Rural Places and Planning: Stories from the Global Countryside 9781447356394

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RURAL PLACES AND PLANNING Stories from the Global Countryside Menelaos Gkartzios, Nick Gallent and Mark Scott

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Policy Press, an imprint of Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1-​9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +​44 (0)117 954 5940 e: [email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2022 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-​1-​4473-​5637-​0 paperback ISBN 978-​1-​4473-​5638-​7 ePub ISBN 978-​1-​4473-​5639-​4 ePdf The right of Menelaos Gkartzios, Nick Gallent and Mark Scott to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Policy Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the authors and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press and Policy Press work to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design by Robin Hawes Front cover photograph: Joanne Coates Printed and bound in Great Britain by CMP, Poole Policy Press uses environmentally responsible print partners.

Contents List of figures, tables and boxes Acknowledgements Preface

iv v vi

1 Introduction

1

2

The built rural

25

3

The economic rural

47

4

The land-​based rural

71

5

The social and cultural rural

97

6 Conclusions

123

References Index

140 169

iii

List of figures, tables and boxes Figures 1.1 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5

The ‘rural idyll’, England’s ‘green and pleasant land’? Landscape near Kirkby Stephen, Upper Eden Valley Community of Suodenniemi Walbundrie Hotel and Pub, New South Wales Røros and its surrounding mining and agricultural landscape The distinctive wooden structures in Røros, along with its prominent masonry church Røros in winter Blue Ridge downtown’s tourist economy –​an example of bar/​ restaurant business Workspace provision in Blue Ridge –​serviced site with three tenants An industrially cutaway bog Example of a peat restoration project Bord na Móna’s Mountlucas Wind Farm, including new amenity, walking tracks and trails for local community use Topography of the Yangliu Watershed where the SLCP was implemented New tree planting within the Yangliu Watershed Restructuring the Aigas Forest from a commercial forest to a local amenity resource Volunteers working at Aigas Community Forest ‘For Lots of Lost Windows’ (2006) by Akiko Utsumi (permanent installation) ‘Tsumari in Bloom’ (2003) by Yayoi Kusama (permanent installation) ‘The Rice Fields’ (2000) by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov (permanent installation) Group of volunteers painting the first rainbow crosswalk in Mahone Bay, Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia at Pride 2020 Pride parade, Eskasoni First Nation, Nova Scotia (2019)

2 30 37 44 54 55 56 61 64 80 81 82 87 88 93 94 108 109 110 117 118

Tables 1.1 1.2 1.3 2.1 3.1 6.1

Developing place capitals Emerging functions of the rural The scope of rural planning  Smart possibilities for rural places The new rural economy Planning for the good countryside

7 19 21 39 48 128

The Fannin County tourist product

62

Box 3.1

iv

Acknowledgements We are indebted to the commissioning and production teams at Policy Press, whose support, guidance and encouragement were instrumental in turning our rough ideas into this more polished text. Emily Watt, Freya Trand, Angela Gage and Annie Rose deserve special mention. The book’s cover photo, ‘The Lure of the Land’, is by Joanne Coates and was taken in rural Northumberland in England. Selecting the right photo for a cover is never easy, but Joanne’s work focuses on how we perceive, present and think about rural places –​and therefore aligns with the goals of this book. Rural Places and Planning was written during a global pandemic. We dispensed with the usual face-​to-​face gatherings, working on the book during lockdowns in relative isolation. While there were of course periodic meetings on Zoom, this has been an odd experience, but also an opportunity for reflection on the multi-​faceted nature of rural planning research and on the great diversity that exists in rural places, which continue to provide a source of inspiration and learning for planning scholarship. Although much of the research for this book has been secondary-​source and online, sometimes referencing past projects, we are grateful to the many people around the world who answered emails and supplied us with images for our rural planning case studies. As such, we wish to thank Johanna Seppa, Suodenniemi-​ Seura; Dag Kittang, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim; Jan Hackett, Fannin County Chamber of Commerce; Christie Gribble, Fannin County Development Authority; Jun He, Yunnan University; John Graham, Aigas Community Forest; Marcus Collier, Trinity College Dublin; Fram Kitagawa and Masahiro Sekiguchi, Art Front Gallery; Tadahiro Asai, Echigo-​Tsumari Satoyama Collaborative Organisation; Shelley Rafuse, Lunenburg Pride; Muin Ji’j (Bertram Bernard Jr.), Pride Eskasoni; and also Adrian Favell, Nathaniel Lewis and Hironori Yagi. The many colleagues who share both our interest in rural places and also their insights during the symposia, workshops and conferences we attend during more ‘normal’ times also deserve our thanks. Finally, the personal credits: Menelaos would like to dedicate this book to his parents, Leonidas and Vera. Nick’s gratitude goes to Manuela, Marta and Elena –​a source of constant support, inspiration and purpose. Mark would like to thank Karen, Ada and Lucas for their love and support, and their patience during various lockdowns, and he would like to dedicate this book to his late parents, Moore and Myrtle.

v

n

Preface Rural Places and Planning explores the interface between the constituent elements of rural places and the idea –​and practice –​of planning, broadly defined. Those places are material (from land and landscapes to buildings and infrastructures), socially constructed (extending from culture and identity to social exchanges) and comprise critical practices (including economic ones, which interlock with material and social assets). Borrowing from earlier writings, these attributes are presented as capitals; and those capitals can be thought of as both place assets and as plains of interface with the processes and actions of planning. This presentation of rural places provides an interrogative frame and a way of thinking about ‘good places’ –​in which economic processes are sustainably embedded in social life, local culture and material assets. Likewise, planning is characterised by its close relationship with people and place –​as an idea that people want to engage with, and as a practice that draws on their capacities and articulates their visions for the future. The idea and practice of planning, as well as what constitutes ‘rural’, varies greatly from one country to the next. This variation is often explained with reference to underlying regulatory systems, along with diverse international interpretations and descriptive definitions of rurality. Legal frameworks, settlement hierarchies across urban and rural spaces, land ownership, the form and purpose of plans, and planning cultures, are all different. But Rural Places and Planning is not primarily concerned with those underlying systems and taxonomies. Because its focus is on rural communities, its consideration of planning is largely about the engagement with, and experience of, planning with and within communities. Similarly, we accept all multiple, relational and sometimes even contradictory understandings of rurality: rather than defining rural places, we are interested in exploring how these places are actually working, what capitals they are ‘made of ’ and how these capitals intersect with the planning vision of co-​producing better places. Across four chapters, 12 rural planning cases are narrated within European, South East Asian, Australian and North American contexts. These cases relay the experiences of confronting a critical planning challenge that is, for example, about advancing material development (of housing, infrastructure or essential services), pursuing sustainable economic pathways, protecting land, landscapes or nature, or contributing to the socio-​cultural life of places as well as promoting the inclusion of marginal groups and recognising their needs. These experiences are situated within a framework of place capitals, and an attempt is made to show how engagements with one capital affect others, and how different planning strategies and actions contribute to making the good rural place. One of the major challenges in writing this book has been the compilation and the choice of our international ‘stories’. While a few of those cases draw on our research, most have been constructed from secondary material –​planning and policy documents or the work of other researchers. We recognise that planning vi

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Preface

scholarship has its own knowledge politics –​it is very much a Global North and Western project –​although we have tried to include as much spatial heterogeneity as possible, drawing on available published research beyond our own. What was the motivation for writing an international book on rural planning? Our 2019 Routledge Companion to Rural Planning contained more than 50 chapters from researchers based in different countries around the world. They provided detailed accounts of critical issues, all framed by a broader consideration of the challenges facing rural places. But the essential nature of those places remained opaque, or rather an attempt to distil common parameters was relegated behind the local detail and the immense breadth of the cases. Rural Places and Planning, on the other hand, puts the accent on developing an understanding of rural places. Its six chapters all address the composition of those places and planning’s engagement with place-​visioning and shaping. It seeks to present good planning as a socio-​ spatial process that is anchored in local aspiration and discourse, and ultimately finds expression in the governance of plans and projects. A number of theoretical propositions help us construct this view of planning, starting with that of place capitals –​borrowed from Bourdieu (1986) and subsequently developed by other scholars. Shucksmith’s idea of the ‘good countryside’ (2018) is also valuable, as is Woods’ notion of the ‘global countryside’ (2007) in which relational and globalised spaces are products of a mix of local and global processes, home to multiple identities and are best served by multi-​level governance. Good planning is inseparable from place: an unavoidable social practice –​or higher instinct of preparedness (to meet and confront critical challenges) –​that is not dependent on any underlying bureaucracy or system. This is the overarching message that we hope to convey in this book. Menelaos Gkartzios, Nick Gallent and Mark Scott July 2021

vii

1

Introduction A proposition This is a book about the relationship between rural places and planning, about how planning can support the co-​production of ‘better places’ (Healey, 2010) and how, in turn, rural places are able to build the capacities and the neo-​ endogenous agency needed to achieve sustainable development goals (Ray, 1997; Gkartzios and Scott, 2014). Despite the rapid and fundamental transformations faced by rural areas over the last century, dominant planning orthodoxies have continued to treat rural places as residual and subordinate spaces that require little intervention or investment. This is, in large part, because they are viewed through the lens of agriculture-​biased and productivist rationalities that elevate farming and preservation interests above everything else that co-​exists in the countryside (Lapping, 2006; Lapping and Scott, 2019). This reductive approach is coupled with dominant discourses of rurality that either present rural places as exclusive, almost pre-​industrial, havens for selective elites (popularised by the discourse of the ‘rural idyll’, Figure 1.1) or as places that are ‘left behind’ technologically, culturally and economically and thus unable to compete in a globalised economy (Murdoch et al, 2003). While none of these narratives captures the complex and nuanced reality of contemporary rural places, their persistence in popular, policy and academic discourses (for example Short, 2006; Cruickshank, 2009; Peeren and Souch, 2018) reveals a failure to appreciate the unique and highly context-​ specific attributes of different spatial pathologies. This rural myopia also impacts planning policy and practice, which privileges urban and metropolitan contexts in research and policy. Far from being parochial backwaters, the ‘global countryside’ from which we extract our titular ‘stories’ comprises relational spaces that are the products of both local and global processes. Indeed, the idea of the global countryside, rooted in the work of Woods (2007), is concerned with deep connectivity and the need for rural planning, however defined and taken forward, to link local action to global challenges. The purpose of this book is, in part, corrective: to shine a light on how rural places function, how they are networked with their wider regions, metropolitan and global contexts, and how planning can support inclusive, socially just and sustainable outcomes that match rural needs while addressing global challenges. In order to achieve this purpose, the book aims, first, to provide a comprehensive view of what rural places are, their constituent components or capitals, and how they are continuously changing, not just as resource spaces but also as arenas of socio-​economic and political processes and outcomes, characterised by 1

Rural Places and Planning Figure 1.1: The ‘rural idyll’, England’s ‘green and pleasant land’? (Northumberland, England)

Source: Authors

ever-​growing local and extra-​local networks, mobile populations, new emergent economies, exclusions and conflicts over development trajectories. Second, the book seeks to illustrate how planning, in its globally differentiated forms, might be able to intervene, not merely as a regulatory framework but as a continuously evolving system of enhanced spatial governance that co-​creates context-​specific 2

Introduction

‘bottom-​up’ opportunities, taking advantage of rural resources (both tangible and intangible) and combatting prolonged and emergent spatial inequalities. This is achieved through the presentation of illustrative stories, or cases, that unpack the ways in which planning policy interacts with the complexity of rural places. Those cases (12 in total, three in each thematic chapter) are drawn from international contexts and aim to reveal both the diversity of rural places globally and the different ways that planning activity –​rooted in different ideological, political and institutional traditions –​operates across different cultural contexts. The broader goal here is to show how social phenomena and spatial inequalities play out in different ways, generating myriad alternative relationships between planning and rurality. Diversity of relationships and outcomes does not preclude opportunities for policy transfer and ‘lesson learning’ across international contexts (Hantrais, 2009). While our cases reveal the specificities of much rural planning knowledge, it is possible to embrace ‘pluralistic universalism’ by accepting that knowledge is place-​sensitive and bound by specific cultural norms, and that reapplication ‘may be disruptive or even inappropriate’ (Lowe, 2012, p 20). That universalism makes it possible to learn something from every context, if there is sufficient sensitivity to the unique realities in which planning pathologies form (Gkartzios and Shucksmith, 2015). Finally, this book aspires to present rural planning as a discipline in its own right, rather than as an extension of urban planning and urban studies reapplied in contexts beyond the metropolis. While urban planning seems to be a well-​ developed discipline –​with its own conference forums, academic journals, university departments and professional organisations –​rural planning appears to be the poor relation, lacking similar structures and institutions. This, to some extent, evidences the parochial construction of rurality and rural studies, as something localised and fringe to more important urban concerns. The rural is also neglected, or masked, in planning theory. At first glance, it appears absent from Healey’s (2010) Making Better Places –​while urban, regional, environmental spatial and town domains are all presented as critical foci for the ‘practice of planning’. Similarly, Rydin (2011, p 12) has defined planning as ‘a means by which society collectively decides what urban change [emphasis added] should be like and tries to achieve that vision by a mix of means’. This does not mean that these contributions have entirely ignored rural spaces: Healey’s first description of a case of planning conflict is about a village in southern England. Rydin also includes a chapter on the ‘green and pleasant land’, discussing the role of planning in rural locations –​and not merely for protecting local amenities. The regular omission of the ‘rural’ from lists of core planning domains illustrates the predisposition of a whole discipline towards urban and broader metropolitan contexts. In the remainder of this chapter, we outline our approach to exploring the relationship between planning and rural places. This is achieved in three main parts. The first of these proposes four constituent elements of rural places, 3

Rural Places and Planning

borrowing from Bourdieu’s sub-​division of capitals. These inter-​dependent capitals form the core dimensions of place. The second part then delves more deeply into the materiality, social construction and practices associated with rurality, enabling us to move from the broad idea of place to a more nuanced view of rural place. The third and final part then introduces planning as a diverse idea and practice rather than a narrow set of regulatory tools. Planning is conceived as being bound into community life: an idea that precedes a diverse range of actions with the potential to make better places.

Capitals and the countryside In order to gain a more complete understanding of the relationship between planning and rural places, it is necessary to unpack the constituent elements, material and non-​material, that ‘make’ those places. Our approach is to deconstruct rural places into their elemental capitals, for reasons that are briefly explained in this introduction and then elaborated upon in the thematic chapters. Extending beyond economic capital The work of Pierre Bourdieu is seminal to the extension of thinking on capital beyond that understanding provided by economic theory. For Bourdieu (1986), capital is rooted in collective and accumulated labour, which is either objectified in the form of goods (including land and property) or embodied in the form of skills. It can be deployed by individuals or social groups –​including groups forming a socio-​spatial community –​to generate the ‘social energy’ needed to achieve different goals, personal or shared. Bourdieu conjected that capital exists in three ‘fundamental guises’ (p 16): as (foundational) economic capital that is transformable into social and cultural capital. Economic capital is wealth which can be inherited or generated and thus includes ownership of land and housing, and financial resources. Social capital refers to networks of mutual acquaintance and recognition, and inheres in social processes between individuals (or their families) and wider society, for example through membership of a group. Cultural capital is primarily transmitted within the family (that is, from parents to children, see Sullivan, 2001) and is distinguished further into three forms: an embodied state (for example, internalised forms such as language, mannerisms, knowledge), an objectified state (in the form of cultural goods such as books and paintings) and an institutionalised state (in the form of educational qualifications and work experiences). Furthermore, Bourdieu acknowledged the existence of symbolic (or reputational) capital, which encompasses prestige, charisma or status (for example, from the professional status of an individual to the holding of titles of nobility). In Bourdieu’s framework, economic capital is ‘at the root of all other types of capital’ (p 193) but is relational and convertible. Because other capitals are rooted in economic power, they are not equally accessible or distributed (Wilson, 2010). Rather, their distribution is class-​based and class-​determined. This means, 4

Introduction

for example, that while the lower classes can acquire cultural capital through education, it is not equivalent to the cultural capital ‘embodied’ in middle-​and upper-​class groups, whose longer engagement with different types of (elite) education –​across generations –​and general family upbringing generates a subtly different capital that underpins a range of social advantages, which are largely relational within their closed social network. Capitals and place The idea of a broad range of capitals, rooted in economic capital but transformed into social and cultural attributes by virtue of place-​based social exchange, has value in both understanding the constituent elements of place and how planning and place interact. First, the abundance or paucity of social or cultural capital might be used to explain spatial inequalities (Pinxten and Lievens, 2014) or capacities (Coleman, 1998). And second, the broadening out of thinking from economic capital underpins a deeper conception of place, focusing attention on socio-​cultural assets that might otherwise be underestimated or overlooked (Lee and Shaw, 2016). But it is perhaps the extension of Bourdieu’s ideas, by other scholars, that has made this perspective particularly pertinent to the analysis of place. The idea of environmental capital (for example Karol and Gale, 2004; Wilson, 2007) acknowledges the relational value of nature to humans and the opportunity, in some instances, to embed sustainable economies in a valorisation of nearby natural assets. Likewise, subsets of cultural capital (including emotional capital –​ see Nowotny, 1981 or Reay, 2004) and social capital (including entrepreneurial capital –​see De Clercq and Voronov, 2009) have been viewed as important determinants of caring for place (and people) and of finding and advancing new development opportunities. Because of the wider benefits arising from stores of capital, they have been frequently presented as public goods or community resources (see Coleman, 1998) that may be present or absent/​abundant or limited within different socio-​spatial communities. An obvious example is the way in which middle-​class groups in rural areas, with significant economic resources, possess the social and cultural capital needed to contest planning decisions and articulate alternative futures for their localities. This is a common observation in the UK (see Sturzaker, 2010; Gallent and Robinson, 2012) and is used to differentiate supposedly vibrant and capable communities from those that are deprived of that capital and the opportunities it can create. But more generally, the perception of a mix of ‘place capitals’ –​constituting, co-​existing and even competing in rural areas –​is now a regular focus for discussion in rural studies, with particular attention given to social capital (as a determinant of social capacity and community action) but also the role played by cultural, emotional and environmental capital in setting particular development trajectories –​rooted in place-​based knowledge, in care for place and in the valorisation of land and landscape assets (Lee et al, 2005; Sutherland and Burton, 2011; Lowe et al, 2019). 5

Rural Places and Planning

The notion that places possess a particular configuration of capitals, that in a sense makes those places, aligns with community development approaches that draw attention to assets that communities are able to mobilise, convert and ‘develop’ (see, for example, Cooperrider and Srivastv, 1987; Sen, 1992; Nussbaum, 2000). In the rural context, Castle (1998) develops the notion of a four-​fold rural capital, consisting of ‘natural, man-​created, human and social’ (p 622), to understand different forces in the rural development process (for example economic development, community development, environmental resource management). That compartmentalisation can be seen in Flora and colleagues’ (2018) Community Capital Framework, presented as an approach to baselining community development potential (applicable in a diversity of contexts: see Emery and Flora, 2006) across seven capitals: cultural, natural, human, social, financial, political and built (see Table 1.1). Beyond baselining, the authors identify two trajectories for place development: decapitalisation, where one capital is prioritised above others with detrimental outcomes, and legacy, where capitals remain intact and are transferred to subsequent generations, evidencing sustainable development. In a similar vein, Courtney and Moseley (2008) use place capitals (or ‘inherited resources’) as a baseline against which to assess local economic performance in rural England. Their choice of capitals –​ economic, human, social, cultural and environmental (see Table 1.1) –​was intended to capture the full range of endogenous and exogenous, tangible and intangible forces underpinning local development. Similar capital-​based analyses appear frequently in the literature (for example Svendsen and Sorensen, 2007; Bosworth and Turner, 2018). Capitals and the good countryside Traditional measures of rural ‘performance’ often focus on conventional economic indicators such as employment growth, income levels, business development and productivity. However, both theory and practice have increasingly recognised that these measures have only a partial relationship with community wellbeing and fail to take account of the importance of other factors in shaping quality of life outcomes or the contribution of rural assets (for example land-​based ecosystem services) to quality of life beyond a specific locale. Moreover, a focus on economic measurement crucially neglects the potential of economic growth to widen social inequalities or to erode natural capital. As an alternative to conventional indicators, over the last decade or more, economists and psychologists have increasingly focused on identifying the social and environmental determinants of quality of life and life satisfaction, usually through survey-​based analyses of affective wellbeing. These types of measurements are being increasingly positioned alongside economic indicators to capture the wider outcomes of policy interventions. Along similar lines, New Zealand’s Treasury Department has adopted a Living Standards Framework based on measurements of financial/​ physical capital, natural capital, social capital and human capital as indicators of 6

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Table 1.1: Developing place capitals Bourdieu

Emery and Flora

Courtney and Moseley

Gkartzios, Gallent and Scott

Convertible into money and may be institutionalised in the form of property rights. Different types of capital can be derived from economic capital.

