Author(s): Melo, Patrícia C. ; Rego, Conceição ; Anciães, Paulo Rui ; Guiomar, Nuno ; Muñoz-Rojas, José
Date: 2022
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10174/31557
Origin: Repositório Científico da Universidade de Évora
Subject(s): rural areas; population; road accessibility; rural-urban linkages; spillover effects
Motorways in Portugal received large scale funding after the country joined the European Union in 1986, making it an ideal case to study the effect of road accessibility on the development of lagging rural areas. We investigate the relationship between rural population change and road accessibility to the urban hierarchy between 1991 and 2011. We find that rural population growth is negatively associated with increased road distance and travel time to cities, notably to medium-sized cities (20,000-99,999 inhabitants). There is no evidence of nonlinearities in the effect of proximity to the urban hierarchy between accessible and remote rural areas
This work also received financial support from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) research grants PTDC/EGEECO/28805/2017-Transport Infrastructure and Urban Spatial Structure: Economic, Social and Environmental Effects (TiTuSS), UIDB/05069/2020, UIDB/04007/2020, UIDB/05183/2020. It was also carried out as part of the European Union's Horizon 2020 project RELOCAL - Resituating the Local in Cohesion and Territorial Development (GA727097).
