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Evolution of Legal Criteria for the Identification and Zoning of Rural Settlements in Galicia, NW Spain

Abstract Planning of rural areas is essential for the preservation of the countryside and the rural settlements (RSs), as well as for the provision of services, infrastructures and resources. In this paper the criteria for the identification and delimitation of RSs established by the successive land use laws in Galicia (a region of NW Spain) are assessed to determine if these criteria have successfully contributed to spatial delimitation. With this aim the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, sustainability, coherence and added value indicators, established by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for the evaluation of policies, have been used, as well as the objectivity, space typology and consistency indices. The results indicate that the legal criteria for RS planning have evolved towards a more objective and quantitative approach, especially through an improvement in the spatial concept of RS. This improvement is due to the definition and description of different typologies of RS areas and the incorporation in the criteria of qualitative and quantitative descriptions.