Regional Spatial and Statistical Analyses of the Urban-Rural Relationships in Romania. Case Study: Romanian Plain

In Romania, the majority of settlements are rural. Generally, they are characterised by a high social and economic dependency on the closest urban areas, thus leading to a series of spatial and functional interactions. The paper is aiming to perform a regional scale (Romanian Plain) analysis of the spatial and functional linkages between 34 cities and 318 rural settlements located in their influence area. For the assessment of the urban-rural relationships, spatial analysis and statistical regression models at Local Administrative Level (LAU) were performed. The authors used three independent variables (demographic size, functional profile and connectivity) considered as driving factors for the selected cities, and eight socio-economic dependent variables (population growth, living floor, age dependency, economic dependency, built-up areas expansion, water supply, migratory balance, unemployment rate) reflecting the degree of rural development. The study results help identify areas with different rural development potential and better understand urban-rural interactions of the last decades.