Publications

Classifying communities into urban and rural is essential in the governmental and institutional decision making process. However, the notion of urban and rural varies from country to another. Some nations classify settlements into urban and rural according to a population threshold, others according to prevailing professions in the community and another method is from a social aspect. The Egyptian State’s method to classify urban and rural communities depends on the Ministry of Interior (MoI) decrees based primarily on population numbers along with other factors like the existence of certain land uses. Within this context, the research pinpointed some ambiguous facts related to that classification. Hence, the current study is pursuing a new method to address this issue. This is to be done by constructing a composite index (CI) that ranges from 0-1. The proposed threshold value is 0.5 where the lower values are considered rural and the higher are inferred to as urban. The analytical study is done on 6 governorates and the data entry for the 34 utilized indicators is done on the “sheiakhat” level which is the smallest administrative unit to collect data upon. The CI delivered values ranging from 0.27 to 0.76 with a cutoff value of 0.56. Furthermore, spatial analysis of the index outcomes shows that variables affecting urbanization vary spatially between selected governorates. Thus, the study concluded that each governorate has its own unique geographical character that necessitates addressing on distinct bases.