Today a collection of works with respect to the urban-rural dichotomy has been published by The Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR). The publication [in German] is titled “Die Abgrenzung des ländlichen Raums – ein (un)mögliches Unterfangen?” – in English „The delimitation of rural areas – an (im)possible undertaking?”.  

Our Earth Observation Research Hub, the German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) of the DLR, The Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR) and The Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB) collaborated to contribute to the Workshop „The delimitation of rural areas – an (im)possible undertaking?” organized by BBSR in April 2022 and the team contributed to the documentation of the scientific approaches and results. In the resulting paper “Differentiating the urban-rural dichotomy: a probability-based approach” published by Hannes Taubenböck, Ariane Droin, Ines Standfuß, Monika Gähler, Antonia Milbert, Nikola Sander, Silas Eichfuss, Fabian Dosch and Michael Wurm the ambiguities arising from varying conceptual, data and methodological approaches to spatial statistics are presented and discussed. Different approaches to quantify and map the urban-rural dichotomy have been calculated for the example of entire Germany and their impact on the statistical estimation of the degree of urbanization for Germany are critically discussed.

Please find the full publication [in German] here: https://www.bbsr.bund.de/BBSR/DE/veroeffentlichungen/bbsr-online/2023/bbsr-online-18-2023.html