Rural-Urban Partnership and Regional Sustainable Development; A Conceptual and Experimental Approach

Urban and rural areas interact with wide flows and linkages. These interactions involve a variety of geographies that often transcend local and regional administrative boundaries. In addition to the positive effects, these interactions, flows and links can also have negative effects. Urban and rural management are not always able to manage these interactions separately for sustainable urban and rural development. Rural-urban cooperation and in particular rural-urban partnership is an effective model for responding to the need to govern these interactions for the welfare and economic development of the region. The present article describes the concepts and dimensions of rural-urban partnership using a narrative review method and examines global experiences in this field as well as its effects on socio-economic development and regional sustainability. Findings show that urban and rural areas have different and often complementary assets. In fact, effective rural-urban partnerships using these assets can play an effective role in achieving economic development goals and increasing the production of public goods, as well as achieving economies of scale in the provision of public services, and increasing the capacity of partners to decide in areas with territorial impacts. In addition, partnerships can help develop new economic opportunities in urban and rural areas.