters in width are not considered. The scale of the output product was fixed at
1:100,000. Thus, the location precision of the CLC database is 100 meters. The highest of the three levels
has 5 classes: artificial areas (1), agricultural land (2), forest and semi-natural areas (3), wetlands (4) and
water surfaces (5) (EU-DG AGRI et. al. 2000, Table 1, p.4); the second highest level has 15 classes that
cover physical and physiognomic entities in more detail, for example as urban fabric (1.1), forest (3.1),
and coastal wetlands (4.2). The lowest level is composed of all 44 classes, including for example
continuous (1.1.1) and discontinuous (1.1.2) urban fabric and port areas (1.2.3).

Our proposed and tested method for separating rural and urban parishes builds on the availability of the
two data sets described above – or similar for non-European areas. Ignoring the fraction of open land,
we focus only on connectivity of the urban system, assuming that the single community’s (individuals’)
perception of their territorial classification can be estimated from the data described above. Obviously,
it is not possible to enquire every community whether they perceive themselves as rural or not, so
instead we assume that in general a territorial unit perceives itself as rural if open land is passed in order
to come from the settlement centre of the territorial unit to the centre(s) in the neighbouring territorial
units. From our point of view such an assumption will only make sense if it links to the size of the
territorial unit, as it has to at least roughly correspond to an area where the majority perceives
themselves as a community. We further suggest a simple and easy operational method to differentiate
the “level of rural rurality” through inclusion of perceived distances in length and time of travels
between and across the areal units. Point of departure is taken in the number of rural communities
which have to be passed to get to an urban area: if no rural community to pass, the distance layer or
index is 1, if one rural community has to be passed to get to an urban area, distance index is 2, if two
rural communities have to be passed, then the distance index is 3 etc.

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Paper prepared for presentation to WG4.5 “Rurality on the map” at the
ESRS conference 17-20 August 2009 in Vaasa, Finland

Figure 1 Idealized landscape with community (parish) boundaries and town system (grey shades). Note that, unlike in for
instance the methodology proposed by Vard et al (2005), no criteria are here set for the proportion of different land use types.
Most parishes has a settlement core, typically a the largest (church) village, only in a few instances no traces of urban elements
are visible, compare figure 2 based on “real world data”.

Figure 1 summarises the approach and illustrates combinations of urban and rural communities. The
rural communities have a centre (identified from CLC data, as described below) from which there is
open land to the centres in the neighbouring communities whereas the urban centre (bolded 1-4) is
either communities which have fused or town parishes or neighbourhoods. These would be urban
quarters or districts. The rural communities neighbouring the urban centre (5-12) can be seen as the
urban fringe (distance layer 1) whereas the rural communities next to the fringe communities can be
considered ‘more’ rural (13-22) and thus constitute distance layer 2, and finally the communities 23-25
as the next degree of rural because two rural communities must be passed to come to the urban
communities – rural area units of distance layer 3.

For this study, and in order to be able to apply the method outlined above, the CLC data were re-
classified into the basic categories “urban system” and non-urban. All land cover types at levels 2 and 3
under class 1 at level 1 are included as indicating ’urban’. An exception is type 1.3: mine, dump and
construction sites, since even when consisting of artificial surfaces, it is not used for activities normally
considered part of an urban system. Also the class Sport and Leisure (1.4.2) facilities had to be excluded
from the urban aggregate, because it includes large coherent areas of holiday homes, where permanent

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Paper prepared for presentation to WG4.5 “Rurality on the map” at the
ESRS conference 17-20 August 2009 in Vaasa, Finland

residence is not allowed, and they therefore do not function as towns. This is in line with the ESPON
(2004) use of the concept ‘artificial surface’. Note that the concept of “open land” here is represented
by all of the non-urban land use categories selected here, even though they include the forest classes
(3.1.x). This is in line with our tentative findings that separation between urban entities, either by
stretches of arable land, forest or wetlands are just as important as the character of landscape views of
the areas between them.

2.3 Implementing the rurality and distance indices


The classification based on the approach described here, use of smallest available territorial unit
(representing communities) and the demand for open space between the urban elements/centres of
the units) was implemented in MapInfo, a widely used GIS software. A series of operations such as split,
erase and combine were carried out along with queries regarding size, producing an index value 0 for
urban and 1 for rural with visible built-up elements (villages) and 2 for rural area units without visible
concentrations of built environment, as illustrated by the flow chart in Appendix 1. For many
applications, classes with values 1 and 2 are merged to represent the rural. It should be possible to
reproduce the steps of the process in most commercial or educational GIS software. Figure 2 shows a
map of Denmark with higher-level regions and the types of rural parishes described here.