Financial

Financial resources available to invest in community capacity-​ building, to underwrite the development of businesses, to support civic and social entrepreneurship and to accumulate wealth for future community development

Economic

Transport and communications infrastructure, workspace, local economic linkages, past private investment by firms and households, range of businesses in existence

Economic rural

Physical productive infrastructures (e.g. land assets); entrepreneurial infrastructure (e.g. business links, value chains); community wealth-​building capacity

Social

Resources that are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalised relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition that provides each of its members with the backing of the collectively ​owned capital, a ‘credential’ which entitles them to credit, in the various senses of the word

Social

Connections among people and organisations to make things happen. A specific configuration of social capital –​ entrepreneurial social capital is related to community economic development. It includes inclusive internal and external networks, local mobilisation of resources and willingness to consider alternative ways of reaching goals.

Social

Networks and partnerships linking the public, private and voluntary sectors, the quality of local institutions and governance, trust and the shared norms that facilitate cooperation

Social and cultural rural

Social networks (vertical and horizontal); community capacity and active citizenship (e.g. ability to mobilise social capital); inclusive places; creativity and cultural practices

Political

Access to power, organisations, connection to resources (continued)

Introduction

7

Economic

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Table 1.1: Developing place capitals (continued) Bourdieu

Emery and Flora

Courtney and Moseley

Gkartzios, Gallent and Scott

and power brokers. The ability of people to find their own voice and to engage in actions that contribute to community wellbeing. Cultural

Cultural

How people ‘know the world’, language, traditions, creativity, innovation, influence

Cultural

Political consensus, civic engagement, local history, customs and heritage, ‘place identity’ and people’s sense of place, valorisation of culture and culture as a collective resource

Human

Skills and abilities of people to develop and enhance their resources and to access outside resources and bodies of knowledge in order to increase their understanding, identify promising practices and to access data for community building

Human

Education, skills, health, attitudes, confidence, entrepreneurship and capacity for risk-​taking of the local population

Rural Places and Planning

8

Cultural capital can exist in three forms: in the embodied state, that is, in the form of long-​ lasting dispositions of the mind and body; in the objectified state, in the form of cultural goods (pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments, machines, etc.), which are the trace or realisation of theories or critiques of these theories, problematics and so forth; and in the institutionalised state (educational qualifications).

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Table 1.1: Developing place capitals (continued) Bourdieu

Emery and Flora Infrastructure

Natural

Weather, geographic isolation, natural resources, amenities and natural beauty

Gkartzios, Gallent and Scott Built rural

Environmental

9 Sources: Bourdieu (1986); Emery and Flore (2006, pp 20–1); Courtney and Moseley (2008)

Natural and human-​ Land-​based made assets that are rural valorised by local residents, investors and visitors; location, embracing peripherality, perceptions of peripherality and proximity to other places

Economic infrastructures (e.g. workspace); nature-​ based infrastructures critical to settlement systems; social-​cultural infrastructures (e.g. housing, community facilities) Land as a socially productive asset; landscape (e.g. tangible and intangible heritage); nature-​based infrastructures (e.g. natural processes, ecosystem services)

Introduction

Built

Courtney and Moseley

Rural Places and Planning

intergenerational wellbeing and as alternative and complementary measures to GDP (New Zealand Government, 2018). The inadequacies of ‘economic growth’ goals (Max-​Neef, 2010; Bache and Reardon, 2013; Bache and Scott, 2017) have prompted interest in broader place-​ based measures of development success, with wellbeing being contingent on a positive relationship between people and places and on care for environmental or natural capitals (Carlisle et al, 2009; Drescher, 2014). Notions of rural wellbeing frequently challenge the hegemony of neoliberal narratives of rural development, arguing that narrow economic goals should give ground to broader wellbeing ambitions (see Scott et al, 2018a). For example, the OECD’s most recent rural policy position, Rural Well-​being –​Geography of Opportunities (OECD, 2020a), identifies rural wellbeing as an overarching rural policy goal, to be achieved through enhancing rural economic productivity (to improve material living conditions), focusing on social wellbeing outcomes, and recognising the relationship between a high-​quality environment and quality of life. This broadening vista has the potential to overcome some outdated ways of thinking about rural policy conflicts including, for example, the discredited economic argument that presents environmental protection as an obstacle to rural economic development (see Kitchen and Marsden, 2009). Instead, planning for rural places should be built on a clear understanding of the interdependencies between economic, social, cultural and environmental processes within rural localities. This suggests the need to consider the economic and social health of rural communities as important elements of sustainability alongside environmental aspects (Owen, 1996; Saxby et al, 2018) and for spatial plans to create mutually reinforcing relationships between environment and economy to bridge this limiting divide (Kitchen and Marsden, 2006). In order to explore these relationships, we adopt a capitals framework for thinking about, and reflecting upon, the elements that come together to make rural places. That framework also allows us to think about the ways in which planning, as a form of anticipatory consciousness, addresses the linkages between place-​based capitals (Shucksmith, 2018). Rather than provide a checklist of indicators, through our case studies we explore how rural communities themselves mobilise place-​based capitals to shape future development trajectories. Here, we seek to answer Shucksmith’s (2018, p 171) provocative call for an understanding of the good countryside: ‘what might constitute visions for rural futures, or our collective imaginaries of rural places into the 21st century, of a Good Countryside to work towards … and how might we approach such a task?’ In addressing this, Shucksmith (2018) recognises that what constitutes the good countryside should be a matter for public deliberation and debate (and not expert prescription), with rural communities themselves best p​ laced to identify priorities or to ‘work through’ their own visions of the good countryside. We identify planning as a key enabling factor in converting, mobilising, reappraising and balancing place-​based capitals into sustainable and inclusive development trajectories to create place-​based prosperity and intergenerational rural wellbeing. 10

Introduction

The capitals framing Taking our cue from these debates, and motivated by a desire to connect planning to the constituent parts of rural places (with a view to making places, and indeed planning, better), we propose a simplified framework for exploring constituent capitals (see also Table 1.1). These are (1) the built rural, (2) the economic rural, (3) the land-​based rural and (4) the social and cultural rural. These elements are in no way discrete or independent from one another and there are, of course, other ways to conceive rural places (see also Bosworth and Turner, 2018). Yet the idea of constituent parts, capitals, which interrelate to form a complete system, provides both the opportunity to compartmentalise our discussions and to consider how different actions or interventions affect the workings of a complete system or place. Capitals exist in different forms in different places, but in every place they interact, undergo modification and provide the building blocks for a spatially selective construction of rurality. Across the next four chapters, each considering one of our composite and simplified capitals, we look at the interactions between capitals and with planning actions in an attempt to reveal critical interdependencies. For the purpose of our book, understandings of rural places are globally and linguistically differentiated and not necessarily fixed to specific definitions (Gkartzios et al, 2020). As such, we are not concerned with defining rural places in a standardised way; we are rather motivated in exploring the relationship between rural constituent elements and spatial planning. Our case studies, therefore, interrogate how these capitals are perhaps reordered or eroded through a range of interventions or actions. The compartmentalisation into capitals means that the thematic chapters give coverage to the issues listed here: • The built rural, comprising places (big and small), infrastructures (including information and communications technology [ICT]) and housing –​the material rural facilitating human habitation. This extends to housing, affordable housing, holiday homes and rural service provision; • The economic rural, looking across traditional activities, transformations and livelihoods in the countryside, economic transitions from a land-​based economy to the new rural economy and the capacity for community wealth building to enhance rural prosperity and how wealth can be directed and reinvested back into local assets; • The land-​based rural, examining the potential of land to be used as a socially productive asset related to land ownership, land-​based ecosystem services as essential nature-​based infrastructure critical to addressing climate change and biodiversity loss, and landscape as a collective visual asset in rural places and as an aspect of common heritage; • The social and cultural rural, extending from local and extra-​local networks and the mobilisation of place-​based cultural resources that can produce change in the social life of rural places, to questions of inclusivity and social justice as a rural planning objective. 11

Rural Places and Planning

These four capitals are tracked in Chapters 2 to 5, with case studies used to illustrate planning’s engagement with these capitals specifically and with place more generally.

Rural places A critical focus on place Place has been a fundamental concept within human geography, although its application (as a broad idea) and scholarly examination is now interdisciplinary. According to Cresswell (2019, p 119) ‘in any given place, we encounter a combination of materiality, meaning and practice’, which are interwoven; place, therefore, is an assemblage of these domains. The materiality of place is most apparent and obvious: places are parks, squares, forests, neighbourhoods –​they have houses, shops, cafes and bars; places are suburban, by the sea or occupy the interstitial spaces between skyscrapers; places are obviously rural too. Places exist on footpaths, on cement, on bare soil, on elevated rooftops, on private gardens. However, places are not just physically ‘there’ with fixed qualities waiting to be described and passively experienced (Healey, 2010); rather, spaces become places as a result of interactions with them, through our feelings, our thoughts, our lived experiences and through a process of infusing them with meaning (Tuan, 2001; Massey, 2005). Our interaction with places thus results, for example, in ever-​changing emotional and political topographies, heritage and memory landscapes, places with complex histories and stories that can mean different, even conflicting, things to different people (Massey, 1994). Places are also, finally, practised. People ‘do things in place’ (Cresswell, 2019, p 119), whether individually or collectively, in cities, villages, in the natural environment. We go for walks, we work, study and think in places. We meet people, fall in love and break up in places. We congregate for celebrations and protests; we take part in elections, in university events and we go on holidays in places. We self-​isolate and lock-​down in places. These practices are equally important, having the power to legitimise or limit what is acceptable in particular places. From sense of place to place-​making ‘Sense of place’ –​or the appreciation of ‘character’ (Massey, 1991) –​is complementary to the idea of place, referencing the ‘emotive bonds and attachments, both positive and negative, that people develop or experience in particular locations and environments’ (Foote and Azaryahu, 2009). That sense of place is an affective characterisation of the ways in which place materiality, the social construction of place, and also personal or collective lived experiences of place are ‘all coming together’ (Healey, 2010) to structure our attitudes, beliefs and feelings towards place(s) and also our understanding of acceptable behaviours and modes of living within those places (Jorgensen and Stedman, 2011). 12

Introduction

Of equal importance are the concepts of ‘placeless-​ness’ (Relph, 1976) and ‘non-​place’ (Auge, 1995), where any sense of place has been lost and replaced by the inauthentic, the soulless and the transient ‘spaces’ associated with hyper​mobility and attendant processes and outcomes of globalisation. But this loss is a disputed reality and that dispute, over the effects of globalisation, has focused greater attention on the processes that make or unmake place. Globalisation, or the abstraction and domination of spaces/​places by capital, does not automatically bring homogeneity: rather, it causes multiple, overlapping and often ephemeral experiences of place, each with its own value. Massey (1991) contends that societies have a responsibility to cultivate a progressive ‘global sense of place’ that embraces globalisation, as an agent of change, and the new social relations it generates. This more extrovert and relational view of places, and place-​making, acknowledges the new significance of place-​networks and of increased connectivity –​rather than being threatened by the openness and fluidity that comes with that connectivity (Massey, 1991). This global sense of place is very much at the fore in Woods’ (2007) conception of the ‘global countryside’ with its multi-​levelled connections and its characterisation as something dynamic and relational. Indeed, place-​making –​a term that is sometimes used to denote a mode of planning that is more broadly owned and focused –​seeks to enhance that (global) sense of place through the engagement of multiple agents and by embracing alternative and conflicted meanings of place and a plurality of lived experiences. Sense of place is a culmination of processes, actions and meanings that can be attributed to place-​making or shaping (Foote and Azaryahu, 2009), with these two concepts bound in a process–​product (albeit a never finished product) dialectic which is at once social and political (Healey, 2010). Place-​making is a social responsibility rather than something invested in professionals (including public sector planners). It can be presented in different terms but generally embraces an enhanced form of spatial governance that brings places and people into a process of imagining, articulating and materialising better places (Friedmann, 2010). Rurality, rural areas and rural places Numerous scholarly contributions on the nature of place have also focused on ‘the rural’, moving discussion far beyond early descriptive and positivist definitions of rurality (Halfacree, 1993). Those early definitions sought to distinguish rural from non-​rural ‘administrative units’ according to population or density thresholds, or the profile of economic activity. They pinpointed areas of population sparsity and ‘weaker’ economic profiles: non-​urban places with negative, laggard or peripheral characteristics. In such definitions, rural was very much a pejorative term, inferring disconnection or subordination (Lowe, 2012; Gkartzios et al, 2020). Early descriptive definitions eventually gave ground to more sophisticated positivist rural typologies based on available socio-​economic data. In Britain, these included Cloke’s (1977) and Cloke and Edwards’ (1987) indexes of rurality based on UK Census data. Later, and internationally, these have included indexes and 13

Rural Places and Planning

typologies such as those by van Eupen et al (2012) and Hedlund (2016). Policy makers have often funded the development of quantitative measures of rurality, which can now be found in many countries (see a review by Nelson et al, 2021). However, the typologies that they underpin have been criticised for the way they generalise the idea of rural spaces/​places and re​produce outdated dichotomies. The lived experience of ‘the rural’ is not captured in any aggregation of key data and such indexes mask the reality of different countries and places having their own culturally contingent ideas of the countryside (Woods, 2005). The circulation of positivist views of the rural, and their failure to draw out the unique socio-​economic phenomena produced by rurality, led Hoggart (1990) to conclude that it was ‘time to do away with the rural’. While researchers did not turn away from seeking those unique phenomena, they started to look in new places, developing less positivist understanding of rurality and viewing such spaces as relational and mixing different ways of life. Pahl (1966) had already developed an urban–​rural continuum that sought to reveal processes rather than types. This approach differed from later planning-​led conceptions of rurality, which conceived of a clear unambiguous divide (Murdoch and Lowe, 2003). But elsewhere, the blending of rural and urban processes –​to produce a rural–​urban continuum and a mixing of rural and urban values, identities and networks –​had long been an important way of thinking about the ‘production’ of rural places (such as in Greece; see Damianakos, 1997). For some researchers, ‘rural’ is important not because it explains spatial processes but because it is used in everyday parlance and is a source of identity (Halfacree, 1993). It is precious to people and helps them make sense of their own biographies. For that reason, Halfacree’s work has focused on the symbols, signs and imageries that are behind representations of rurality. Subjective representations of rural places are grounded in social constructionism and particularly in the work of Michel Foucault, which invites far greater diversity in thinking on the rural (for example da Silva et al, 2016) and, more critically, reflections on how power dynamics produce dominant representations and prioritise the interests of powerful actors (for example Rye, 2006; Sturzaker and Shucksmith, 2011). There is a long sociological tradition of ascribing key values to the countryside and to rural communities, which began with the work of Ferdinand Tönnies and Louis Wirth. However, the ‘new’ social constructionism turned away from fixed representations and embraced a new plurality of values, identities and even languages (Gkartzios and Remoundou, 2018; Gkartzios et al, 2020). This was in contrast, for example, to the work of Louis Wirth (1938) who, like Tönnies before him, presented urban life as dynamic and impersonal, and its rural counterpart as stable and personal, characterised by closed networks and everyday familiarity. This myth –​the rural of the popular imagination –​was stripped away and replaced with a much more malleable, locally contingent and differentiated countryside. Rural areas were suddenly re-​presented as places of significant transformation, underpinned by urban-​to-​rural mobilities and by middle-​class nostalgia for countryside settings and lifestyles (Halfacree, 1995). Across many parts of the 14

Introduction

world, counterurbanisation has become a critical process and research focus in rural studies over the last five decades. Indeed, since the term was first coined to explain the growth of non-​metropolitan population share in the US in the 1970s (Berry, 1976), it has become a universal shorthand for the restructuring arising from middle-​class colonisation of rural areas (Champion, 1989; Boyle et al, 1998; Mitchell, 2004; Stockdale, 2006). As a framing, it has been applied equally in the Global North (for example Grimsrud, 2011) and Global South (for example Potts, 2005), although its traction has arguably been greatest in Britain where numerous sub-​processes –​from population ageing, through housing market change, to new modes of tourism –​are presented as part of a broader counterurbanisation trend (see Champion and Brown, 2012). Its most visible outcomes have been amenity and lifestyle-​led migration, housing market distortions and the social reconfiguration –​ or gentrification –​of many rural areas (Benson and O’Reilly, 2009). Counterurbanisation is, in turn, underpinned by new mobilities: these mobilities are important for places because they introduce contested meanings, new politics and new place actors/​capacities (Cresswell, 2006). How rural places ‘work’ has been transformed by mobilities (Milbourne and Kitchen, 2014): a prime example of this is the way in which ‘counter-​urban’ (or ex-​urban) groups have been found to shape local planning strategies in such a way as to protect the values and amenities that are important to them (see Sturzaker, 2010). Statutory local plans have become instruments of so-​called NIMBYism where, as in Britain, ex-​urban groups are able to exert significant pressure over the political and discretionary decision making behind planning outcomes (Spencer, 1997). In those situations, counterurbanisation and NIMBYism become synonymous and a principal cause of declining housing access and social exclusion (see, for example, Satsangi et al, 2010). But elsewhere, counterurbanisation can be a positive agent of change, providing a means of repopulating depleting and marginal rural areas (for example, in Japan –​Odagiri, 2019). Critiques of the assumed universality of counterurbanisation/​mobility outcomes (rooted in an Anglo-​centric perspective) have given rise to broader foci on rural-​to-​rural movements, open-​ended migration and crisis-​led mobilities (Halfacree, 2008; Stockdale, 2016; Remoundou et al, 2016; Gkartzios et al, 2017). Getting back to the nature of place, this journey from positivist to dynamic and transformational conceptions of the rural has brought us to a point where rural places are ever-​changing and shaped by the power and agency of multiple groups (Frouws, 1998; Richardson, 2000; Donovan and Gkartzios, 2014). The recent deconstruction of the rural has followed geography’s own cultural turn. This journey was summarised by Cloke (2006) who charted the way in which positivist tendencies, including his own, had given way, for the most part (except in agricultural economics), to a diversity of thinking on the rural that seemed to have jettisoned (or significantly relegated) any notion of distinct ‘function’: he called this ‘post rurality’. This functional detachment has been met in recent years by calls to reconnect with the material reality of rural places (Lu and Qian, 2020). The increasing 15

