The report diagnosed the three D’s - density, distance and division - as the foremost impediments to regional development, and proposed the three I’s -institutions, infrastructure and integration - as the treatment for each. From this perspective, the principal problem that impoverished rural areas face is a lack of agglomeration related to sparsely populated areas with few connections to more densely settled towns and cities. From this perspective, rural areas face considerable physical, institutional and transactional cost barriers to accessing and engaging in trade with domestic and international markets. The more remote and sparsely populated - where poverty is coincidentally at its highest - the lower the development potential.