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ESRS conference 17-20 August 2009 in Vaasa, Finland

Figure 2 Denmark, map of parishes (LAU2 level) with rurality according to the criteria defined here, and region borders.

In order to implement the distance based indexing of the total set of areal units, an identification of the
set of urban ‘sogne’ (rurality 0) was carried out and used to create consecutive sets of distance layers, of
rank 1 to 4, with rank 1 taken to identify rural ‘sogn’ neighbouring rurality 0 (distance layer 1), rank 2 to
identify rural ‘sogne’ neighbouring rurality 1 ‘sogne’ (distance layer 2) etc. Figure 3 shows a map of
Denmark with urban and rural ‘sogne’ at these five degrees of rurality. The necessary operations were
performed using the Distance Calculator tool, which is included in the most recent versions of MapInfo.

Since each spatial unit has been assigned a unique ID-number, which is also used by Statistics Denmark
to identify locations, it is uncomplicated to combine for instance surface area information for the
relevant units with population, business and socio-economic data. In Denmark only a small number of
dataset can be downloaded for free on LAU 2 level (‘sogn’) but it is possible to order specific data
deliveries. A similar situation is found in for example Sweden, for the territorial units ‘forsamlinger’ (N =

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2,225) and for France, where key numbers are from the population census available online at
‘commune’ (N = 36,683) level, in both cases supplied by the national statistical agencies (Eurostat 2009).

Figure 3 Map of parishes, grouped by distance to urban system (minimum number of area units to be passed in order to reach
area with rurality 0).

2.4 Supplementary data: nature from CLC, demographic data


For analysis of particularly relations between nature and scenic values and economic and demographic
trends, we created a merged land-use class supposed to represent “nature” in the sense of land neither
built upon nor used for intensive agriculture. It therefore was made to include the relevant non-urban
and non-agricultural land use categories from CLC (all land cover class under type 3 and 4 and the
classes representing streams and water under type 5 – and perhaps more controversially - class 2.4.3:
mixed agriculture with large parts of natural vegetation). The data was then combined with a national
spatial data of protected coastal and dune areas, assembled by the Danish Agency for Spatial and
Environmental Planning (BLST 2006). Based on a coverage created by merging the ’CLC-nature’ and the

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coastal datasets, it is possible to calculate a ‘percentage of nature content’ at different unit sizes as for
example LAU 2, LAU, 1 and NUTS 3. The percentages at parish (LAU 2) level was used for segmentation
of parishes for the surveys and interviews carried out for Johansen and Eskildsen (2008).

Information on the population at LAU 2 level and changes over time was drawn from Statistics Denmark
(through the web portal www.statistikbanken.dk), where population data at parish level are freely
available, while other socio-economic information at this level is available upon request – and at a price.
Data for the example about establishment of service activities in Region Midtjylland was drawn from the
Danish business database ‘NN-Erhverv’, geo-referenced and assigned to the correct region units through
use of a recent version of the official Danish address database used in public administration (since Febr.
2009 freely available for public administration and universities).

3. Results and applications


In this section, we first present the basic results of applying the proposed method to Denmark,
combined with population data and derived population density values. Then some illustrating examples
are shown, drawing on examples from a study on business activity and entrepreneurship, where the
properties related to rurality and distance are used to describe the spatial distribution of service
activities. The additional information on proportion of nature areas from CLC data described above is
used as background/contextual information. Table 1 summarizes the presence of the three basic types
of parishes according to rurality by region. There are obvious differences between the regions, with the
relative number of rural parishes being highest in the region of Nordjylland (Northern Jutland), where
also the highest percentage of parishes without distinct built-up areas are found (32%). Still, the
proportion of rural parishes in the regions outside the Copenhagen metropolitan areas (Hovedstaden)
lies in the interval 13 to 21 %. Table 2 summarizes the presence of the different types of parishes that
can be defined by distance. The parishes that end up in distance layer 4 are typically on islands and
peninsulas, but in the region Syddanmark (Southern Denmark, covering southern Jutland and Funen) a
number of parishes in the South-Westernmost part have been assigned to the most distant group,
implicitly having the most rural conditions.