Rural Places and Planning

divergence between cultural and material perspectives had also driven a wedge between academia and policy making, with the latter looking for failings (for example, low productivity or declining accessibility –​ as direct measures of rurality) that policy might address (Jones, 1995). But at the same time, academia saw the opportunity of bringing new issues to policy debate, recognising that this needed to be done in a clear way, with supporting data. In the 1990s, the need for a broader perspective on rural lives –​beyond agricultural economics –​ prompted Philo (1992) to flag important equality concerns that had taken root in rural areas, and thereafter for Cloke and Little (1997) and Little (1999) to draw attention to different lived realities of rurality, raising important public and social policy questions that would later be turned into new planning agendas (Doyle, 2018; Doan and Hubbard, 2019; Shortall, 2019). And so, in a sense, Cloke’s post-​rurality was more of a moment than a sustained trajectory. Once identified as a new direction, or distraction, it triggered a rapid response. Building on Lefebvre’s The Production of Space (1991), Halfacree (2006) argued that rurality properly comprises localities (of production and consumption), representations (lay and professional) and everyday lives (or the experience of rurality that Philo, Little, Cloke and others had been drawing attention to, and couching in policy terms, during the preceding decade). As Halfacree (2006) argues, discourse about rurality is, of course, not only produced by scholars (Jones, 1995; Woods, 2011). For example, a popular rural discourse is evidenced in recent years in the way that the countryside is mobilised in cultural production, and specifically within the global circuits of the ‘art world’ (Gkartzios et al, 2019). In Britain, for example, while the 2012 London Olympics’ artistic performances at the opening ceremony celebrated the British countryside and placed ‘the village’ at the heart of a global spectacle, London’s public art gallery, the Whitechapel, has since hosted a series of events on ‘The Rural: Contemporary Art and Spaces of Connection’, culminating in a Rural Assembly conference (Whitechapel, 2019). And, even more recently, architect Rem Koolhaas has curated a large-​scale exhibition in New York’s Guggenheim on ‘Countryside, The Future’, which explored ‘radical changes in the rural, remote, and wild territories collectively identified here as “countryside”, or the 98 % of the Earth’s surface not occupied by cities …’ (Guggenheim, 2020). These point to a notion of rurality which is increasingly multifunctional and co-​produced in various political and social locales, both material and symbolic, within and beyond rural areas (Hamilton, 2015). Across these different plains, and because of political and material dynamics, rural areas –​and rural places –​form what is frequently called a ‘differentiated countryside’ (Murdoch et al, 2003). Digging deeper than measurable characteristics (percentage of land u ​ se in x, or percentage of inhabitants engaged in y), the proposition of a countryside differentiated by power dynamics across multiple agents (political, economic and social) has become an important lens for examining and explaining the production of rural place. It contends that difference is explained by reliance on state support, the dynamic between economic development and environmental 16

Introduction

conservation interests, or the dominance of traditional landowners versus the intrusion of state or new institutional investment. Complex power hierarchies find expression in localities, representations and everyday lives –​and in development trajectories. They produce a ‘preserved countryside’ in which conservation interests dominate; a ‘contested countryside’ in which opposing rationalities compete; a ‘paternalistic countryside’ in which traditional landowners hold sway; and a ‘clientelist countryside’ in which the state and institutional landowners frame opportunities for rural development. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this lens has been accused of perpetuating Anglo-​centric bias. While it has been deployed in international settings (for example Herslund, 2012; Brunori and Rossi, 2007), it is calibrated to the unique socio-​economic and political realities of England (OECD, 2011; Shortall and Alston, 2016). Its constituent building blocks are formed from those realities, limiting its transferability to different places. In contrast, our capitals framing –​detailed in the previous section –​is far more malleable and rooted in universal realities of material and non-​material place assets: its built, economic, land (including landscape and nature) and social-​cultural attributes are conceived as plains of interface with the actions and processes of planning, which aim to ‘make better places’. Place is at once a composite of these and a system in which planning is, or should be, an integral part.

Rural planning: integrated or intrusive? Planning:​idea and practice Planning, in the widest sense, is a process of place governance that is underpinned by social relationships (Gallent and Gkartzios, 2019). Like Healey (2010), we view planning as both an idea and a diverse practice that contributes to the development of places –​rather than as an instrument of state bureaucracy, administration and control. Planning ‘systems’ are not the focus of this book; instead, we are concerned with the way planning (before it is even badged as such) presupposes the imagination and curiosity to rethink the world, possesses the perception and intuition to understand change, and offers the vision and coordination to co-​create ‘better places’. This idea of planning is political but free from administrative constraints. But as a practice, planning is bound within governance structures, and also constrained by political antagonism and policy frameworks, which confer or limit its capacity to survey, analyse and act, but also (and more critically in our view) to bring about change in partnership with communities. As an idea, planning is a higher instinct of human preparedness. It is both place-​bound and place-​uneven. As a practice, this higher instinct is fixed within different political economies and their various restrictions and opportunities, becoming an instrument of government or governance that is wielded according to socio-​political and ideological predilection. Over time, it becomes a toolbox of instruments –​or a system –​used to prioritise different interests and target alternative spatial outcomes. Furthermore, as episteme, planning is interdisciplinary (or even trans-​disciplinary in its ambition to co-​produce places 17

Rural Places and Planning

with communities), embodying an array of traditions and knowledge sets, but often locating in either architecture, engineering, economics or (more recently) in the environmental and social sciences. While there is a degree of universality in the idea of planning, there is great diversity in both episteme and practice, with local systems anchored in different disciplinary traditions and guided by different government objectives and governance processes –​see, for example, Gallent et al (2003), Gkartzios and Shucksmith (2015), Lapping and Scott (2019) and Frank et al (2020) for comparative explorations of different rural planning contexts. From regulation to spatial visions The practice of planning has changed in recent decades, with a marked shift away from its former regulatory focus towards an emphasis on spatial vision and the realisation of visions through mixed means (Healey, 1997; Tewdwr-​Jones, 2001; Gallent and Gkartzios, 2019). In much of Europe, for example, there has been a turn away from the hegemony of expertise, top-​down solutions and planning through regulation. The term ‘spatial planning’ gained much currency in the 1990s, embodying the idea of a more open and devolved form of spatial governance: one that challenged the normative construction of planning expertise and sought wider private and civil society inputs into the generation of planning knowledge and formulation of ‘planning solutions’, now more broadly defined. In the UK, Tewdwr-​Jones et al (2010) traced the infusion of this idea into the English system. Despite the change of government in that year, there appeared to be some continuity (or even acceleration) in spatial planning thinking, with communities handed a bigger role in policy and plan ​making. There are now signs that England may row back from this more social and community-​based planning, returning to a more regulatory mindset –​of the type that is common in North America and parts of East and South East Asia (notably China and Japan) –​having decided to prioritise a narrower set of business interests by jettisoning much of the democracy of local planning (see recent proposals for planning reform: MHCLG, 2020). But in the majority of liberal democracies, the shift from land-use planning to (strategic) spatial planning (Albrechts, 2004; Albrechts et al, 2003) has been a general trend, evidencing, inter alia, a transformation in the power hierarchies of planning knowledge and the democratic expectations of local populations. Changes in planning practice mirror an underlying transformation in governance. Land use planning is confined to the policing of land-use change according to fixed rule books. Sometimes, this sort of land policy and planning is needed (to prevent adverse changes that might impact on landscape, important habitats or amenities), but it is patently different from the socio-​spatial process required to formulate and deliver visions of positive change that break existing path-​dependencies. Spatial planning implies enhanced governance, working in partnership with multiple stakeholders and diverse communities across different scales; it is concerned with a mix of actions and investments of which land-​use 18

Introduction

control is just one (Gallent and Gkartzios, 2019). Building on the earlier work of Healey (1997) and Kunzmann (2000), Albrechts (2004, p 747) observes that while spatial planning generally remains public sector-led, it is characterised by a ‘socio-​spatial process through which a vision, actions, and means for implementation are produced that shape and frame what a place is, and may become’. And rather than being a solution in itself, it is an open invitation to think of planning as a ‘socio-​spatial’ endeavour that belongs to society at large as opposed to a narrow planning ‘profession’. That invitation, and the idea that socio-​spatial processes (planning) are particular to place, is critically important and provides the cue for much of the discussion contained in this book. Those processes surely need to adapt to discursive and material taxonomies; and they need to acknowledge the peculiarities of rural places, despite the uniformity of tools, regulations and systems that exist at a ‘state’ level. Rural planning requires its own set of ideas and practices, which break from the assumption that all rural places are the same and face the same challenges. Lapping (2006, p 118) contends that ‘rural planning and policy has demonstrated an amazing consistency and lack of imagination in terms of their focus and orientation. In many national and international contexts, an emphasis on agriculture as the rural persists’. The idea of planning has to be underpinned by the idea of rurality and rural places, and by an understanding of the functions they play and the challenges they face. The summary in Table 1.2 aims to begin the process of profiling these functions, showing how they often co-​exist and potentially conflict (see also Gallent and Scott, 2017). Table 1.2: Emerging functions of the rural The rural as … A playground …

… as a place of consumption for new second home owners, tourists, food consumers

A dumping ground …

… for controversial unwanted land uses (e.g. waste incinerators, prisons)

A post-​carbon landscape …

… a site for the (often contested) deployment of renewable energy –​wind farms, solar farms, biomass

A resource sink …

… a site for extracting resources, often with short-​term ‘boomtown’ effects and limited long-​term reinvestment in rural futures

A cultural heritage repository …

… tied into perceptions of rural ‘authenticity’ and nostalgia, cultural landscapes and the commodification of place

A food basket …

… as agriculture remains as a dominant land use and function of rural places

A provider of ecosystem services …

… whereby ecosystems provide functions and services essential to human wellbeing, from recreation to flood alleviation or carbon storage

A social space …

… at the scale of everyday life, where people live and interact, often characterised by strong place attachment

Source: Gallent and Scott (2017)

19

Rural Places and Planning

The practice of rural planning The practice of rural planning, wherever it happens, is already broad in scope. It is undertaken in various ways by numerous agents; it comprises a range of initiatives, interventions and local actions; and it extends beyond land policy. Much of what might be considered ‘planning’ actually comprises everyday socio-​ spatial actions –​projects, for example, that communities have undertaken for many years (that is, to complement the resources of their own towns or villages), but which are now listed as evidence of a spatial governance shift. Community actions, alongside private investments or charitable undertakings, are often brought together within new institutional arrangements to convey a sense of coordination and strategy, connecting local and extra-​local networks and resources, which is then presented as an open system of community governance and planning (Gallent and Gkartzios, 2019). More prosaically, Gallent et al (2015) and Scott (2021) scope the components of rural planning (see Table 1.3) across a composite of core ‘public planning’ functions (primarily the control of development), normative spatial or territorial planning that brings together a wider range of public and private stakeholders, community action and planning in various guises, the procurement of outcomes through market-​based instruments, countryside management (which deals with the spaces beside or between settlements and is often led by farming interests) in general or through public ownership or national parks, and finally the programmes and projects spearheaded by central government departments and agencies (Bishop and Phillips, 2004, p 4), which can include investment in education or health care –​among other things. A community-​based focus A very important concern for rural planning has been its engagement with, and framing of, community initiative and action (see Gallent and Ciaffi, 2014). This concern exists at the interface between rural planning and development, with community capacity considered both an important development resource and a substitute for public intervention and private enterprise, in areas with thin service markets and potentially low returns from high per-​capita investment. The community-​led and delivered component of rural planning is considered both a gap-​filler and a product of the closer bonds, resilience and networks that rurality can incubate. Engagement with those networks has been an important policy prescription since the 1990s. LEADER (Liaison Entre Actions de Développement de l’Économie Rurale) programmes, for example, successfully transformed the European Commission’s top-​down development interventions, which primarily targeted the farming sector, into a participatory, grass roots approach to rural development mobilising Local Action Groups through partnerships between various stakeholders (EC, 2006; Lapping and Scott, 2019). LEADER has been characterised by its territorial and integrated focus; its emphasis on endogenous processes, centred 20

Introduction Table 1.3: The scope of rural planning Components

Functions

Public or statutory land-​use planning

National policy Strategic planning for infrastructure and housing Development (settlement) planning Land-​use control and other regulatory functions

Spatial or territorial planning

Area visioning Coordination of service investments Coordination of all public/​private and third sector initiatives

Community action and planning

Campaigning and lobbying Voluntary delivery and control of services Support for community development and social infrastructure Community visioning Interfacing with public and spatial planning activity

Market-​based instruments

Fiscal incentives or disincentives to rural landowners to induce desirable land-​use outcomes (e.g. farmland preservation) Incentives to stimulate physical investment or adaptive reuse of the rural built environment Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES)

Countryside management

Farming and stewardship Strategies and actions that focus on the spaces beside or between physical development Strategies for renewable energy, mineral extraction or ‘fracking’

National parks or public ownership

Closely related to countryside management Public ownership of important rural assets by state organisations, for example wilderness areas National parks to manage ‘prestigious’ or culturally significant landscapes Land often remains in private ownership, but strictly managed and regulated by designated park authorities

Other projects and programmes

Governmental and pan-​national directives and programmes Departmental or agency-​based (sectoral) projects around health, education, transport and so on Development agency interventions Private sector (industrial) programmes and initiatives

Source: Adapted from Gallent et al (2015) and Scott (2021)

within rural communities; its appreciation and use of local resources, tangible and intangible; and by its local contextualisation through active public participation (see Moseley, 1997; Ray, 2000). The combination of both endogenous (for example, local resources) and exogenous forces (for example, state support and funding) with the dynamic of networks to mobilise these forces for the advantage of rural places is often called neo-​endogenous development (Lowe et al, 1998; Ray, 2001; Gkartzios and Lowe, 2019). It is frequently held up as an exemplar of rural governance shift (Scott and Murray, 2009; Bock, 2019), although critics point to bias and elitism in the processes of participation (Storey, 1999; Shortall, 2008; Bosworth et al, 2016), with Shucksmith (2000, p 215) arguing that participatory processes often ‘favour those who are already powerful and articulate, and who already enjoy a greater 21

Rural Places and Planning

capacity to act and to engage with the initiative’. The prioritisation of sectoral or private interest is an ever-​present risk when representative democracy gives ground to participatory forms of governance: the unequal capacities of different groups and interests to lead and participate in those processes can undermine the democracy of community initiative and action. More broadly, rural planning remains a conflicted and political undertaking. A range of challenges emerge in different contexts and some of these are explored in this book. And because contexts and cultures differ so much from place to place, it is impossible to catalogue examples of good and bad practice. Our aim, therefore, is to use detailed ‘stories from the global countryside’ to explore the interplay between different manifestations of rurality and planning. Rurality and rural places are viewed as composites of the linked capitals introduced in this chapter, while rural planning comprises the multi-​sectoral interventions, investments and actions introduced here.

Moving forward Rural places, like other places, are lived, experienced, practised, negotiated and contested. Planning should not be an artificial intrusion in the life of places, but rather an integral part of how those places form and develop. Some aspects of the practice of planning can look and feel mechanical. But aside from regulatory interventions –​the legal tools and the processes of control and enforcement –​ planning also comprises the thinking, discussing and doing of ‘place-​making’. Conceptions of planning have broadened during recent years. The idea of enhanced spatial governance may not be meaningful to many communities, but many would recognise the ambition to embed responsibility for planning –​or at least thinking about and visioning future development –​within local discourse, and avoid the imposition of outside solutions. This book narrates stories, that is local case studies from different parts of the world, that illustrate planning’s interface with rural places, in order to learn from processes and interventions that appear to have made ‘better rural places’ and those that have brought negative consequences. Twelve rural planning cases are presented across four chapters, each of which focuses on one of our four capitals, while also demonstrating linkages with all other capitals. These draw on published literature, the goal being to narrate international and globally differentiated situations and outcomes while acknowledging that we are reproducing knowledge, across the fields of planning and rural studies, that has a strong Anglo-​centric, Western and Global North bias (Gkartzios et al, 2020). The four chapters start with general discussions of the built rural, the economic rural, the land-​based rural and the social and cultural rural. The nature of these capitals is scoped and detailed –​and their constituent elements, and likely features, are unpacked. These opening discussions are used to frame the cases. Chapter 2’s cases –​dealing with the built rural –​examine local responses to housing needs within a neighbourhood planning framework in England, 22

Introduction

community support for infrastructure upgrading and the development of smart villages in Finland, and the use of cooperative structures to facilitate community buyouts of essential local services in rural Australia. Chapter 3, which examines the economic rural, begins by looking at heritage-​led rural regeneration in Norway. The focus then shifts to the valorisation of natural resource amenity in the US and onward to the purchase and lease back of farmland in Romania, with the latter examining the practicalities and the dangers of land financialisation and the potential siphoning of local value through international investment and local corruption. Chapter 4 then turns to land-​based rural capital. The first of its case studies reconceptualises the role/​function of land within a ‘just transition’ from carbon-intensive land uses towards a zero-​carbon landscape in Ireland. We then turn to an example of a payment for ecosystem services (PES) scheme in China to explore its role in watershed management and supporting sustainable rural livelihoods. The final case in this chapter explores land reform in Scotland and experiments with community ownership of land assets. And finally, Chapter 5 looks at the social and cultural assets of rural places. It begins by exploring the intent and outcomes of a contemporary art festival in rural Japan, showing how culture and the art experience can contribute to making better places. The focus of the second case is the role of networks as nurtured by a LEADER Local Action Group in supporting the local population and building resilience during the COVID-​19 pandemic in Spain. The final case study then explores queer livelihoods in rural Canada and, as such, addresses biases in the production of rurality as a discourse, while dealing with the theme of inclusivity in planning. Rural planning is, at its best, a collective endeavour that brings together mixed interests in the articulation and pursuit of ‘good places’. A significant goal of this book is to answer Shucksmith’s (2018) call to explore ideas of the ‘good countryside’. That good countryside exists where there is a propitious balance of place capitals that are protected, enhanced and treated as critically interdependent by development strategies, land policies and community projects; where, in essence, the importance of these capitals to rural places is acknowledged. The capitals introduced in this chapter form a heuristic device at two levels. First, they help us make sense of rural places. Second, they provide points or plains of interaction with planning, where planning –​however devised –​is able to, first, demonstrate its inclusivity and its attention to wellbeing and ecological integrity; second, support integrated land governance; and third, adapt to changing social needs, including the need to rethink governance arrangements and democratic practice. Our concern in this book is primarily with planning for good rural places. The problems encountered by planning are well d​ ocumented. As it operates in a political context, it bends to special interests and is susceptible to power asymmetries. It can also perpetuate privilege (especially middle-​class privilege in rural amenity areas) and may set priorities, including land management ones, that reflect a disciplinary bias. And its disconnection from other areas of public policy can accentuate that bias, making planning intervention appear narrow and 23

Rural Places and Planning

incapable of tackling the challenges confronting rural places in an integrated way. Planning is also subverted by a number of disruptive forces: these range from dominant neoliberal narratives, populism and radical politics, to clientelism and corruption. But planning, as an idea and as a practice, is an essential part of the unfolding story of place. It takes many forms and should be integral to the life of communities rather than intrusive –​part of the everyday thinking on rural place, and a means of imagining and realising better futures. The cases presented, and accompanying analysis, aim to illustrate this ever-​present connection between rural places and planning.

