DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO THE URBAN-RURAL TYPOLOGY: DIFFERENT VIEWS ON DISTRIBUTION OF URBAN AND RURAL POPULATION IN SLOVAKIA

Abstract

The official governmental documents about rural development for individual programming periods had used different identification of rural areas. The aim of the article is to provide the concise presentation and comparison of various theoretical- methodological approaches to the definition and delimitation of urban and rural areas that were applied and are used by scientific and expert community in Slovakia during the processes of preparing these documents. We present the difficulties and critical statements about application of administrative and statistical NUTS III and LAU 1 spatial units for deeper understanding of rural problems in extremely spatially differentiated Slovakia.

Keywords

• urban-rural typology
• definition and delimitation of rural areas
• distribution of population
• slovakia