In order to give a contribution to the problem of defining urban-rural interrelations, the authors use census data concerning daily flows of commuting workers. Hsu's cell mapping method, transferred from physical dynamics to areal analysis, allows us to obtain a consistent hierarchy of clusters of municipalities. Some archetypes of areal interrelations emerging from this analysis are described, and it follows an overview of the results obtained working on the whole of Italy. In the case of Milan metropolitan area a comparison with other methods shows that Cell-mapping is sharper in analysing urban-rural competition and therefore it can be used to help the decision maker