24

2

The built rural Unpacking the capital There was no discrete ‘built capital’ in Bourdieu’s triad of economy–​society–​ culture. But those base capitals become objectified or embodied in material things or human capacities. Modern economies, for example, require an infrastructure of fixed and mobile objects: places of economic production, means of connectivity and transportation, and other apparatus, to enable that production. Likewise, society is rooted in a material world: places of home, of private and public dwelling, of interaction and the formation of social bonds, which host the development of meaning and shared culture. It was noted in Chapter 1 that later extensions of Bourdieu’s thinking transformed his fundamental capitals into public goods and community resources (Coleman, 1998), tying them to particular places and therefore arriving at the notion of ‘place capitals’. Taking this line of logic further, these capitals became ‘assets’ that advance or restrict the economic, social and cultural lives of different places. How places develop will depend on whether they are asset-​r ich or asset-​poor, whether they have the means to get ahead or are more likely to be left behind. Social capital has become a key signifier of place-​based development potential but is often, we would argue, invoked as a shorthand for a constellation of linked capitals, material and non-​material. A combination of many things –​capacities, skills, knowledge and infrastructures –​produces that potential, all of which centre on people, what they do individually and collectively, and what resources they have to hand. Emery and Flora (2006) list only one item under ‘built capital’ in their own expansion of Bourdieu’s triad: infrastructure. Definitions of infrastructure can be very broad, extending from roads, rail and ICT (that is, communications infrastructure), through water supply, electricity and gas (that is, utility infrastructure) to homes, schools, retail outlets, health care and ‘blue-​light’ emergency services (that is, social infrastructure). Everything listed here, extending to places of work, could be labelled ‘economic infrastructure’; and everything interstitial including the wider countryside could be viewed as ‘green infrastructure’. Then, beyond the material, soft structures –​anything from formal support networks (perhaps run by charities or voluntary groups) through to neighbourly interest in vulnerable people –​can be badged ‘community infrastructure’. Almost everything one might conceive as existing in a place can be understood as infrastructure, in so far as it delivers service (economic, social, environmental and so on) or supports human activity (dwelling, working, socialising, shopping and so forth). Therefore, using the word infrastructure to denote the sum of built capital is at once correct and also excessively vague. Perhaps 25

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for that reason, Courtney and Moseley (2008) distribute built infrastructures among five capitals: transport and workspace to economic; education (and the ‘objects’ of that education) to human; networks and voluntary sector services to social; heritage (including built heritage) to cultural; and other anthropogenic assets to environmental. Some fusion of infrastructure and capital seems to convey and situate the range of things that constitutes the built rural. For the purposes of this book, the countryside’s built capital is treated as an assemblage of anthropogenic, physical things that can be examined in a single chapter. The intention is not to draw boundaries around that capital but rather to use built capital as a vantage point from which to explore contributions to, and linkages across, other capitals. Anthropogenic things have social and economic functions; they embed in a wider natural environment, and they are also instilled with socio-​ cultural meaning. It is important to understand what they are, the functions and meanings they have, how they contribute to place and how they are affected by different actions and interventions. The remainder of this chapter, like the three capitals chapters that follow, is divided into three parts. The first part provides a more detailed account of the ‘sub-​components’ of built capital (what it comprises) and the ways in which those components contribute to the function and experience of place at an individual and community level. The second part then presents three case studies: of housing problems, interventions and outcomes in England; of the development of enabling infrastructure for ‘smart villages’ in Finland; and of cooperative community spaces in Australia. These are relayed as narratives from which lessons or key observations concerning the ways in which planning interacts with the built rural are drawn in the final part of the chapter.

Exploring the sub-​components Generally, the built rural comprises material assets that are assembled in rural places and the wider countryside. But in order to make sense of the many items, assets and infrastructures that constitute this built capital –​and therefore more easily link to discussions in the next three c­ hapters –​it seems sensible to distribute these infrastructures, for want of a better term, across our three related capitals. Therefore, the built rural consists of (1) economic infrastructures, (2) environmental or nature-​based infrastructures and (3) socio-​cultural infrastructures. These categories overlap, with some material assets occupying at least two groups. Take housing, for example; this multi-​functional public/​private good is at once social infrastructure (for communities) and economic infrastructure (supporting labour supply). The availability of housing at affordable cost determines social mix and the sustainability of a community, whether, for example, young people can exercise their right to access housing and therefore provide a secure home for their children, or whether housing supply and quality enable older people to remain in a community in later life. But it is equally an economic infrastructure. Building homes is a productive activity and securing loans on houses feeds the 26

The built rural

financial services sector and is important for national economies (Gallent, 2019). Locally, the availability of housing supports labour supply –​ensuring that people can work on nearby farms or in rural tourism. Likewise, broadband is often viewed as an economic infrastructure, helping business start-​ups and thereafter ensuring that those businesses can reach customers and clients. But it is also a social infrastructure, creating opportunities for interaction via social media and countering the isolation of some rural locations. The built rural is traditionally presented as a challenge for ‘settlement planning’ and books which take on that challenge generally rattle through a shopping list of concerns: housing, retail, transport and so on. They seldom categorise these built things or think about the integration of their broader functions. Indeed, it is difficult not to deal with the built rural in a compartmentalised way, although an attempt to do exactly that is made here. Economic infrastructures range from workspaces, income-​generating apparatus, supports for labour supply, ICT and conventional transport. Workspaces can comprise small business units, workshops, non-​residential farm buildings, shops, food and drink outlets, and so forth. Income-​generating apparatus can include energy infrastructure (wind turbines, bio-​fuel facilities, solar panels and hydro) that may be community-​operated or privately run, circulating capital back into the community. Likewise, social events and festivals hosted in rural areas may require temporary infrastructures for coping with surging visitor numbers. Supports for labour supply is an opaque reference to housing, which is a vital economic infrastructure for all communities. ICT (alongside all ‘utilities infrastructure’ –​gas, water and electricity supplies) is essential for economic activity in rural areas, connecting consumers to the suppliers of goods and services and vice versa. And conventional transport –​roads, rail, bus stops, railway stations, bridleways, footpaths and so on –​connects homes to places of work, and more broadly provides the operating system of any modern economy by enabling the movement of goods and people. Environmental or nature-​based infrastructures are largely the domain of Chapter 4, being mainly non-​built. But green infrastructures –​from reservoirs providing water and power, to forests acting as carbon sinks –​are served by built things including access roads, security and the machinery to control water levels or extract power. Environmental infrastructure also extends to protection for important assets, in the form of fencing or more traditional divisions, perhaps dry-​stone walling or hedgerows. Nature-​based infrastructures may require fewer built elements –​supplying eco-​system services from entirely natural assets –​but some, including watercourses that have been widened, deepened or had their courses fixed to provide flood defence, may utilise gabions or other artificial channelling. Rural places are replete with environmental infrastructures that have artificial control features. Moreover, nature-​based infrastructures can perform a critical role in reducing environmental risks to rural properties and include upstream infrastructures designed to reduce storm runoff in the lower parts of a catchment and thereby reduce the flood risks faced by villages and towns. 27

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Socio-​cultural infrastructures start with housing –​the focus and facilitator of private and public dwelling (see also Gkartzios and Ziebarth, 2016; Gallent, and Scott, 2019) –​but extend to all forms of social space, internal and external. Those social spaces can be purpose-​built, including ‘village halls’ or community centres, or they may comprise cafés, shops or similar, otherwise economic and employment spaces that nevertheless have a socio-​cultural function. Then there are outdoor public spaces –​from village greens, small squares (or incidental spaces), to sports fields and other sites of possible social exchange. Schools can also be listed among social-​cultural infrastructures. They provide an essential service for the community and may also provide public venues for out-​of-​hours activities. All of the above provide spaces for cultural events, from local fairs, through sports, to art exhibitions. This includes homes: in the absence of formal community spaces in some rural areas, Kilpatrick et al (2014) cite examples in Australia where private garages attached to homes become impromptu meeting places. In fact, rural settlements might be viewed as singular social infrastructures, providing the stages on which rural lives are played out and intimately linked to the economies of rural places. The sum of these infrastructures provides an important dimension of rural place. How they are assembled –​and which of these are present and accessible –​ will contribute to the experience of that place, determining whether happy and prosperous lives can be lived. Of course, rural places are not islands but rather embedded in networks of places, smaller and bigger, that provide different services and opportunities. But through a focus on place –​contextualised by those wider connections –​it is possible to assess whether those places ‘work’: whether they are good rural places, and what might need to be done to make them better. The ‘good countryside’ is surely a legitimate goal of planning in all its various guises. In the opening chapter, we drew attention to Shucksmith’s (2018) notion of the ‘good countryside’ and the right mix of place-​based assets and capitals that planning can utilise to shape sustainable rural places. In this chapter, it is important to link the arrangement of infrastructures to the experience of place, not only when the infrastructure is up and running but also during the production of built capital –​when good countrysides are co-​created. To that end, the cases presented in this chapter touch on issues of inclusion, inequality and socio-​economic justice, wellbeing, access to and the distribution of land and property, governance and structures of co-​production, and flexibility or innovation in policy making and planning. This framing allows us to spotlight how the production and presence of infrastructures contribute to the functioning of a place: so, for example, what does the housing resource need to look like to make that contribution and what sorts of housing situations contribute to delivering inclusivity, justice and wellbeing? It is impossible to cover a full shopping list of built things (sub-​components of the overall capital) in this chapter, so the approach taken is to start with core issues, look outwards and explore connections. The overall aim is to consider how sub-​components, and therefore capitals, contribute to good rural places. This is achieved by illustrating and investigating contributions through our case studies, 28

The built rural

which also look at the role of planning in facilitating the availability, distribution and access to sub-​components that support rural quality of life and quality of place.

Housing, smart villages and interactional community spaces Community control of housing outcomes:​Upper Eden, England The Localism Act 2011 introduced neighbourhood development planning to England. Together with the revocation of regional plans during the following year, it delivered a fundamental localisation of planning: more responsibility and power devolved to the lowest tier of local government and the promise of broader public involvement in the development of local plans and associated land-​use policies and decisions. Neighbourhood planning is rooted in the tradition of parish plans (Parker, 2014; Gallent, 2016), which evolved from local evidence gathering in rural areas from the 1970s onwards. By the 1990s, parish councils were regularly becoming involved in the drawing up of non-​statutory plans, which they then struggled to connect with statutory local plans –​often because these ‘parish plans’ were little more than unstructured wish ​lists: accounts of the various gripes over roads and housing, which communities often express to local authorities. For a variety of reasons –​from perceived voter distrust of regional bodies, to the desire to project public values in development decisions (or merely protect equity in private homes by rejecting new development) –​the Conservative Party in opposition came to believe that informal parish plans provided a blueprint for formal neighbourhood planning. This was seen as a vote winner in the 2010 general election. With a Conservative-​led coalition installed in government, the pledge to introduce neighbourhood planning was delivered. The removal of regional plans tilted power towards local planning –​which became the sole focus of housing delivery –​and created a context in which community groups could exert more control over the location and form of development. The government introduced a system of light-touch inspection for neighbourhood plans and the right for acceptable plans –​compliant with national policy –​to be ‘made’ (adopted as) part of the statutory local planning structure. The content of those plans would really matter and could affect all manner of development outcomes. At the same time, a raft of neighbourhood rights were introduced, potentially giving communities control over some key services and assets. And neighbourhood forums (or parish councils in rural areas) would be able to modify the ‘planning permission’ system for their local area by enacting a development order –​potentially waving through developments deemed to be in the interest of ‘the community’. In the English planning system, secondary instruments (subordinate legislation) define land-use ‘classes’ and the requirement for permission to change between uses. Local Development Orders (implemented by local authorities) or Neighbourhood Development Orders (implemented by neighbourhood forums or parish councils) effectively remove some material changes (in land use) from the permissioning system. Within prescribed parameters, neighbourhoods can take control of the planning system. 29

Rural Places and Planning Figure 2.1: Landscape near Kirkby Stephen, Upper Eden Valley

Source: https://​www.flickr.com/​

Eden District is located in the north-​west of England in the county of Cumbria, between the Lake District National Park to the west and the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) to the east. Despite the presence of one of England’s most important north–​south motorways, the M6, Eden District comprises mainly ‘open countryside’ and is regarded as one of the most rural districts in the country (Figure 2.1). Sturzaker and Shaw (2015) claim that this is typical ‘clientelist’ countryside, using the definition developed by Murdoch and colleagues (2003): a relatively remote rural area, ‘far enough away from major employment centres to make commuting back into those centres impractical/​ undesirable for most, a different set of relationships, power structures and local priorities are in place than is the case in areas closer to urban centres’ (Sturzaker and Shaw, 2015, p 594). The nearby Lake District has a high concentration of second homes and well-​ documented affordability challenges (affordability being the ratio of median house prices to median workplace earnings). Policies for advancing local housing interests over those of external buyers have been analysed for several decades (see Shucksmith, 1981 and 1990) and reveal the difficulties faced by rural authorities when confronting systemic problems, related, for example, to the assetisation of housing through its national tax treatment, with area-​based local actions (Gallent et al, 2020). Although largely outside the Lake District, Eden faces substantial pressures. The district’s 2015 Strategic Housing Market Assessment (EDC, 2015) revealed a pattern of future household growth (2,000 extra households between 2014 and 2032), an ageing and older population than England as a whole (with a forecasted loss of working-​age households and their replacement with retired 30

The built rural

people) and high rates of activity but low wage levels. The median house price in Eden in 2012 was 7.2 times greater than the average household income. Local incomes are generally inadequate for those wanting to buy their homes, but at the same time, about 7.2 per cent of Eden’s housing stock comprises second homes, many located in the district’s picturesque western and eastern fringes –​away from the main towns and the M6 motorway. Thus, Eden displays the typical picture of housing stress shared by many remoter but accessible and attractive rural areas in England. Over successive local plans, the district council has sought to facilitate residential development in service centres and key settlements. This makes sense for a number of reasons: housing is closer to services and many jobs; the council can lever more significant planning gains from larger concentrated developments (which is important as market prices are very high in some parishes, resulting in big spikes in land value when permission for housing is given –​which can be captured via conditions attached to planning permission and used to subsidise non-​market affordable housing); and concentration, rather than ‘smearing’ development, may preserve the character and amenity of smaller villages and hamlets. But this hierarchical approach to settlement planning, which has been the norm in England for several decades, also creates problems. First, it tends to reinforce spatial segregation: richer second homeowners in the smaller –​and increasingly exclusive –​villages and local households on lower incomes in the service centres. Second, it starves ‘lower tier’ settlements of workers, generates social imbalance and tends to separate age cohorts: it has a role in spatialising inter​generational inequality. And third, if workers are forced to live away from jobs in local shops then they will also be obliged to back-​commute to those jobs, probably by private car. This type of top-​down distribution of development tends to enhance socio-​spatial exclusivity; increases class-​based inequalities; negatively affects the wellbeing of residents by limiting spatial choice; limits the distribution of community assets; and is predicated on traditional models of representative government and executive power, with little in the way of planning and policy innovation. Neighbourhood planning offers an alternative way of responding to the spatial distribution of housing stress. Upper Eden’s Neighbourhood Development Plan (NDP) was not produced by one parish council but rather by a grouping of 17 parishes clustered in the south-​eastern section of Eden District. It is notable for being England’s first formally ‘made’ NDP and had a strong focus on housing, containing a raft of policies that ‘are aimed at making sure that the opportunities that exist for local people to build to solve their own housing problems are positively supported through the planning process’ (Upper Eden Community Interest Company, 2012, p 6). An early study of the NPD was undertaken by Sturzaker and Shaw (2015), drawing on interviews with key actors in 2012 (within a year of the Localism Act). They note that the history of community planning in the wider area stretches back to 2002 when a number of separate parishes undertook local ‘health checks’, all coordinated by the market town of Kirkby Stephen. Eventually, the ‘Upper Eden’ group was formed and produced its first 31

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collective community plan in 2008, which laid the foundation for the later NDP. The community plan set a number of objectives for the group, including several focused on housing, which responded to perceived challenges and shortcomings in the District Plan: deliver more dispersed housing allocations (contrary to the District Plan’s key settlement approach), promote self-​build affordable housing and reuse buildings for housing and employment use. Sturzaker and Shaw (2015) point out that while neighbourhood planning in England is presented by some as a ‘NIMBY charter’, strengthening the hand of homeowners wishing to reject development, there is a history in Upper Eden of communities wanting a greater share of the district’s allocated housing and also wanting more affordable homes. It is notable perhaps that Upper Eden is away from the highest concentrations of second homes, located mainly in the Lake District National Park. Community and neighbourhood planning has been overseen in Upper Eden by residents whose primary concern is with preventing their villages from falling into the ‘sustainability trap’ described in the Taylor Review (2008): places ‘written off’ by the narrow environmental concerns of formal planning and provided with too few opportunities to house those needing to live locally and no chance of growing services and job opportunities. That type of planning prioritises amenity (for those fortunate enough to already own property) over future need and wider sustainability and social justice. Rooted in the 2008 community plan, the NDP advanced four key policies that essentially amend policies contained in the District Plan. The first alters the approach to exceptional planning consent for housing on agricultural land. Since the early 1990s, district councils in rural England have been able to permit affordable homes on farmland outside village development envelopes. Providing that landowners are willing to sell land to community or third-​sector providers at close to agricultural value, this produces an important land-​price discount that can be used to reduce the cost of housing, with that reduced cost reflected in ‘affordable’ rent levels (Gallent and Bell, 2000). Eden District’s Plan stipulated that exceptional permission for affordable homes could only be given on sites close to existing dwellings. This rule had previously limited the number of suitable sites in small villages. Upper Eden’s NDP amended this rule, saying that site suitability should be judged only on visual impact. Moreover, the possibility of converting outbuildings to residential use was opened up by the same policy –​ but only to meet local needs. The second policy allowed new housing on farms for use by ‘family members, holiday letting or renting to local people’ (Upper Eden Community Interest Company, 2012, p 16). In supporting the policy, it was argued that Eden District Council’s own plan was ‘silent’ on the ‘flexible use’ of farm dwellings, and the NDP intended to create a framework in which the farming economy, and those reliant on it, would be supported. The third policy was concerned with older residents requiring affordable homes in named villages to be reserved for local older people and designed appropriately. The fourth policy addressed the key concern in rural settlement planning noted previously, acknowledging that non-​key settlements can be starved of vital development 32

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(Gallent et al, 2015; Sturzaker, 2019) and essentially ‘written off’ (Taylor, 2008) by conventional planning approaches. The NDP noted that Eden District’s Core Strategy contained an LSC (Local Service Centre) de-​designation policy: the local authority committed to review its settlement hierarchy every two years, potentially removing LSCs on the basis of their judged sustainability. The direction of travel of the NDP could not have been more different from that of the District Plan. It contended that top-​down assessments of sustainability are flawed, ignoring the needs of communities while pursuing amenity, landscape and character goals. It sought an increased housing allocation across the district (Sturzaker and Shaw, 2015, p 597), widening the distribution to smaller settlements and de-​designated LSCs. In those de-​designated centres, the NDP promotes exception sites to meet local housing needs. Arguably, the district and neighbourhood plans diverge in their thinking on place: the former takes a holistic view of the needs of Eden, developing a housing allocation strategy that discriminates against those places where it views development as inherently unsustainable but is indiscriminate or generalist in its overarching concern for the district. Its focus is the sum of the parts and not the parts. But the latter is fighting for specific places, wanting nowhere ‘written off’, and gives priority to particular places, perhaps over the relationships between places. The district is rational, arguing that residents can live and work in A and B rather than C. But C is given a powerful voice in the neighbourhood planning process and wants its own future, independent, to an extent, of what happens elsewhere. Neighbourhood plans exert the rights of places and therefore at a very local level can promote inclusive planning in process and outcome; deliver cohesion because of attention to detail (for example, the needs of elderly households in the case of Upper Eden, plus the integration of living and work space); think about the socio-​economic wellbeing of places in a more focused way; and advance/​reconfigure access to resources. They also provide an opportunity to prioritise open government. Sturzaker and Shaw (2015, p 600) point out that the District Council received 56 and 72 responses respectively when it consulted on its local plan in 2005 and 2007, from a population of 52,000. In contrast, a third of residents voted in the NDP referendum, with 90 per cent supporting its adoption (Sturzaker and Shaw, 2015). There is evidence, at least in Upper Eden, that neighbourhood planning has broadened public interest in a planning process that promises to deliver very targeted interventions in otherwise forgotten places –​including outbuilding conversions that support farm incomes or provide homes for local workers, and which have been hitherto barred in local plans. But the picture is not entirely rosy. Asking local groups to plan in support of the public interest can be an invitation to promote private interest, for groups to become increasingly myopic. In the case of the Upper Eden NDP, what constitutes local need –​and who is considered ‘local’ –​depends on standard criteria (that is, length of occupancy and employment need) but parish councils have also handed themselves the discretion to validate individuals’ claims of localness for housing allocation. This is a clear risk of abuse with such powers and the prioritisation of patronage over public interest. 33

