Planning the Development of Urban and Rural Areas: An Integrative Approach

Rural areas are sparsely populated territories outside of the limits of a city or town or designated commercial, industrial, or residential centers. Typically, they are characterized by farms and open spaces in the country side.

Urban areas or urban agglomerations are human settlements with high population density (much higher than their close rural areas) and infrastructure of built environment. Urban areas are created and further developed by the process of urbanization, with typical morphologies of cities, towns, and suburbs. A metropolitan area includes the urban area and satellite cities plus intervening rural land that is socioeconomically connected to the urban core city, typically by employment ties through commuting, with the urban core city being the primary labor market.

System (urban, city, town, regional, rural) planning is the process of designing the development of a spatial area and their regulating factors (building, energy, water, food) and activities.