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Number of LAU-2 units (sogne)

Region (NUTS-2 Urban Rural with distinct Rural with no distinct Total
level) bulit-up areas bulit-up areas
Sjælland 76 225 116 417
Hovedstaden 185 55 9 249
Syddanmark 104 305 90 499
Midtjylland 117 335 164 616
Nordjylland 51 185 104 340
Total 533 1105 483 2121
Table 1 Count of types of parishes relating to rurality. Note that region Hovedstaden approximately covers the Copenhagen
metropolitan region, North Zealand and the island Bornholm. Region delimitations shown in Figure 2.

Number of LAU-2 units (sogne)

Region Distance Distance Distance Distance Distance


(NUTS-2 layer 0 layer 1 layer 2 layer 3 layer 4+ Total
level)
Sjælland 76 157 144 27 13 417
Hovedstaden 185 34 21 8 1 249
Syddanmark 104 145 153 54 43 499
Midtjylland 117 190 224 74 11 616
Nordjylland 51 90 126 65 8 340
Total 533 616 668 228 76 2121
Table 2 Count of types of parishes relating to distance to urban system, per region.

The distribution of the population, drawn from Statistics Denmark is shown in Table 3. The main result
here is that the proportion of people living in rural communities is found to be around 37%. This is
below 49% of the total population living in “rural regions” that would come out of applying the OECD
definition to the new municipal structure of Denmark, following the 2007 structural reform. This
number can be compared to the proportion of the population living in Peripheral (9%) and Rural (28%)
areas, together 37% and Semi-Urban municipalities according to the work of Kristensen et al (2007,
table 4).

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Population
1. January Rural with Rural without distinct
Region 2008 Urban distinct built-up built-up

Sjælland 817269 49.13 45.81 5.06


Hovedstaden 1633248 90.28 9.31 0.41
Syddanmark 1186692 50.40 46.21 3.40
Midtjylland 1212318 55.70 39.08 5.21
Nordjylland 575646 43.56 50.39 6.05
Danmark 5425173 62.67 33.89 3.44
Table 3 Population by region and parish types according to land-use based rurality.

The example of application of our approach to economic geography deals with locations of start-up
businesses of KISA type. KISA is the acronym for Knowledge Intensive Service Activities and is more
specifically defined as ‘the production and integration of service activities undertaken by firm, in
manufacturing or service sectors, in combination with manufactured outputs or as stand-alone services’
(OECD 2006). Examples of KISA are: engineers, consultants, auditors, legal advisers, architects,
physiotherapists, psychologists and ad agencies. At community level, settlement of KISA is key issue
because such firms may attract higher skilled labour force and younger families. At regional level,
settlement of knowledge intensive firms may attract more knowledge intensive firms and create spin
offs which would add to the regional economy (Kemppilä et al., 2004). For comparison of regions across
Europe, with Denmark represented by region Midtjylland, we had to know the distribution of KISAs
between rural and urban areas. This turned out to provide a useful, though challenging test-bed for the
application of our proposed method. In Table 4 below, the segmentation by distance layers is used to
summarise data from rural communities all over the region, providing information that would be lost if
using for instance the adjusted OECD criteria at municipality level. In urban municipalities there are
actually 55 establishments of KISA in communities in distance layer 2, and in the semi-urban 170
established KISA in distance layer 2, 3 and 4 rural communities. The result suggests that also in a Danish
context, peripheral and rural municipalities include urban communities and that these like in the urban
and semi-urban municipalities tend to attract the overwhelming part of the KISA establishment. In total,
the number of KISA found to be established in rural communities is smaller when this approach is used,
relative to use of the simple or adjusted OECD criteria. However, the rural communities are more
comparable and it becomes simpler to look for explanatory factors for differences in performance at
unit size level which is pointed out as the most relevant for cultivating of local amenities.

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KISA established from 2003-2006 in Region Midtjylland

Adjusted OECD rurality distance index Total


typology KISA by
(municipal level adjusted
= LAU 1) 0 1 2 3 4 OECD

Peripheral 165 73 62 58 15 373


municipalities
Rural 599 239 340 65 4 1,247
municipalities
Semi-urban 394 192 136 31 3 756
municipalities
Urban 1,802 220 55 - - 2,077
municipalities
Total KISA by 2,960 724 593 154 22 4,453
distance index
Table 4 Cross-tabulation of establishment if KISA in Region Midtjylland between the adjusted OECD
typology/classification and distance based index of rurality. Note that the distance index is applied to the parish within
which the business is located.