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But more generally, the widening of participation that is possible with neighbourhood planning suggests a socio-​spatial process firmly anchored in place. In rural contexts, it has been able to challenge conventional approaches to housing delivery, producing more nuanced responses that look beyond amenity and accept the need to work with the multifunctional, or multi-​capital, nature of rural places. The rise of the smart village:​Kuhmo and Suodenniemi, Finland Achieving the ‘smart city’ ideal is now a goal of municipal governments around the world, though what this means in practice remains ‘fuzzy’ and uncertain, according to Caragliu and colleagues (2011, p 67). Building on Hollands (2008, p 308), these same authors draw attention to six features of a smart city. First, networked infrastructure –​including ICT –​brings to ‘the forefront the idea of a wired city as the main development model and of connectivity as the source of growth’ (Caragliu et al, 2011, p 68). Second, smart cities tend to be business-​ led: they are neoliberal spaces that prioritise economic performance. Third, there is a clear focus on ‘achieving the social inclusion of various urban residents in public services’ (p 68). Fourth, high-​tech and creative industries are assigned special importance in smart cities. Fifth, there is ‘profound attention to the role of social and relational capital in urban development’ (p 68). And sixth, social and environmental sustainability is frequently set as a major strategic goal in the planning and operation of smart cities. Relative to these ideals, outcomes on the ground are sometimes sub-​optimal, with urban populations enjoying variable access to the benefits of ‘smartness’: indeed, many cities around the world, ‘smart’ or ‘dumb’ (Murgante and Borruso, 2015), are sites of socio-​economic division and injustice. However, the belief that challenges are rooted in application, rather than in the ideals, lends continuing support to the concept –​which has also been rescaled in the idea of the ‘smart village’. However, this newer concept is less developed than its urban counterpart. Sometimes, it seems to refer simply to an alternative service model, less reliant on face-​to-​face provision and more about online delivery. But in the last few years, there has been movement towards a more comprehensive understanding of the smart village, given momentum in Europe by the launch of the EU Smart Village Initiative in 2017. Zavratnik et al (2018, p 2) begin their own discussion of the concept with the usual disclaimer: ‘definite definitions’ do not exist. But some general features can be identified from various international initiatives. First, smart villages pursue prosperity by following ‘smart growth’ goals. These can be broad or narrow. In India, for example, extant literature references technological innovation in the farming sector. In the US, smart growth plans are multi-​dimensional, encompassing housing, transport, community development and sustainability. In Europe, the accent has been placed on promoting the ‘knowledge-​based economy’ (Zavratnik et al, 2018, p 2). Second, smart villages 34

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have a clear ‘digital dimension’ that is often complemented with up​skilling and training. Third, smart villages are goal-​oriented, always specifying the challenges they aim to address –​from wellbeing, through the empowerment of key groups (for example, women) and the promotion of sustainable energy, to reducing inequalities and delivering social justice (many smart village initiatives in India, for example, seek to overcome prejudices rooted in the caste system). These three features –​pursuit of smart growth, clear digital dimension and being goal-​ oriented –​hint at the nature of a smart village, but Zavratnik and colleagues ultimately propose that the smart village concept overlaps with that of the smart city, albeit rescaled, and embraces those ‘smart infrastructures’ that replace or augment more conventional forms of service delivery and governance. They also fall back on the EU definition: smart villages comprise ‘rural areas and communities which build on their existing strengths and assets as well as on developing new opportunities. In smart villages, traditional and new networks and services are enhanced by means of digital, telecommunication technologies, innovations and the better use of knowledge for the benefit of inhabitants and business’ (EU Action for Smart Villages, cited in Zavratnik et al, 2018, p 3). Technology and innovation are front and centre in this ‘rural smartness’, addressing key service, business and social challenges. Examples of smart villages tend to focus on one of these dimensions rather than a full spectrum. That being the case, two brief examples of smart village initiatives are presented below, dealing with digital transformations for services and business. Finland is home to some of Europe’s most remote and sparsely populated rural communities. Isolation may be eased through good broadband connectivity. Because commercial providers are not always persuaded of the business case of connecting the hardest-​to-​reach places, this generates both a challenge and an opportunity for communities: an impetus to come together, growing social capital, to find ways to deliver crucial digital services and business support. Villages in the region of Kuhmo, eastern Finland, faced exactly this challenge: ‘due to its sparse population, it has not been commercially attractive for telecommunications companies to invest in broadband and optical fibre infrastructure in the area’ (ENRD, 2017, p 2). The first response of the Finnish government was to offer a subsidy, through its ‘Broadband for All’ programme, to the commercial providers. But this proved an inadequate incentive, prompting the government to upend its approach and direct funding to bottom-​up providers, including local cooperatives. The success of this kind of approach depends on the existence of community actors able to steer projects and galvanise local support. In this case, a local ‘researcher and IT enthusiast’ provided part of that steer, championing a demonstration project in 2007 before establishing a local internet cooperative in 2013, which became a recipient of funding. The cooperative brought together residents across seven villages: Hietaperä, Härmänkylä, Livantiira, Kuusamonkylä, Härmänkylä, Koskenmäki and Ylä-​ Vieksi. Its aim was a straightforward one: to enhance ‘quality of life’ both through improved access to services and by supporting entrepreneurial activities that 35

Rural Places and Planning

contribute to economic development. An important addition was the inclusion of local people in the initiative, as future subscribers to the service whose support was enlisted for the laying of physical infrastructure: ‘The cooperative started by seeking the commitment and buy-in of the local community. They went household by household and organised village and neighbourhood gatherings. They explained and discussed the benefits of the “information society” and opportunities of fast internet connections’ (ENRD, 2017, p 2). Once the commitment was secured, two key actions followed: first, the cooperative entered into negotiations with commercial service providers, eventually reaching an agreement with TeliaSonera –​a national provider; second, the communities themselves worked on the essential infrastructure, digging the trenches in which cables would be laid. ‘Many local people offered their time and equipment for free. As well as the use of tractors and excavators, the project benefitted from 36,000 hours of voluntary work at the construction phase’ (ENRD, 2017, p 2). The network was up and running by the end of 2015. Ultimately, the Kuhmo cooperative delivered a new physical infrastructure comprising 165 km of optical fibre providing very fast data connectivity for the 200 (of 270) households choosing to subscribe to the service. The impacts of this type of project on services and business are explored in another case below, but the process of delivery in the Kuhmo case appeared at least as important as the product. Residents forged a new relationship with each other and with their local authority. Volunteers came together to deliver an infrastructure which would not otherwise have been commercially viable; whether this effort seeded enhanced inclusion and cohesion is not entirely clear but research into the cooperative model in Finland, including Kuhmo, has concluded that: ‘active cooperatives, municipalities, village associations, and companies have in many places together managed to create remarkable local structures of know-​how which will offer benefits far into the future’ (Honkaniemi and Luoto, 2016, p iii). Networks and social capital have been crucial building blocks for the Kuhmo cooperative, but whether inequalities in its benefits persist is also unclear. The same researchers, looking across this and other initiatives, also conclude that: Selective differentiation with regard to the distance, solvency, age, participation, and information technology skills, is also evident within the regions and even within the villages. There is an obvious danger that those user groups with the potential to reap the greatest welfare gains from access to a fibre optic network connection are being excluded from the new digitized services. (Honkaniemi and Luoto, 2016, p iii) In their study, which focused on the delivery of digital transformations through Finnish rural cooperatives, they noted a tendency for more advantaged groups to reap the greatest benefit: teleworkers, relocating from urban areas, found it easier to work from remoter rural locations; but already excluded groups –​including 36

The built rural

elderly residents –​struggled to access those benefits. Other studies and other cases have highlighted the need to dedicate effort to opening up the opportunities of the smart village to a broader set of potential beneficiaries –​through upskilling and training. The Kuhmo case ticks some boxes, being a goal-​oriented project with significant potential to deliver a digital transformation in local services and business innovation. It had some very important attributes: a champion or boundary-​crosser able to work with commercial interests, community members and local government; a mobilisation of social capital; innovation in policy making and planning, which switched to work with community actors; and at least a potential to deliver justice across different domains, from education and training to rural health care and so on. But efforts to use smart infrastructure effectively are highlighted in other Finnish cases. Suodenniemi is located in the Tampere region in south-​western Finland (Figure 2.2). It has a population of around 1,400 residents and covers an area of just over 220 km2. Once digital infrastructure had been installed, further challenges remained –​the supply of digital services, and ensuring people’s ability to use the infrastructure and services: ‘experience has shown that where the infrastructure works the services will follow. Often the weakest link in the chain is people’s ability to adopt new services and technologies, which is especially true of elderly people’ (ENRD, 2018, p II). With that challenge in mind, the Suodenniemi Association launched a ‘Digi-​Hub’ with the aim of ‘helping elderly people to Figure 2.2: Community of Suodenniemi

Source: Photo supplied by Suodenniemi-​Seura and reproduced with permission (also available at https://​ suodenniemi.topoteekki.fi)

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benefit from digitalisation and rapidly emerging new online services related to health, banking, shopping and social relations, among others’ (ENRD, 2018, p II). The Hub was set up in the public library in 2017 with the twin goals of developing and promoting the adoption of new digital services in a community that has suffered depopulation and the closure of many public and private services during recent years. Key to adoption is the improvement of IT literacy among elderly residents, the project’s primary target group. With the support of a LEADER Local Action Group (see Chapter 1), an IT specialist was hired to help residents (in two six-​hour weekly slots) with everyday technology problems –​from e-​security basics, to paying bills online and the use of emerging e-​health services. The Hub is now part of the national ‘SeniorSurf ’ network of advisory centres. One notable feature of the initiative has been the online return of services –​including banks and pharmacies –​that had previously closed down in Suodenniemi: ‘public discussion and media attention … created a positive attitude towards digitalisation’ (ENRD, 2018, p II), generating demand for a wider range of services. But while the Hub played a key role in reaching elderly residents, its proponents concede that many of its target groups remain unconnected to e-​services. This remains a key challenge for digital transformations: inclusivity requires active promotion –​and inequalities between groups, including inter​generational ones, will persist unless there is rigorous and targeted outreach with the community. These sorts of smart infrastructures create the potential to transform wellbeing in rural communities, but considerable investment and effort are needed to turn that potential into reality. The digital transformations flagged in the earlier cases have been underway in rural communities for the last 20 years, or more in some cases. Although the smart village is about more than technological innovation, with ICT contributing to social capital and network building, there is an increasing focus on the opportunities arising from future technologies. Geospatial ICTs have a range of place-​based applications. Social media tools (including smartphones, geotagging and geospatial analytics) alongside sensor-​based tools (including remote sensors and sensor networks) generate a range of possibilities for smarter rural places, across the economic, environment, governance, mobility and living domains (see Table 2.1). Combinations of these have the potential to contribute to the good rural place, delivering new economic possibilities, enhancing human wellbeing and reducing inequalities. E-​education and e-​health stand out as particular contributors to the good rural place (OECD, 2019, p 15) but are now being joined by other possibilities. Autonomous vehicles may ‘ease access to physical services and social networks’. 3-​D printing may ‘reduce the market dependence of rural areas on mass-​manufactured goods’. And drones may ‘improve access to goods’ and ‘boost productivity of rural businesses’ (OECD, 2019, p 14). But all of these things are dependent on ensuring ‘quality broadband connection’, which remains the essential foundation for all technological innovation and the smart village. However, the longer-​term development of that technology is difficult 38

The built rural Table 2.1: Smart possibilities for rural places Domains

Illustrative examples

Smart rural economies

• Utilising local and ICT networks for organising and adding value to supply chains • Enhancing existing rural assets with ICT, for example, digitisation of cultural heritage for tourism • Real-​time management of the circular economy through more efficient connecting of supply and demand •  Creative economy clustering • Creating a rural ‘marketplace’ of ideas for the knowledge economy • Attracting new ‘creative economy’ in-​migrants and mobile capital attracted to the rural living environment, enabled by ICT infrastructure

Smart rural environment

• Real-​time management of rural resources, for example, visitor numbers to fragile habitats • Combining sensor technology and mobile technology to enhance resilience to natural disaster risks, for example, flooding, wildfire •  Volunteered geographic information for environmental management •  Real-​time monitoring of ecological data •  Novel methods for raising public ecological awareness

Smart governance

•  ICT based methods for accessing public services in rural localities • More efficient methods of service delivery through smart technologies • New methods of public engagement between policy ​makers and rural citizens and the adoption of a citizen science approach to utilise local knowledge in co-​design of rural development pathways • Smart community decision-​making for community-​based ownership, for example, blockchain distributed ledger tools for managing community owned schemes (e.g. applied to local energy schemes), e-​voting decisions and managing local voting rights, and mixed-​ finance tools including crowdfunding • Participatory e-​platforms •  Networked activism for local civil society

Smart mobility

• Real-​time technologies and geospatial tools to encourage carpooling, car-​sharing and other ‘sharing’ formulas in rural locations • Combination of different types of services for cost reduction • Dedicated smart mobility initiatives, for example, tourism • Real-​time technologies and geospatial tools for the more efficient and flexible management of public transport provision –​overcoming traditional deficiencies in serving a dispersed rural population with public transport

Smart living

• ICT enabled information infrastructures to manage energy usage in buildings and public spaces • New health and social care delivery through smart and real-​time technologies • Enhancing cultural life, for example, heritage virtual databases, archiving local story-​telling or minority languages • Connecting local education institutions with online delivery, for example, adult education and training • Remote working including from shared cooperative spaces, for example rural digital hub locations

Source: Authors

39

Rural Places and Planning

to foresee: 5G and its successors may eventually substitute for fixed connections if bandwidth issues cannot be resolved. More broadly, many rural places are developing the infrastructure needed to become smarter. Voluntary community action, with top-​down supports, often provides a model for that development, with effort then expended on equipping otherwise left-​behind groups with the skills needed to benefit from the smart village. This approach –​community-​led rather than technology-​driven –​appears to provide a process and a formula for fully realising the potential of this built capital. Co​operative community spaces: Kaniva and other asset ‘buy-​outs’, Australia Rural places need a physical focus –​spaces where people can come together, interact, socialise, share ideas, develop know-​how and become a community. Spaces for interaction –​community spaces –​are critically important and part of an ‘interactional infrastructure’ that comprises, more broadly, ‘opportunities and structures for interaction in a community’ (Kilpatrick and Loechel, 2004, p. 4), which include social networks, institutional structures (for example, a community council or association), leadership (able to bring people together) and communication sites (Kilpatrick and Loechel, 2004, p 7). In the smart village examples outlined earlier, all of these interactional infrastructures were present: the boundary-​crossing IT expert in Kuhmo, the relational networks, the institutional structure (the cooperative) that coalesced and the library (in Suodenniemi) that became a critical communication site (joined eventually by virtual sites on the internet and, later, smartphone apps such as WhatsApp). But conventional communication sites comprise meeting places: ‘halls, meeting rooms, malls, main streets and skate parks’ (Kilpatrick and Loechel, 2004, p 7). A longer list might include a range of commercial (shops, workspaces hired out for community use, cafes and bars –​or public houses in Ireland and the UK), public (civic or village halls, schools or libraries) and private spaces (homes and annexes/​outbuildings such as garages). Communication sites can be indoor or outdoor, with the latter including village greens or public squares, sports or recreation grounds, school playgrounds and private gardens –​anywhere that people might be able to gather. These are a key component of the built capital of rural places and might be thought of as ‘third places’, being neither (primarily or only) spaces of home ​life or work ​life, but rather focal points for social activity (see Oldenburg, 1989). Sometimes they are in short supply owing to population decline and the closure of commercial and public facilities (shops or schools) that can serve this purpose. In response, communities may find new ways to sustain their community spaces, either creating multi​functional hubs (that mix commercial, public and community uses) or resorting to ad hoc private spaces in which to host gatherings. It is difficult to conceive of a good rural place without interactional space: without the opportunity to build social cohesion, address training and learning needs, or deliver the open governance structures that incubate policy and planning innovation. 40

The built rural

Business failures –​and the closure of essential infrastructure –​can have a profound impact on rural places. It is not only the services themselves –​banks, post offices, shops, petrol stations and so forth –​that are lost but also the focus and opportunity for social interaction, which the physical spaces of those businesses provided. In some countries, the response has been community-​led buyouts, followed by community or cooperative control of the service and community space. In the UK, for example, the Plunkett Foundation has been supporting the creation of ‘community businesses’ since 1919, helping communities whose shops or cafes are closing to take over those services and run them for the benefit of local people (Gallent et al, 2015, p 190-​1). The Foundation provides ‘practical advice, support and training’, including advice on funding sources and options. Elsewhere, the support structures for community buyouts are sometimes less developed, but there has been recent rapid growth of this model from a relatively low base. In rural Australia, a number of community buyouts have been spur-​of-​the-​ moment, ad hoc and unsupported events. But their success has prompted the development of support networks and the roll-​out of advice to others considering taking over failing businesses. A recent surge in buyouts over the last 20 years has been triggered by rural restructuring: Not many people in the city realise it, but for years a semi-​depression has afflicted many rural communities across Australia, apart from the occasional good years for agricultural yields and exports. Changing global agricultural markets; lack of employment; centralisation of health, education and energy; drought and fire; low birth rates; and an exodus to the city or more preferred towns all play a part. (Montgomery, 2006, p 31) A key driver of business closure has been demographic ageing and the outflow of younger people. It was reported in the 2000s that nearly a half of current rural business owners were planning to retire in the next five years (Montgomery, 2006, p 31). In many cases, those businesses were unlikely to attract a buyer due to their marginal profitability but were nevertheless important for the communities they served: ‘buyouts tend to gather steam in social hotspots where the community “stop and chat” ’ (Montgomery, 2006, p 31). The small town of Kaniva, Victoria had a population of just over 800 residents at the 2016 census. It is a farming community with a third of its workforce engaged in the sheep, cattle and grain industries. In 2004, Mobil decided to sell the franchise for the town’s petrol station and roadhouse. Responding to community concern, the local authority –​West Wimmera –​brokered a deal that would see the roadhouse operating until a buyer could be found. A coalition of residents and businesses came together as a ‘buyer of last resort’: they formed the ‘Kaniva Community Roadhouse Pty Ltd’ (KCR), a proprietary company that aimed to purchase the roadhouse but only if an alternative buyer did not come forward. 41

Rural Places and Planning

‘Residents not only feared a 90 km round trip for a fill-​up at the next town’ if the business folded, ‘but [also] community spending going elsewhere and the slow death of the town’ (Montgomery, 2006, p 31). The proprietary company raised $82,000 from its 18 members –​well short of the estimated $400,000 needed to buy the roadhouse, which prompted a rethink. The first reaction was to expand the proprietary company and try to raise additional investment: 200 Kaniva residents had signalled interest in contributing to the project. However, a proprietary company can have no more than 50 non-​employee shareholders. Therefore, the group engaged the assistance of Co-​operative Development Services (CDS) –​based in Victoria and established in 1999 by an employee of the state government who had been involved in the setting u ​ p of numerous co​operatives –​with a view to exploring other options. The director of CDS proposed that the company convert to a cooperative, which would remove the shareholder restriction. However, KCR would first need to be deregistered and this would take time, meaning that the roadhouse would face a period of closure, during which time business might be lost. To expedite the process, it was decided that a trading cooperative should be created, with KCR becoming a subsidiary. Action to save this community asset centred initially on one person –​a town councillor, who was also a mechanic. He was then joined by three other residents: a farmer, a teacher and a local grocer, who –​following the advice of CDS –​came together to form the Kaniva Community Co-​operative (KCC), which was formally registered on 14 December 2004 (Marino, 2004). A week before its registration, 200 people –​a quarter of the town’s population –​had attended the cooperative’s formation meeting (the 200 that signalled initial interest) and pledged $280,000 towards the purchase of the station: individual investments ranged between $500 and $10,000. With further investments over the next few months, the station was purchased and reopened in May 2005. Its status as a community-​ owned asset resulted in a new level of pride and patronage: ‘it’s become a focal point. The community meet there, have dinner and spend more money at the station because they are shareholders’ (Montgomery, 2006, p 31). The Kaniva Community Roadhouse is certainly a hub, of sorts. It is a meeting place (with a restaurant and rear meeting/​dining room which hosts a photographic exhibition and local history display), but it also occupies a pivotal position in the economic life of the community (directly employing 12 people but also retaining spending in Kaniva for reasons noted below). Many Australian small towns are adversely affected by the centralisation of services. A lack of regular public transport and the spacing of towns means that residents are reliant on private cars and will gravitate towards centres with ‘fuel retailers’ (hence the special interest in the community buyout of petrol stations and roadhouses in rural Australia: see CDS, nd), often spending money and doing business in those places. Some cooperative buyouts in Australia have catalysed service revivals, internalising spending and seeding a wider pattern of business investment. While cooperatives can be viewed as investment vehicles, the growth of activity they generate may also result in the creation of ‘community 42

