# 1. Introduction

The global population is often categorized as living either in urban centers _or_ in rural areas. Partly this is because data comes with a simple (and convenient) rural–urban breakdown and because national ministries are often divided by rural and urban mandates (Forster & Mattheisen, 2016). Consequently, much development literature focuses on the urban–rural divide, with rural areas typically lagging behind their urban counterparts (Bailey, Jensen, & Ransom, 2014; Loh & Hadden Love, 2020).

Many disciplines have long recognized this dichotomy as inadequate (Champion & Hugo, 2004). A strict division of governance in rural and urban mandates is not adequate to understand and act upon poverty and undernourishment, education and health, environmental management, or even development more generally. It is one’s position along the urban-rural continuum and within the hierarchical settlement system that affects social and economic development and well-being. This perspective prompts a more nuanced examination of spatial relationships as they relate to development along a continuum, compared with the more conventional rural-urban binary. It can also provide insights that are useful for the development and administration of public policy and the targeting of investment and governmental assistance.

Rather than a bounded territorial space, the rural–urban continuum views the interface between rural and urban areas as a place of exchange and socioeconomic interaction. For example, urban to rural migration tends to link urban and rural places rather than separating them as most rural in-movers retain their urban job and commute to the city on a daily basis (Champion, Coombes, & Brown, 2009). At the same time, as societies evolved and became more connected – through infrastructure and information and communication technology (ICT) – the differences between urban and rural blurred. Consequently, multiple measures have been developed expressing the gradation in rurality (Brown, Cromartie, & Kulcsar, 2004; Li, Long, & Liu, 2015; Waldorf & Kim, 2015) or urbanicity (Cyril, Oldroyd, & Renzaho, 2013; Dahly & Adair, 2007) to analyze issues of economic and social development. Doing so is important both for conceptual and empirical reasons.

A newly developed global spatial data set<sup>1</sup> by Cattaneo, Nelson & McMenomy (2021) opens up new opportunities to more systematically account for these rural-urban interconnections. This paper explores its applicability and relevance for policy making across a series of fields with a focus on developing countries, where adequate and easily accessible data for a more integrated territorial approach to development have so far been largely absent. The paper proceeds as follows. Drawing on the literature, Section 2 first briefly reviews how a rural-urban lens falls far short of capturing important nuances in development dynamics across space and why a more continuous urban-rural perspective is needed. Section 3 then takes stock of the two major approaches that go beyond the urban–rural dichotomy in analyzing drivers of economic and social development and provides a conceptual framework merging the merits of each, i.e. the urban-rural catchment area approach differentiated along an urban hierarchy (from megacities to small towns). The global spatial data set constructed using this framework is then briefly compared to another recent development, by Moreno-Monroy and

> 1 Data can be downloaded and visualized with https://data.apps.fao.org/?share=g-90e451f8f10c9894243a4885d8d1be5f.

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