The extended metropolitan area in a new EU Member state: implications for a rural development approach

The aim of the paper is to examine the role of rural development strategies in a new Member State and, in particular, to analyse the case of the metropolitan area of the Bucharest-Ilfov region, situated in the Southern part of the country and in the central part of the Romanian Plan. The total surface is about 1.8 square kilometres, out of which 12.5% occupied by Bucharest town and 87.5% by Ilfov County; approximately 88% of the population is concentrated in the urban center and only 12% in Ilfov County. The case study is characterised on the one hand by a high GDP growth rate, a relatively low unemployment rate and increasing consumer good sales; on the other by some marked disparities in macroeconomic indicators among regions and between rural and urban areas and the enormous lack of infrastructures. The case study calls for a local approach.