The built rural

transaction centres’: ‘a place where all services –​child care, doctors, banks –​go under one space, a CTC’. Whether this happens will depend on the size of the host community, its proximity to other service centres and its attributes (including existing service mix – ​that is, its attractors) relative to those of other centres. Montgomery (2006, p 32) notes the example of an early community buyout in Nuriootpa in South Australia, which has a resident population of 6,500. A local department store was purchased by the Barossa Community Co-​operative Store (Nuriootpa) Ltd in 1944. Since the buyout, the cooperative has expanded its operation, opening a number of other businesses and morphed into the ‘Barossa Regional Shopping Centre’, which now employs 250 people. Nuriootpa is a key settlement, facing different challenges from Kaniva and similar villages. What constitutes a hub, or valuable community space, differs depending on scale and context. The Kaniva experience is being repeated across rural Australia, especially as knowledge is gained and shared and as local governments become increasingly involved in community projects, sometimes providing seedcorn funding or ‘matched government subsidies’ (Montgomery, 2006, p 32). An example similar to that of the Kaniva Community Roadhouse is that of Yackandandah, again in Victoria, where the community’s enthusiasm for buying and keeping the local petrol station going (for very similar reasons to those faced in Kaniva) was galvanised by a shire council contribution of $120,000 towards the $412,000 price tag. The loss of the Kaniva Community Roadhouse would not of itself have deprived the town of community space. Kaniva has a school (Kaniva College, which provides for primary- and secondary-​age children from around the wider area), a shire hall, a railway station and an annual show run by the Agricultural and Pastoral Society. Because it serves a wider hinterland, it retains a number of key services despite its relatively small population. The roadhouse was crucial to the service economy of the town. Had it disappeared, traffic on the Western Highway –​connecting Melbourne with Adelaide –​would have stopped elsewhere, threatening spending and the retention of services. Smaller communities, however, have been handed a lifeline by the cooperative model. Walbundrie in New South Wales, for example, has just 200 residents and has seen its population and essential services drain away during recent years. The Walbundrie general store closed in 1974 but following discussions with a cooperative based in the town of Albury, 50 km to the south, reopened as a branch of the Albury Rural Co-​operative Ltd. That arrangement, however, was short-​lived and the store closed again in early 1977. The second closure provided the cue for the Walbundrie residents to set up their own cooperative, enabling the community to purchase and reopen the store. Since the late 1970s, it has expanded into a ‘one-​stop shop’, providing post-​office services, groceries, take​away food, newspapers, fuel and a range of financial services including over-​the-​counter banking. Walbundrie is far smaller than either Kaniva or Noriootpa: the loss of the store would have left its 200 residents with only the Walbundrie Hotel and Pub (Figure 2.3), which is (at the time of writing) currently available for purchase at an asking price of $330,000. 43

Rural Places and Planning Figure 2.3: Walbundrie Hotel and Pub, New South Wales

Source: https://​www.flickr.com/​

Whether the Walbundrie Co-​operative Ltd might orchestrate another community buyout is unclear, but the current owner appears to have been looking for a buyer for a number of years (dropping the asking price from $400,000 in 2018). If none is found, then there is at least a chance (given its past track record) that the community will step in again to save another important community space. These examples of cooperative buyouts of important community assets –​which are both communication sites and also key economic infrastructures –​illustrate how place-​based solutions can counter the exogenous forces of rural restructuring. Local authorities often recognise the limits of private enterprise in weak service markets but are nevertheless unable to bring assets into public ownership: instead, they provide encouragement and bridging grants where they can. But overall, it is residents –​in these Australian examples, and also in other rural areas around the globe –​that employ social capital to understand legal apparatus and options and thereafter take control of key assets and, more broadly, their livelihoods. Community cooperatives in Australia are part of the wider interactional infrastructure: the community-​based trading cooperatives examined here are distinct from the consumer or producer cooperatives centred on farming (see Lyons, 2001; Balnave and Patmore, 2008) or more specialist cooperatives focused on housing or finance. But for small rural communities, they often galvanise around leadership, strengthen institutional infrastructure and –​of most interest here –​secure the 44

The built rural

futures of important communication sites while buffering rural economies against the loss of critical infrastructure.

What can be drawn from these cases? This chapter has been primarily concerned with the built capital of rural places –​ illustrated with housing, smart village (broadband) and community-​controlled essential infrastructure examples. Two obvious messages emerge. First, built assets are integral parts of social and economic realities in rural places: housing is an essential socio-​economic infrastructure that shapes rural economies and determines wellbeing; smart villages are built on a physical infrastructure that generates a broad range of opportunities and future possibilities; and essential services –​which are also community spaces –​are contributors to both the economic and social lives, themselves inseparable, of rural places. These are obvious points but worth underscoring. Second, rural places –​if they possess the initiative resources and motivation –​are often best placed to formulate solutions to critical development challenges. Being best placed means understanding place-​ based challenges, having the relational networks needed to mobilise social capital and skills and having the desire to innovate in order to resolve sometimes simple problems that nevertheless confound top-​down interventions. The three cases presented here share this place-​based community focus: taking control and adapting the formal planning system in England, direct delivery of infrastructure and training in Finland, and orchestrating community cooperation in Australia. All three are examples of community action in the face of rural restructuring, with that community action becoming the instrument of planning, framed by national policies –​statutory land-​use planning in England and legal cooperative frameworks in both Finland and Australia. But in all cases, those frameworks did not provide the initial impetus for action. That arose from existing relational networks and institutional structures, which had taken shape over many years. It was also grounded in the realisation that external actors could not be relied upon to ‘intervene’. Extra-​local intervention, on its own, is often not a feature of ‘good planning’ in rural places. Some European countries realised some time ago that it is local populations through successful networks and partnerships who need to step in and help themselves in rural, difficult-​to-​reach, places: there is a strong culture of ‘do-it-yourself ’ planning, which has been slower to take root in Australia. ‘Australians like to think the state should step in and look after its citizens, which effectively precludes community finance from mushrooming’ (Montgomery, 2006, p 32). And yet, all three examples illustrate the potential of ‘socio-​spatial’ forms of planning for rural places, which deliver a mix of direct and indirect benefits. It was noted in the introduction that our concern with both the production and presence of key infrastructures in rural places would likely lead us to issues of inclusion, inequality and socio-​economic justice, wellbeing, access to and the distribution of land and property, governance and structures of co-​production, 45

Rural Places and Planning

and flexibility or innovation in policy making and planning. In relation to these concerns, some broad conclusions can be drawn. Neighbourhood and cooperative action are inclusive, or at least more inclusive than intervention. Inclusivity has at least a chance of seeding social cohesion and in all three cases, there was evidence of wide participation in the different projects: although communities are, in their nature, fractured by competing interests –​and so the coming together of people should not always be interpreted as deeper cohesion. All three cases sought to deliver socio-​economic justice in some form: affordable housing for lower-​ income and retired households, broadband connectivity (with a focus on access by vulnerable groups) and the preservation of essential community infrastructure (the loss of which would have impacted disproportionally on the vulnerable). And in all three cases, there was a clear sense of what constituted context-​ specific wellbeing: community balance, connectivity and sustained livelihoods. Cooperatives recycle and reinvest value within a community (among shareholders who further recycle that value through local spending) rather than allowing it to be ‘extracted’ by external investors: the cooperative model is directly concerned with access to and the distribution of community resources, being built on a foundation of open governance and delivering resilience through an economic model that draws in local energies and retains benefit locally. Likewise, the housing example seeks, through modification of standard planning approaches, to widen the distribution of resource, potentially addressing intergenerational inequalities. The resilience of a rural place, to external shocks, will depend on its internalised capacities, meaning that the mobilisation of social capital, and self-​help in all its forms, is crucial to rural resilience. The cases presented here involve community actors adapting solutions to local problems from a toolbox of standard frameworks. There is no suggestion that these approaches and the solutions formulated guarantee or signify a good rural place. However, the production, presence and defence of key infrastructure –​and retention of built capital –​is an important piece of a bigger jigsaw, helping sustain the socio-​economic and cultural vitality of communities.

46

3

The economic rural Unpacking the capital Within Bourdieu’s (1986) essay on forms of capital, economic capital refers to material assets that are ‘immediately and directly convertible into money and may be institutionalised in the form of property rights’ (Bourdieu 1986, p 242). Economic capital includes all kinds of material resources such as financial resources or resources with exchange value including land and property. However, key to Bourdieu’s analysis was his observation that other forms of capital (social and cultural) can be convertible to economic capital through enabling processes, such as education or social obligations or connections. Moreover, economic capital afforded opportunities for developing or acquiring further stocks of social and cultural capital, providing a positive feedback loop, suggesting that the complex interplay of economic, social and cultural capital could be mutually reinforcing. Understanding and exploiting this complex interplay between economic capital and other forms of capital has been hugely influential as both an explanation of the differential economic performance of rural places and also for rethinking rural development policy and practice. This implies moving beyond traditional economics to focus on the economic potential of tangible and intangible resources or assets. The variable economic performance of rural regions and localities has been the focus of much debate over the last two decades or more. As recorded by Bryden and Munro (2001), differences in economic development success between rural localities may be explained by the interplay of global and local factors. The external environment of rural regions, for example, is affected by current globalisation processes and by macro-​economic conditions. These relate to international trends and conditions –​including global economic growth, exchange rates, interest rates, global commodity prices (energy costs and so on), and domestic supply side issues –​including international competitiveness, wages and broader input costs, and regulatory burdens (Riordan, 2005). However, increasingly both academic literature and policy makers have focused on territorial dynamics to denote a set of specific regional and local factors that influence relative economic performance (Terluin, 2003). These factors include developing both tangible and intangible aspects of local development and enhancing ‘non-​mobile’ and ‘less mobile’ assets in the form of exploiting economic, social, cultural and environmental capital which are specific to individual rural localities (Bryden and Munro, 2001). This thinking has also been translated to rural development practice. From the post-​Second World War era until the late 1980s, rural development policy was dominated by a rural modernisation agenda with a focus on agricultural 47

Rural Places and Planning

productivism and a ‘deficits’-​based approach, which focused on addressing the perceived limitations of rural geographies, such as peripherality, infrastructure deficiencies, inefficient land management, poor living conditions or educational opportunities, and a lack of competitiveness or a limited industrial base (Lowe et al, 1998; Woods, 2010). Moreover, these deficits were to be addressed by top-​ down government interventions and exogenous development models. While these modernisation approaches still dominate policy discourses in emerging economies and China, in the Global North the 1990s witnessed a shift in thinking away from deficits to assets as a way of building rural economies from the bottom​ up. This approach focused on the use of local resources and endogenous (that is, ‘emerging from within’) development approaches in combination with the mobilisation of local and extra-​local networks (often discussed as neo-​endogenous rural development) (Gkartzios and Lowe, 2019), exemplified by the OECD’s New Rural Development Paradigm (OECD, 2006) and in Europe, as already highlighted in Chapter 1, by the European Union’s LEADER Programme. This policy direction focused on the revalorisation and exploitation of place-​based capitals (social, cultural, environmental and so on) to identify local place-​based specificities as a means of generating new competitive advantages within the context of spatial and territorial development and nurturing the so-​called new rural economy (Scott, 2019) as outlined in Table 3.1. In this sense, these capitals are recast as rural resources to be invested in and from which a stream of benefits may be drawn. The original emphasis on place-​based rural capitals to foster local development as a singular pathway has faced criticism for neglecting the influence of external forces and actors in shaping the fortunes of rural places. For example, Ward and colleagues (2005) suggest that relying solely on local factors is naïve, arguing that the notion of local rural areas pursuing socio-​economic development Table 3.1: The new rural economy The new rural economy

Linking economic development to the revalorisation of place-​fixed rural resources. Examples include: •  tourism based on rural heritage and cultural assets; •  payments for ecosystem services and environmental goods; •  renewables and the low-​carbon economy; • adding value to food production through local traditions or place-​ based identity; • the ‘circular’ rural economy: where the value of products, materials and resources is maintained in the economy for as long as possible, and the generation of waste is minimised (CEC, 2015), for example the reuse of agricultural waste in energy production; • the ‘eco-​economy’: viable businesses and economic activities that utilise the varied and differentiated forms of environmental resources in rural areas in sustainable ways (Kitchen and Marsden, 2006); • multifunctional agriculture characterised by on-​farm diversification, on-​site added value and landscape management.

Source: Adapted from Scott (2019)

48

The economic rural

autonomously of outside influences may be ideal but is not a practical proposition in the context of globalisation and external trade. Indeed, a rich vein of research has emerged in the wake of the global financial crisis in 2008 illustrating the uneven impacts on rural places of global financial instability. Rural areas have been far from immune to these changing global financial and economic conditions, with rural scholars charting how rural places have been reconstituted through market forces and globalisation in the context of the global financial crisis (Papadopoulos, 2019). This includes research on neoliberalisation and rurality (Dibden et al, 2009; Tonts and Horsley, 2019), the impacts of austerity measures on rural places (Black et al, 2019; Faulkner et al, 2019), and the influence of financialisation on shaping rural futures (for example Murphy and Scott, 2014; Gallent et al, 2018). However, the ability of rural places to mobilise local resources and capitals enables places to cope, respond or adapt to external influences, whether an abrupt shock, such as the global financial crisis of 2008 or the economic consequences following the global COVID-​19 pandemic, or slower-​burn change processes, such as an ageing rural population or the longer-​ term impacts of the climate crisis.

Exploring the sub-​components Within the rural development literature, place-​fixed capitals are generally framed as assets to generate economic development and to support the new rural economy (as outlined in Table 3.1). However, the precise nature of economic capital itself is rarely explored in detail. In other words, while theory and practice suggest that social, cultural capital and so on can be converted to economic prosperity, the actual make-​up of economic capital is often neglected. However, the nature of wealth or economic assets generated through place-​based development has implications for wider rural quality of life outcomes, raising questions over the fair distribution of prosperity, or how economic capital is reinvested in other forms of capital. Generally, economic capital refers to liquid assets (money, bonds, stocks) or assets that can be directly converted into money or financial assets (for example, material assets such as land or property). However, to operationalise economic capital as a place-​based framework for development, we broaden the conceptualisation of economic capital beyond an individual or household scale to examine economic assets within a rural locality. Before breaking this down into sub-​components, it is important to recognise that economic capital is not considered as an end point or end goal within this book, but instead as a means to enhance rural quality of life and wellbeing and to create the ‘good countryside’. Second, it is critical to understand the relationship between economic capital and other capitals. To generate economic capital requires the valorisation of tangible and intangible social, cultural, environmental and built capital. These capitals require conversion through enabling factors, which is the ability to mobilise these capitals for economic development. Economic capital, along with the other capitals explored in this book, 49

Rural Places and Planning

provides a resource for enhancing rural quality of life, which can be reinvested into each form of capital, creating a mutually reinforcing feedback loop. However, the generation of economic capital also has the potential to erode, rather than reinforce, other forms of capital. For example, this might be through unsustainable natural resource exploitation (thereby degrading environmental capital), the hoarding of assets (for example, land ​banks among volume housebuilders), the extraction of resources for profit without any local reinvestment or increasing local social inequalities through inequitable economic outcomes. To break down economic capital into its sub-​components, we identify three categories that underpin rural prosperity: (1) physical productive infrastructure as material assets for direct conversion to money; (2) enterprise infrastructure, which captures entrepreneurial culture, existing businesses and business links; and (3) community wealth-building capacity, which identifies the outcomes of enhancing rural prosperity such as sustainable livelihoods and how wealth can be directed back into the local economy. Physical productive infrastructure overlaps with the economic infrastructures outlined in the previous chapter. These are material assets with potential for direct conversion to money and also assets with use value to generate economic development. At a basic level, this includes land, with an attached value, as the most fundamental rural resource (further considered in Chapter 4), which underpins the traditional land-​based rural economy of food and fibre production and fuel and mineral extraction. Such rural land values vary considerably, depending on either productive capacity (for example, compare a vineyard in Bordeaux with a marginal hill farm in Wales) linked to wider environmental factors (weather, soil quality and so on) or its potential for conversion to non-​farming uses such as residential development, which will depend on location. These resources are often institutionalised through, for example, property rights and inheritance rules and taxes. Or the potential use ​value may be institutionalised through the planning system and the regulation of land use, whereby the zoning of agricultural land for residential purposes may vastly increase the value of a landholding (which may or may not be subject to land value tax on unearned increases in value). However, within a capitals framework, land resources are also revalorised as nature-​based capital (discussed in Chapter 4) with, for example, the potential for generating PES, as a repository of cultural and natural heritage essential to attracting tourists, or as sites for the renewable energy sector. The reform of land ownership (for example, land trusts) and direct community ownership of land assets have the potential to generate immediate local resources through collective ownership of rural assets (for example, housing) whereby surplus capital (rents or sales profits) can be recycled into new community projects that redistribute wealth for collective purposes. Property is a further economic resource at a household level. As explored in the previous chapter, the housing sector is central to asset accumulation, for example through intergenerational transfer of assets and value appreciation. However, these resources are unevenly distributed and may reinforce inequitable outcomes where housing supply is scarce. Beyond land and property, physical productive infrastructure at the scale of the local economy also includes workspace, transport 50

The economic rural

and ICT infrastructure, which interact with a wider regulatory environment such as land-​use planning and communications regulation. Similar to land-​based resources, at times these resources (for example, workspace, local shops) may be community-owned or community-​operated assets, particularly as a collective approach to address market deficiencies (as highlighted in the previous chapter). Enterprise infrastructure relates to factors which underpin local entrepreneurial activity. This includes the range and quality of local businesses in existence along with past investment by these local businesses in terms of productive infrastructure and human resources (skills, attracting new labour). The quality of local business networks and business-​to-​business links is also a critical factor, particularly in terms of creating local value chains or by developing a rural-​based circular economy, where the value of products, materials and resources is maintained in the economy for as long as possible, and the generation of waste minimised. Access to business support is a key dimension of enterprise infrastructure in a rural context, particularly given the prevalence of microenterprises as well as small and medium enterprises (SMEs). These supports include training and financial advice, access to capital such as private investment, bank loans or public funds (for example, LEADER grants), suggesting a mix of private and public resources is required. Human resource is a further dimension of enterprise infrastructure. This relates to three key aspects. First, the ability of a rural place to retain entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs. Second, the ability of a rural place to attract newcomers or new residents who can add new skills, entrepreneurial capacity and political know-​how, adding much-​needed capital and skills to underpin rural regeneration initiatives (Stockdale et al, 2000; Kilpatrick et al, 2011; Mitchell and Madden, 2014). Bosworth (2010) terms the influence of in-​migrants on the rural economy as ‘commercial counterurbanisation’, linking demographic counterurbanisation with new rural in-​migrants stimulating local economies through new business start-​ups, new entrepreneurial activity and embedding new enterprises into local business networks. Finally, the existence of social enterprises that can perform a key role in bridging local skills gaps through training or providing not-​for-​profit local services is also crucial. Community wealth-building capacity is the ability to generate wealth defined as the stock of all assets that can contribute to wellbeing and can be considered as an output of the aforementioned sub-​components or as an outcome when built, social/​cultural and land-​based capital are converted to economic capital and monetised in some form. The generation of local income is of critical importance and created through local business profits or through local employment (both new job creation and sustaining existing jobs) and wages. In this regard, the types of jobs created/​retained and levels of pay will vary considerably across sectors within the local enterprise base, raising questions of who get the jobs, under what working conditions and at what wage levels (Ratner and Markley, 2014). A key issue is how to retain local income within a locality through supporting local services, spending locally or reinvesting, particularly when local services and retail are being eroded by the competition from e-​commerce. A further aspect of this sub-​component is the generation of external income within a rural place, 51

