What is the impact of increasing population movements from the countryside to cities and towns on the provision of local public services? How can urban and rural local governments cope? How do they finance these services in times of urbanization? Does the merging of smaller local governments really entail efficiency gains and how do other solutions like inter-municipal cooperation fare in comparison? How can citizens effectively participate in decision-making in both urban and rural municipalities?

These are only some of the questions that the LoGov project seeks to answer. What they all have in common is their growing urgency as a result of fundamental demographic changes. The phenomenon of urbanization sparked the emergence of metropolitan areas, on the one hand, and the depopulation of rural areas, on the other. According to World Bank data, between 1960 and 2017, the share of rural population worldwide fell from 67% to 45%. This brings along a wide variety of social challenges such as ageing rural populations and causes political challenges such as increasing disparities between local authorities in terms of their political leverage and financial resources.

These trends inevitably entail lasting changes in the interplay between urban and rural areas, which prompted us to launch the LoGov project. It has been our ambition to research and disseminate local government practices that enable municipalities to better cope with the impact of changing urban-rural relations in five major areas:

• Local responsibilities and public services
• Local financial arrangements
• Structure of local government
• Intergovernmental relations of local governments
• Citizen participation in local governance

This White Paper draws on the wealth of experiences and insights of 18 LoGov partners from six continents and different professional backgrounds such as academia, policy advice and local government associations. With its problem-oriented approach, it is targeted especially though not exclusively at local government practitioners. The White Paper presents in text boxes 30 practices from around the world regarding particularly topical issues within the five above-mentioned areas of local government, ranging from local public transport and housing to local tax revenue, inter-municipal cooperation in rural areas, metropolitan governance, the role of local government associations and citizen participation in local planning and budgeting. Still, this is only a small fraction of the research conducted within LoGov. Further project outputs freely available online are our 15 Country Reports, 5 Research Area Reports and 3 edited books.