The findings summarized in Table 4 could also be illustrated in map format, as shown in Figure 4, where
both municipal and parish boundaries are shown, along with the structure of the urban system. This
map illustrates the substantial differences in density of KISA-activity within the relatively large
municipalities in Jutland, including the absence of newly established ones in many peripheral parishes
(relative to largest town and/or administrative center of municipality).

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Figure 4 Map of Region Midtjylland and new KISA per 10.000 inhabitant from 2003-2006, shown in rural parishes. Municipality
borders shown by bolder, black lines.

The final example shows the comparison of population development and KISA entrepreneurship, divided
into five main groups: Health care, Engineering and technology advice, Legal and economic advice, IT
consultants and advice, Creative business. From Table 5 it appears, that also for description of
population development in rural communities, the small area/community approach can provide a
simple but still rather precise picture of relations between establishments of KISA and population
development at a local level and tendencies which may vary across the larger region. Information on the
change in population at LAU 2 level was drawn from Statistics Denmark (www.statistikbanken.dk).

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Number of Population development trend in ‘sogne’ in region Midtjylland,


enterprises distance layers 2, 3 and 4
Label 1 2 3 4 5 TOTAL
Change 2003- below -5 to -1 to 1 to 5% above
2007 -5% -1% 1% 5%
Health care 2 25 35 70 37 169
IT 0 15 15 29 37 96
Engineering &
KISA main Technological
group Advice 1 10 12 29 32 84
Legal &
Economic
Advice 8 28 16 69 83 204
Creative
businesses 5 22 30 56 47 160
Total 16 100 108 253 236 713
Table 5 KISA establishment in rural parishes, distance layer 2, 3 and 4, sorted by population trend index and KISA
main groups. 56 out of the 769 KISA enterprises found in these layers according to table 4, could not be assigned to
the main groups used here and were therefore left out.

Figure 5 illustrates the geographic location of the businesses identified and summarised in Table 5. As
background is used the nature proportions derived from CLC and coastal protection data, grouped into
four categories, as used in Johansen and Eskildsen (2008). Inspection of data extracted from the GIS
showed a tendency for KISA establishment to take place in areas with high proportions of the nature
land use classes, overruling constraints from distance and lack of service providers. However,
confirmation of nature as a pull-factor awaits the results of an ongoing survey, part of an international
comparative study.

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Figure 5 Degree of nature in rural communities and location of KISA established from 2003-2006 in Region Midtjylland.

4. Conclusions so far, Perspectives for further work


The development and application of the community-based approach, making use of the smallest
available administrative level for mapping and analyses have provided some advantages, including:

- A more fine grained picture and background data set with indications of rurality status, which is
useful for landscape and ecological applications.
- Provision of a more realistic (visually pleasing) image of where the rural areas are found within
the country and regions.
- Assured compatibility with with statistical data, for further segmentation and/or providing
background parameters of (relative) rurality indices, a need made obvious by our literature
survey, summarized in the introduction..
Concerning the methodology used, it proved to be robust, and should be possible to implement in any
GIS software. The intermediate step of defining an “urban system” layer through merging CLC classes

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proved most useful, and the possible applications of this layer in other contexts should be explored. We
deliberately left out inclusion of transportation networks, terrain and other supplementary data, but
investigations of the relation between these features and the shape of the urban-rural system will surely
be of interest in further studies.

This paper has focused almost singly on land use, rather than on communities and local actors and social
factors. That is factors that must be included if our approach is to be used in a broader context and
tested with other GIS and statistical data. Further, we have taken the territorial units of analysis as
defined by parish boundaries as of 2008 for given, without paying attention to their historical
development or to alternative delineations. This ought also to be included in a more comprehensive
study, where attention is also paid to regions outside Denmark.

References
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Bryden, J., Arandia, A. and Johnson, T. (2008): Theoretical and policy background to the
Top-Mard project (towards a policy model of multifunctional agriculture and rural development).
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and Rural Development Policies". Sevilla, Spain, January 29th -February 1st, 2008. Available at
http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/6396/2/pp08br20.pdf (accessed 30/7/2009)

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Appendix 1:

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