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either through income from external visitors and tourists or through the ability of local enterprises to generate income and profits from non-​local markets. In this context, rural places that are outward-looking and foster regional connections have the potential to develop complementarities or a collaborative network to develop a critical mass needed to access, support or develop local supply chains, therefore developing greater local economic closure through, for example, the (re)localisation of food supply chains, thereby enhancing local transactions or creating business clusters (Scott, 2019). This approach may also facilitate the use of a regional or territorial identity in promoting goods and services through place-​marketing or branding of products. Strengthening urban–​rural partnerships to enable the integration of rural and urban economies, especially for rural localities within urban functional areas, also offers opportunities, for example, to promote relations between rural and urban enterprises, urban markets and rural suppliers, rural areas as consumption areas for urban dwellers, and rural areas as suppliers of natural capital for urban areas. This approach, therefore, facilitates rural economies to mobilise extra-​local resources suggesting a more outwardlooking approach across spatial boundaries. For instance, urban–​rural partnerships and a regionalisation of food supply chains may open new market opportunities and provide alternative pathways to dependency on large supermarkets for food products (Morgan and Sonnino, 2007). Finally, an important element of community wealth creation is the capacity to redirect or redistribute wealth back into the local economy, placing more control and benefits into the hands of local people (Kelly et al, 2016). On the one hand, this relates to enhancing the local tax base, including tax on residential properties or second homes, specific tourist taxes and local business taxes, which may be reinvested in a locality to maintain local services or to redistribute wealth. However, this also suggests emphasising the importance of local and plural ownership of the economy, creating a just local labour market, and promoting socially productive use of economic capital assets. Taking a place-​based perspective illustrates that economic capital is inherently interlinked to place-​based attributes, resources and the mobilisation of other forms of capital –​social/​cultural, built and environmental. The aforementioned economic capital sub-​components are dependent on reappraising the traditional rural resource base embedded within a capitals framework. However, central to this process are enabling or conversion factors, which are critical to place-​based rural development strategies. These include the importance of: • the local and wider regulatory environment, including the regulatory planning system; • the quality of local institutions and institutional and political capacity, including the ability to adapt, or foster and mobilise, extra-​local resources; • human resources, particularly relating to entrepreneurial culture, creativity, innovation and a local skills base; • digitisation and technology, as a disruptive force capable of reframing market access or labour mobilities. 52

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While the aforementioned sub-​components are often conceived at the individual level (such as land and property ownership), a key dimension of reducing inequalities, creating place-​based prosperity and contributing to rural wellbeing is to consider alternative models of asset ownership and wealth creation. This includes experimenting with diverse land ownership models, such as direct community ownership, land trusts or ownership by environmental local nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), which can achieve a more equal distribution of benefits or prioritise the reinvestment of economic capital and thereby contribute to a wider range of wellbeing outcomes.

Heritage-​led rural development, the new natural resource economy and financialisation of rural assets Making use of heritage for rural regeneration:​Røros, Norway For rural communities facing depopulation, erosion of local services and higher levels of unemployment, heritage-​led rural development offers a potential pathway towards generating economic activity. Historic rural landscapes and settlements are critical repositories of cultural heritage, not only in their buildings, townscapes and living and working landscapes but also for their intangible features, such as creating local identity and a sense of place. Historic rural landscapes have been formed through incremental change over many years in response to shifting economic, social and environmental dynamics to produce a complex and highly differentiated rural fabric in terms of structure, ownership and the historic periods represented, creating place distinctiveness. In this case study, we examine how built heritage assets have been revalorised to form the backbone of a local rural economy. The instrumental use of heritage for economic regeneration is not new. Pendlebury (2009, 2013), for example, provides an extensive review of the ways that built heritage has been revalorised for its economic potential and how the reuse of historic buildings or environments has provided a foundation for wider local regeneration efforts. Moreover, Pendlebury also highlights how heritage actors themselves have incorporated these values into official heritage discourses as a means of positioning heritage vis-​à-v​ is wider government objectives regarding the economy. In this case study, we examine the role of heritage actors in protecting a historic built fabric and cultural landscape in Røros, Norway, and how this has enabled the locality to transform from its historic role of copper mining towards local wealth creation underpinned by heritage. This includes direct benefits through attracting tourists and visitors to the area, in turn enabling webs of local businesses to develop while maintaining local services, and second, through fostering place identity that has been critical in building a reputation (and brand) for the local speciality and organic food sector, which is based on local traditions and collaborative networks of food producers and processors. The municipality of Røros is in southern Norway, located in Trødelag county. The area covers approximately 2,000 km2 and is a sparsely populated mountain region with a mix of forests, mountains, agricultural lands and small settlements. There is a 53

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population of approximately 5,500 people, with around 3,800 people living in the historic mining town of Røros. The town, along with its surrounding landscape, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site designated for the cultural legacies of its 350-​year history of copper mining. This activity has resulted in a unique land-​use system and interaction between resource use and landscape change, and an extensive assemblage of well-​preserved buildings protected for their universal cultural value (Kaltenborn and Bjerke, 2002). The history of Røros is intrinsically linked to copper mining in this mountainous region. The town was founded around the establishment of copper mining in 1644, with production peaking during the 19th century, before declining from the early 1900s and ceasing operations in 1977 (Guttormsen and Fageraas, 2011). The town was completely rebuilt after its destruction by Swedish troops in 1679, leading to the development of a distinctive townscape assemblage, characterised by wooden one-​and two-​storey houses, with blackened wooden façades (and often with turf roofs), giving the town a medieval appearance (UNESCO, 2020). Around 2,000 wooden structures dating from the 17th and 18th centuries survive today, located within a distinctive townscape comprising a single street, with houses around courtyards, where residents traditionally kept cattle in sheds to supplement their income from mining –​the last farmer only moved out of the town centre in 2002 (Lillevold and Haarstad, 2018). Figures 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 provide illustrative examples of the built heritage in Røros. Figure 3.1: Røros and its surrounding mining and agricultural landscape

Source: Photo supplied by Dag Kittang and reproduced with permission

54

The economic rural Figure 3.2: The distinctive wooden structures in Røros, along with its prominent masonry church

Source: Photo supplied by Dag Kittang and reproduced with permission

The conservation of built heritage in Røros was initiated in the first half of the 20th century, with the first legal protection given to historic structures in 1923. Lillevold and Haarstad (2018) note that the initial preservation efforts were driven from the national rather than local level, coinciding with the establishment of the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage. Early preservation initiatives were given further impetus after the well-​known Norwegian artist Harald Sohlberg produced several paintings of Røros’ distinctive streetscapes, infusing heritage with further symbolic cultural capital. However, despite these early efforts, the townscape continued to suffer from decay and dereliction, mirroring the wider demise of the town’s mining industry. Today, the town’s fortunes have been revived following UNESCO’s listing of Røros and its industrial heritage as a World Heritage Site in 1980. Initially, only the actual town of Røros was selected as a World Heritage Site –​being viewed as a historical townscape representing an important technological phase in European history (Bye, 2008). However, a second application was ratified in 2011 to significantly extend the area to include the wider mining and cultural landscape. The World Heritage Site now comprises ‘Røros Mining Town and the Circumference’, which includes the town’s built heritage, the surrounding cultural landscape (including both derelict mined areas and 55

Rural Places and Planning Figure 3.3: Røros in winter

Source: Photo supplied by Dag Kittang and reproduced with permission

agricultural lands), the Femundshytta smelter and water management system for transporting copper ore to nearby smelters, and the ‘Winter Transport Route’ used to transport copper including ice r​ outes over Lake Korssjøen. This wider assemblage of tangible heritage assets was identified by the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage (2009) in its submission to UNESCO as demonstrating the full relationship between the wider mining landscape and 56

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the town, particularly how the mining operation adapted to its cold and mountainous location. Preservation of the historic structure of Røros has been critical in developing a post-​mining economy. Unsurprisingly, given the international recognition of its heritage value, tourism is now a significant economic activity in the town and its rural hinterland, with approximately one million visitors per year. Røros is marketed as a living museum, with its unique townscape being the major draw for visitors (Bowitz and Ibenholt, 2009). However, the town’s wider industrial heritage has now become part of an expanded tourism product, aligned with the extension of the World Heritage Site. This includes museums focused on the mining experience and ‘mining safaris’ to explore the extensively scarred landscape and remaining slag heaps. In addition to tangible heritage assets, the place identity of Røros is widely used as an inspiration for events and the branding of local products, specifically local food products (further discussed in the following) and Røros tweed. The town has used events and festivals to generate income throughout the year, including outdoor theatre, outdoor music festivals and markets, all using the historic townscape as a backdrop (Lillevold and Haarstad, 2018). The most important event is the Rørosmartnan, an annual winter market in February (held every year for over 165 years), which now attracts around 70,000 visitors over five days. Related to tourism and its heritage ‘brand’, Røros has also developed a strong identity connected to food quality, organic food and speciality products. Two key initiatives have emerged since the early 2000s –​the start-​up of Røros Meat Ltd and Røros Dairy –​with both companies seeking to capitalise on the brand recognition of Røros as a distinct cultural landscape to create locally embedded products with the wider aim of developing Røros as a food region based on local production, traditions and clean production (Münchhausen et al, 2017). The development of these two food production enterprises has, in part, stemmed from an alliance of producers and local NGOs concerned with the food-​health-​environment nexus. They have joined forces to create a network of local stakeholders in an organisation called ‘Food from the Mountain’ (Kvam and Bjørkhaug, 2015a). Key stakeholders in this network include primary producers, local food processors, the local authority and consumers, who share the goal of supporting local food production. Røros Meat was established in 2003, underpinned by the efforts of the Røros organic farmers’ cooperative and a partnership with Røros Abattoir, creating new chain partners and supply chain integration (Münchhausen et al, 2017) and selling organic products under the brand of Røros Food to local hotels and restaurants in the region, and, more recently, through a retail chain. Røros Dairy is a private company founded by a cooperative of milk producers, the Røros municipality and Innovation Norway. Røros Dairy specialises in traditional and distinctive local organic products, such as tjukkmelk (thick sour milk), skjørost (similar to cottage cheese) and songraut (porridge), and, more recently, introducing new milk, cream and yoghurt products also using traditional production methods (Kvam and Bjørkhaug, 57

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2015b). Similar to Røros Meat, Røros Dairy also sells directly to local restaurants and hotels and has also linked up with the supermarket chain, Coop. Kvam and Bjørkhaug (2015b) note that Røros Dairy directly employs around 20 people (with 12 employees owning company shares) and, additionally, the dairy is connected to 35–​40 local organic milk producers. The success of Røros has been nurtured through a mix of local and extra-​ local actors. The preservation of the town’s built heritage has generally been led by ‘expert’ conservation professionals. This included the initial protection of historic structures in the 1920s, through to the efforts of the Norwegian Cultural Heritage Directorate in its application for UNESCO World Heritage Site listing in the 1980s and extended in 2011. Typically, conservation practitioners are motivated by preserving the authentic built fabric for its artistic, cultural and universal value. However, the preservation of built heritage in Røros has also laid the foundations for a wider economic renewal, combining these tangible heritage assets along with intangible heritage factors, including place identity, reputation and food-​producing traditions. Lillevold and Haarstad (2018) claim that almost everything in Røros is connected to the historical layers of the town and its cultural landscape. This ‘authenticity’ is critical for traditional crafts, local food production, adventure experiences, local retail and restaurants, sightseeing, festivals, plays and outdoor theatre, in defining the cultural and economic life of Røros (Guttormsen and Fageraas, 2011). While external actors have been critical, Røros municipality plays a key role in supporting heritage preservation through its physical planning strategy. Protecting heritage is one of the overarching priorities of the municipality with the objective of strengthening the historic centre and fostering the historical characteristics, qualities and traditions as a driving force for business development, cultural activities and good living conditions (Lillevold and Haarstad, 2018). Heritage is framed as a key source of wealth creation, and residents see themselves as ‘caretakers’ of the historic built fabric, much of it in private ownership (Bye, 2008). In this regard, the municipality requires that houses owned in the historic core of Røros must be used as permanent residences, preventing the hollowing out of the historic built environment by second homes and holiday lets. Røros municipality has also played a key role in fostering Røros as a centre of speciality and quality food, developing networks of food producers to develop the ‘Food from the Mountain’ alliance. The emergence of Røros as ‘Norway’s local food capital’ has been a bottom-​up process, building on the cooperation of local producers, processors, the local authority and retailers to build a brand for local specialities and organic products. Farmers’ cooperatives have also been central in this process, stimulating the creation of local value chains to add value to local farm produce that draws on local traditions and production methods. While the development of a local food sector draws on the heritage brand of Røros and the name recognition of the area within Norway, local food production and processing provides an important diversification of the Røros economy, which has now extended beyond the tourism market to establish supply links throughout Norway. 58

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Natural resource amenity as an economic pathway: ​Fannin County, Georgia, US This case study is located in the Appalachian Region in the US, an area historically associated with poverty and depopulation. Appalachia is made up of 420 counties across 13 states and spans 205,000 square miles, from southern New York State to northern Mississippi. The region’s 25 million residents live in parts of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and all of West Virginia. The economies of many counties and sub-​regions in the Appalachian Region have historically depended on a few dominant industries such as mineral extraction and related manufacturing, which have been in decline over recent decades (Appalachian Regional Commission, 2019a). Despite rich coal and copper resources, there has been a long-standing recognition of the region’s deep-​seated poverty throughout much of the 20th century, including when the influential President John F. Kennedy commissioned a study to evaluate social and economic conditions in the region in 1964. While resource-rich, commentators have questioned the extent to which the region’s extractive economy generated local wealth and prosperity. For example, Marshall et al (2020) note the long-​term absence of local reinvestment from the extractive sector and the continued extra-​ local control of resources and land. These structural factors have tended to sustain poverty through exporting profits, inhibiting economic diversification, leading to lower growth and eroding resilience to external economic conditions through exposure to volatile energy and mineral markets. Despite the establishment of the Appalachian Regional Commission in the 1960s and top-​down investment in the region’s physical infrastructure, throughout the 1970s the dominance of extractive industries remained, defining the region’s economic fortunes. This economy is particularly susceptible to cycles of boom and bust and dependant on external global market conditions. However, as Marshall et al (2020) highlight, the loss of employment in Appalachia during periods of cyclical decline exceeds the gains during growth periods, resulting in long-​term decline across many Appalachian localities. Consolidating this long-​term spiral of decline in employment in the extractive sector, the region has also experienced a decline in its manufacturing base, often in the face of intense international competition, leading to a deepening of disparity between the region and the rest of the US in terms of lower-than-average wages, higher poverty rates, lower educational attainment and health inequalities, including high rates of substance abuse (Pollard and Jacobsen, 2020). The Appalachian Region is, in many ways, emblematic of many of the challenges facing rural regions in the US, and for understanding the ‘larger political economy affecting rural communities across many parts of America, and of the debates why poor, rural communities at the blunt edge of inequality … appear to engage in increasingly authoritarian politics’ (Gaventa, 2019, p 442). Rural areas such as these have attracted much media and academic attention in 59

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recent years, particularly following the election of President Donald Trump in 2016. These areas have been described as ‘hollowed out heartlands’ (Edelman, 2021, p 1) or as places and people ‘left behind’ (Ulrich-​Schad and Duncan, 2018, p 29), characterised by a ‘geography of despair’ (Johnson and Lichter, 2019, p 5) evident in depopulation, deindustrialisation, poverty and chronic health inequalities. Edelman (2021) further identifies these types of rural places in the US as ‘sacrifice zones’ to capitalism, where wealth has shifted upwards (in class terms) and outwards (in geographic terms), while local institutions and resources have been diminished and eroded, such as local banking services, retail functions and local media. Our case study, Fannin County, is located in north Georgia’s Appalachian communities, close to the borders of Tennessee and North Carolina. The population of Fannin County is approximately 26,000, with its largest urban centre, Blue Ridge, populated by fewer than 1,400 people. The wider sub-​region is mostly rural and mountainous, with the topography of the area adding to the isolation of north Georgia’s rural communities, and in many ways has made regional development efforts difficult particularly in transportation, infrastructure development and delivery of education services (State of Georgia, 2019). Fannin County is an area in transition. Historically, the area’s economy was related to timber extraction and copper mining, and later the production of sulphuric acid (as a by-​product of copper extraction pollution), which ceased in the 1980s. The area also suffered the closure of the Levi Strauss plant in 2002 after 40 years of operation (Northwest Georgia Regional Commission, 2017). Manufacturing in surrounding counties has also been impacted by two interrelated external factors. First, manufacturing in this sub-​region has centred on products for the construction sector, with demand falling dramatically following the great financial crisis of 2008 and the national collapse in housebuilding. Second, while demand is returning, the jobs have not been replaced due to a shift in production methods to automated manufacturing (State of Georgia, 2019). Faced with these challenges, the local economy in Fannin County has been transitioning from an extraction and production-​based economy towards an amenity-​based economy, built on the sustainable consumption of the area’s natural resources. This shift was initially centred on natural amenity-​based tourism, but also underpins the county’s efforts to attract new entrepreneurs to live in the area through a live-​work-​play strategy. Despite the deindustrialisation within Fannin and neighbouring counties and the fall-​out from the global financial crisis ten years ago, job growth has remained resilient over the last decade (with 43 per cent of the working population self-​ employed) along with above-​average population growth for north Georgia (Appalachian Regional Commission, 2019b). Early success in developing a tourism economy was based on capitalising on visitors to the nearby Chattahoochee National Forest (attracting two million visitors per year) with 40 per cent of the county’s land incorporated into the publicly o ​ wned forest park. The area also contains natural springs and high-​quality waters, leading to its designation as Georgia’s trout fishing capital. The Blue 60

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Ridge Lake, dam and reservoir also serve as a focal point for tourist activities, with a marina and canoe and kayak launch site below the dam to provide access to the Toccoa River, with Class I and II rapids (that is, classed as suitable for novices) following regular dam releases. Early tourism-​related businesses served the outdoor recreation market and tended to be small, locally o ​ wned and operated enterprises, and with the additional development of tourist infrastructure (for example, the marina), they have now developed into a key growth sector for the local economy. For example, the county’s largest town, Blue Ridge, is now a key centre for tourism-​related enterprises with over 60 businesses located in its downtown, including outdoor recreation shops, sports equipment hire stores, restaurants, motels and craft shops (see Figure 3.4). Managing and promoting tourism is now a collaborative effort coordinated by Fannin County’s Chamber of Commerce, which has been key to developing business-​to-​business links, creating local value chains and maximising tourist spend in the area, which combined with small, locally o ​ wned and operated businesses, ensures a local distribution of income. The Chamber’s mission is to ‘support existing businesses, promote positive economic development and tourism, while preserving our community’s natural resources and enhancing our community’s character, natural resources and quality of life’ (Fannin County Chamber of Commerce, nd.).

Figure 3.4: Blue Ridge downtown’s tourist economy –​an example of bar/​restaurant business

Source: Photo supplied by Jan Hackett (President, Fannin County Chamber of Commerce) and reproduced with permission

61

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Box 3.1: The Fannin County tourist product • Hiking, fishing, mountain biking trails, horse-​riding and related outdoor activities • Water sports: canoeing, white-water rafting, tubing and kayaking • Aerial adventure park (highline climbing, zip lines) • Working farms and farm shops (particularly related to orchards), with direct selling of agricultural products to visitors • Weekly farmers’ market in Blue Ridge –​direct selling of local farm produce to visitors and locals • Three local wineries and four craft breweries, including tours • Arts-​based tourism: Blue Ridge is designated as an Arts Town and includes art galleries, craft shops and arts festivals • Music festivals over the summer months • Blue Ridge Scenic Railway, connecting Blue Ridge with surrounding towns through a historic mountain rail line • Diverse accommodation options: cabin rentals, lodges, motels, an RV park and bed and breakfasts Source: Compiled by authors

Much of the area’s soft and physical tourist infrastructure is developed by the Chamber of Commerce, including marketing, online resources for visitors and a visitor centre, funded through local accommodation tax revenues (ensuring local reinvestment of revenue). The Chamber now represents over 800 businesses across the county, indicative of a local entrepreneurial culture, with a board of 20 representatives from public and private bodies, and a further six committees reflecting the public–​private composition of the board. In addition to a tourism committee, other committees deal with developing the area’s external political relations, fostering new business leads and an ambassadors committee to mentor and promote local enterprises. With enhanced local capacity and know-​how, the local tourism product has developed and diversified as indicated in Box 3.1. It is noticeable that local enterprises have developed webs of complementarity (for example, clustering of outdoor sports retail along with equipment hire and activity organisers), while revenue is maximised through business-​to-​business linkages. This has been beneficial to local farmers and local producers selling directly to visitors through a weekly farmers’ market and supplying local businesses with produce, encouraged by a state-​wide ‘Georgia Grown’ food labelling scheme for supporting agri-​business. While the Fannin Chamber of Commerce has been an important enabler, their work has also been supported by the county’s Comprehensive Development Plan, which has provided a key strategic tool in the careful management of the 62

The economic rural

county’s environmental and cultural resources. The most recent Comprehensive Development Plan (2018–​28) (North West Georgia Regional Commission, 2017) was adopted in 2017 and prepared by the North West Georgia Regional Commission in collaboration with the mayor’s offices in three of Fannin County’s key towns along with a county-​wide commission, a planning committee of elected representatives and support from four local stakeholder-​based planning committees. In addition to this direct stakeholder engagement and wider public meetings, an online community needs platform was developed to input into the planning process. Core to the planning strategy is protection of the county’s natural amenities, with policies targeting the protection of key waterways with detailed environmental assessment criteria. Protecting the wider rural landscape is also included as a key strategic goal within the plan, related to protecting biodiversity, enhancing the rural experience for visitors and maintaining a high-​quality environment for local food production. Thus, the plan avoids the false dichotomy between economy and environment to stress the importance of a healthy environment for the local economy and emphasising economic activities which minimise impacts on this environmental quality. The planning strategy also supports wider tourism activities, including the provision of tourist accommodation, prioritising facilities for artistic development and protecting public space for the farmers’ market. While the tourism sector has provided the backbone to the new rural economy in Fannin County, its comprehensive plan also recognises the need for further economic diversification to increase long-​term economic stability. These policies are aligned with natural resource protection through seeking to attract new permanent residents and to bring in new entrepreneurs to encourage local business start-​ups, recognising the importance of creating a local entrepreneurial culture through attracting new social capital, human resources and skills into the community. The comprehensive plan prioritises small businesses that are siteappropriate, supported by local zoning policies. As outlined in the plan: The benefits of this would be many, including people being able to work where they live, local high school graduates returning to the county after completing college, and residents having access to more services in the community. With good planning, a diversified economy would contribute to the rural, small-​town culture that residents and visitors love. (2017, p 4) This planning approach is further supported by the Fannin County Development Authority, which markets the area for potential new business development based on the county’s natural amenities, emphasising the potential to live-​work-​play through its aspirational slogans such as, ‘grow your business naturally’ and ‘unwind, relax, create’. The development authority also acts as a key enabler. In addition to marketing, the authority is responsible for identifying serviced workspaces and sites (within the context of the comprehensive plan) and for providing ready-​made 63

Rural Places and Planning Figure 3.5: Workspace provision in Blue Ridge –​serviced site with three tenants

Source: Photo supplied by Christie Gribble (Executive Director, Fannin County Development Authority) and reproduced with permission

solutions for new start-​ups or for businesses relocating to the area (see Figure 3.5 for an example of workspace provision). It also focuses on ‘soft supports’ for relocating businesses (and new residents) to the area, including broader quality of life information on local schools and services, and is currently participating in Georgia State’s Remote Work Ready Pilot Program to attract new residents through marketing to mobile workers. This case study is indicative of a rural economy shifting from a long-standing emphasis on production and extraction towards consumption. Key to Fannin County’s emerging new rural economy has been a positive reappraisal of its natural resources as key to economic development, recognising ‘the positive economic value of the presence of a healthy environment’ (Hibbard et al, 2019, p 39). This has included direct benefits in terms of attracting visitors and also more indirectly through attracting new residents and businesses thanks to the area’s rural and outdoor-oriented lifestyle. This echoes Hibbard and Lurie’s (2019, p 3) observation that a ‘robust locality development strategy needs to start by recognising the web of economic and social ties in which rural people are entangled, based largely on the landscape and in the way they use it’. However, central to any success has been the importance of key enablers and good local governance, which assisted in ‘converting’ environmental capital to economic capital and local prosperity. This includes a collaborative local planning strategy that emphasises environmental protection and connects environmental quality with local prosperity, and a local development authority capitalising on local amenities to attract new residents and entrepreneurs. Furthermore, the local chamber of commerce has played a pivotal role in fostering a local 64

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entrepreneurial capacity through an outward-​facing approach (for example, building external political networks, attracting new social capital, human resources and skills) and by developing local webs of locally o ​ wned enterprises (for example clustering of business, local supply chains, collective marketing and reinvesting capital). Financialising economic capital:​Dobromir, Romania Mazzucato (2018) argues that modern capitalists are ‘takers, not makers’, extracting profit from fixed assets –​real estate and the land it sits on –​rather than generating new value. Productivity (making) has been eclipsed in the recent past by a form of ‘voodoo economics’ that delivers no added value but extracts profit (taking) via ‘new-​fangled financial engineering techniques’ (Christophers, 2010, p 106). The financialisation of fixed assets has been long in the making. In its simplest form, the creation of debt –​and the levying of interest on that debt –​constitutes the extraction of profit through a financial channel. If someone buys the debt (or a bundle of debts attached to a portfolio of assets) then that profit will be captured by a third party –​an investor in ‘debt securities’. This type of financialisation has been a feature of financial markets for the last hundred years, but in the more recent past, forms of financialisation have become increasingly varied, with research highlighting its application within commercial development (Weber, 2015), infrastructure (Pike et al, 2019), housing (Aalbers, 2016), land in general terms (Ryan-​Collins et al, 2017) and more specifically applied to farmland and the apparatus of agricultural production (Gunnoe, 2014). Gunnoe (2014) has drawn attention to the particular appeal of farmland in transition economies and other places where land values remain relatively low. This, he argues, has resulted in the consolidation of landholdings by investment banks and financial service providers (both of which create tradable investment funds, backed by land assets). Other research has observed the same phenomenon in North America (Newell and Lincoln, 2007), Australia (Magnan, 2015) and the Global South (Robertson and Pinstrup-​Andersen, 2010; Cotula, 2013). There has been a great deal of recent concern for the impacts of this form of financialisation on rural places, especially if the practice of ‘taking’ reduces the ‘the extent to which economic action is embedded in structures of social relations’ (Granovetter, 1985, p 481). In other words, economic activities centred on or supported by extra-​local investors may be placeless and disconnected: their objective is to extract value rather than recycle that value locally in support of communities and places. The beneficiaries receive ‘income’ and ‘accumulation’ returns on quarterly spreadsheets, and financial service providers, competing against others, extract as much as they can for their clients. They operate in a neoliberal framework, expanding the commodification not only of land but also ‘rural products and rural labour’ (Haroon Akram-​Lodhi, 2007, p 1437). Literature on ‘land grabs’, in the Global South (and also in affected transition economies), notes low levels of embeddedness and a range of repercussions for communities arising from 65

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corporate regimes of food production that prioritise profit maximisation above any social goals (Loris, 2016). Indeed, this form of financialisation has ‘diverse implications for poverty and inequality in rural societies through the concentration of landholdings, growth of wage labour, new classes of accumulating elites, and rising landlessness’ (Hall et al, 2015). Dobromir is a commune in Constanța County in the very south of Romania, on the border with Bulgaria. At the 2002 census, it was the only commune in the country with a Turkish Muslim majority. There are six villages within Dobromir, including the village of Dobromir itself. The overall population was just under 3,000, falling to 2,600 in 2012. It is notable for few reasons apart from being one of the most deprived local government areas in Romania (Mitrică et al, 2020) and also a focus of agricultural land investment by Rabo Farm. Rabo Farm is part of Bouwfonds Investment Management, the real estate asset manager of the Netherlands-​based Rabobank Group. Established in 1898 by Dutch farmers looking to pool resources and support farm modernisation and improvement, the group is now a financial services provider which claims to be an ‘ethical investor’ that takes care of the people and places that become a focus of its investment activity. Rabo Farm ‘initiates, structures and manages funds that invest in farms and agricultural production’: it is a vehicle for investing in farmland and farm infrastructure (including ‘building, storage, drainage, irrigation and liming’), and arable crops such as grains and oilseeds. Besides delivering returns to investors, linked to farm yields and appreciating land values, it also aims (or claims) to support ‘local social and economic development’ (Rabofarm.com, cited in Gallent et al, 2019, p 69). For investors, Rabo Farm offers two funds focused on farmland and agricultural production: ‘Europe Fund I’ (drawing on investments across the EU) and ‘Fund II’ (focused on Central and Eastern Europe and established in 2014). Rabo Farm is an intermediary between investors (to whom it provides financial services) and farmers (to whom it provides, among other things, purchase and lease​back schemes, which release equity for farm upgrading). The lease​back model works in one of two ways: farms are purchased by Rabo Farm and either leased back to the vendor/​owner or to a new tenant farmer. The expectation is that capital raised from the sale should be invested in ways that will increase productivity, enabling the tenant to service the rent to Rabo Farm and run a profit. New farmers entering the sector avoid the capital outlay of purchase, presumably leaving them with cash to spend on machinery and labour. Rabo Farm, therefore, ‘provides long-​term access to farmland and cooperates in further developing its productivity and efficiency’ (Rabofarm.com, cited in Gallent et al, 2019, p 69) through farm de-​leveraging (when farmers are unable to generate sufficient profits to attract more debt to grow their business); through enhanced productivity (when farmers do not intend to buy and own more land but prefer to use cash to operate and lease farms); through sale and leaseback (when farmers want to generate cash to invest in livestock, machinery and so forth, or when they want to finance their own working capital so that they are in a better position to manage the volatility 66

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of the market); through succession (when farmers hand over their farms to a successor who lacks the financial resources to buy from the current owners); and through upgrading (when farmers cannot afford the cost of upgrading their farms, for example drainage, soil improvements, farm base redevelopment). In short, Rabo Farm acquires assets (using investors’ capital), levies rent (correlated to rising productivity) and directs income back to its investor. It holds land as collateral in the event of rent default. By 2015, Rabobank had committed €315 million to its Europe Fund II, purchasing 21,000 ha of farmland across Romania (from 2011 onwards). It targeted a return on its investment of €900 million within a 10 to 15-​year time horizon. From the point of view of investors (those holding portfolios which include income or accumulation from Fund II), their relationship with the Romanian farms is indirect, via Rabobank (and Rabo Farm), and certainly passive. They have no involvement in the investment strategy or the way Rabobank manages these assets. The income is most likely reported in quarterly statements and credited to ‘Rabobank Europe Fund II’ or perhaps subsumed into an aggregate package of agricultural investment (or just ‘emerging markets’), bundled together by another asset manager. Those managers may switch investments in or out of such funds depending on their performance relative to other bundles, perhaps moving their client’s money to ‘global smaller companies’ or ‘listed infrastructure equity’. Trust is placed in the financial services provider, the hope being –​for many investors –​that practices are ethically sound while meeting their expectations in terms of risk and return. Rabo Farm’s lease​back scheme led to the acquisition of farmland in and around 51 Romanian villages in the rural south of the country, including Dobromir. Investigations by the European Union (and by local journalists) revealed that Rabo Farm’s leaseholders included local politicians and individuals convicted of crimes including modern-​day slavery, theft and bribery. Others were ‘local oligarchs with strong connections to corrupt officials’ (Dale-​Harris and Semeniuc, 2015, np). Prior to the arrival of Rabo Farm, expectations of the future value of farmland around Dobromir were linked to the prospect of EU membership. That membership would give farmers access to the EU subsidy regime, which prompted localised land grabs. Dale-​Harris (2015) reports on how, in 2006, groups of older villagers were ‘herded’ into vans, taken to the city of Constanța and forced to sign legal documents in darkened rooms in return for envelopes of cash. They had parted with their land for €90 a hectare, which was then bought by Rabo Farm six years later for upwards of €2,000 a hectare. Indeed, ‘since 2012, Rabobank has bought at least 939 ha of land in Dobromir: the vast majority of which they lease out to the village mayor’ (Dale-​Harris, 2015, np). Rabo Farm purchased land around Dobromir for two reasons: first, its fertility, and second, its price (€2,000 to €3,500 per hectare is only a fraction of the cost of farmland in western Europe and is expected to triple in value within a decade). But the land grab that happened in Dobromir predated Rabo Farm’s arrival. Demand arising from impending EU membership seemed to offer many farmers 67

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an escape route from poverty. A great many were reliant on state benefits and the sudden demand for land gave them a quick way of making money. Not all were coerced into selling. But Dale-​Harris (2015) notes that all the land purchased in Dobromir and neighbouring villages was acquired by three intermediaries, who used ‘strong arm’ tactics to encourage more recalcitrant villagers to part with land. The intermediaries engaged local mafia for this purpose, led by a man with links to Dobromir’s former mayor (who was voted from office in 2012). When Rabobank arrived, it used one of its own subsidiaries to purchase land from the three intermediaries and another company registered overseas –​ ultimately in Liberia. Dale-​Harris’ investigations revealed a number of links from that company to individuals involved in illegal land deals, and land grabs, in various parts of the world, some of whom had faced corruption charges in their own countries. Dobromir’s former mayor became mired in mafia links and became the face of the local land grab. He was replaced, in 2012, by a new mayor who promised to combat local corruption. But that new mayor now controls more than 3,000 ha of land around the village, including 882 ha on a lease​back contract from Rabo Farm. There has been a huge shift in the pattern of land ownership in the area, triggered firstly by EU membership and then by Rabobank’s purchase and lease​back scheme. Dale-​Harris (2015, np) asked Rabobank to explain its involvement in this shift: The due diligence process for land acquisitions foresees a check on sellers and intermediaries. These processes have led in a number of cases to the cancellation of cooperation with intermediaries. We take the allegations seriously. We will use any new information to review our business relationships and terminate should your allegations prove to be correct. But at the time Dale-​Harris was writing, the intermediaries were still acquiring land in the area, and Rabobank’s subsidiary was still purchasing it. While there was no suggestion that Rabo Farm and Rabobank were complicit in the theft of land, its offer to landowners incentivised the dispossession of poorer farmers and their substitution with new owners ready to do business with Rabo Farm. In this way, an extra-​local, Dutch multinational bank became implicated in local corruption and land grabbing in eastern Europe. Constantin et al (2017) have examined the extent of land grabbing and the problems of land rights –​and land transfer practices –​in transition and post-​ transition economies. It is the opacity of local practices –​alongside EU rules on grant support for farming –​that create the context in which dispossession becomes a problem. New leaseholders (including Dobromir’s mayors) are able to claim single farm payments from the EU as a guarantee against rents. It was unclear, in some instances, whether rents were being serviced from incomes derived from more efficient and productive farms or whether EU payments were becoming a substitute for those incomes and were leaking out of the local area and going 68

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straight into the hands of investors. But in the case of Dobromir’s mayor, Dale-​ Harris notes significant modernisation of farming practice: a shiny and efficient farm, with new equipment and ‘vast corrugated steel warehouses’ that would not be out of place in France or the Netherlands. Transition economies are vulnerable to such practices given the potential uplift in land values that investment can bring and given the apparent inability of legal frameworks to keep pace with the speed of transition. Romanian agricultural values remained low in the post-​transition period (Mancia, 2014). This, combined with the enthusiasm of investors to exploit emergent markets and the weaknesses of legal protection for poorer landowners, seems to have caused a perfect storm in which Rabo Farm was caught out. The EU has undertaken its own study of ‘farmland grabbing’ in the EU, noting the problems arising from Rabo Farm’s investment (Directorate-​General for Internal Policies, 2015). The trust placed in intermediaries was perhaps Rabo Farm’s undoing, or rather the undoing of villagers. The financialisation of farmland runs the risk of siphoning off value from rural places and depositing it in the hands of international investors, but that risk is nothing compared to the dangers of dispossession, which in the case of Dobromir has indeed created ‘new classes of accumulating elites’ while advancing ‘landlessness’ (Hall et al, 2015). The new money in rural areas that financialisation brings can be used to deliver increased productivity, wage growth and rising wellbeing (Gallent et al, 2019). But weak governance practices, locally and institutionally, conspired against such an outcome in Dobromir, a case which scores badly against all our measures of a good rural place.

What can be drawn from these cases? This chapter has focused on economic capital, conceptualised as comprising: (1) physical productive infrastructure; (2) enterprise infrastructure; and (3) community wealth-​building capacity. Together these sub-​components provide assets and the capacity to generate local wealth creation. Underpinning this potential is the valorisation of place-​based assets and capitals that can be ‘converted’ to economic capital through key enabling factors, such as human resources, good governance or new technologies. The first two case studies in this chapter demonstrate the potential for converting place-​based assets to local wealth creation. The revitalisation of Røros in Norway has been based on the preservation and exploitation of tangible and intangible heritage as a means to generate local economic opportunities. In this case, extra-​local specialised knowledge and skills within the heritage sector were key in recognising the potential value and uniqueness of the built fabric in Røros. However, these efforts at preservation and importantly the designation of Røros as a UNESCO World Heritage Site has fostered a local entrepreneurial culture to not only attract visitors but also to develop local value chains in terms of local crafts and foods. Collectively organised events and local branding enable local businesses to thrive while developing connections with local supply chains. The 69

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unique heritage of Røros has also fostered the growth of local speciality and organic food, developed through new alliances and networks and building on the brand recognition of Røros and consumer trust in its heritage image. In Fannin County in the US, key to its economic success has been an emphasis on its natural resource amenities and environmental capital. Like Røros, tourism has been the backbone of the new rural economy in Fannin; however, further diversification is now central to the area’s plans to attract new residents, entrepreneurs and businesses to the area based on the appeal of its natural amenities and rural lifestyle. The Røros and Fannin County cases illustrate the importance of good governance and the role of institutions in enabling economic development. Whether drawing in expertise from national and regional levels or creating collaborative local alliances, effective governance and local leadership are central to local wealth creation. This includes the ability to foster local ownership of enterprises (thus retaining profits locally), business-​to-​business links in creating local value chains and retaining local know-​how to mentor new entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, many of these attributes were absent in the third case of Dobromir in Romania. Rather than utilising land assets for local wealth creation, the value of land is being extracted from the area through an often opaque process of financialisation overseen by financial institutions operating at a pan-​ European or global level. There are parallels here with past resource extraction in the Appalachian Region, whereby land and mineral resources were owned by external operators, leading to profit extraction and a lack of reinvestment of capital within local places, which in turn sustained local poverty. More plural and local forms of ownership provide greater potential for more equitable wealth creation than is possible where economic activities are structured by the interests of distant investors. In Dobromir, this external ownership of key local resources was compounded by weak local governance, providing limited opportunities for enhancing local quality of life. In both Røros and Fannin County, spatial and physical planning strategies have been critical in providing an institutional framework for place-​based development. Too often, planning is viewed as a barrier to economic growth in rural places, or as a means of stopping things happening through restrictive regulation (Scott, 2019). However, both these case studies demonstrate that planning has played a critical role in protecting rural assets that now occupy centre stage within a reimagined rural economy. Thus, both cases have avoided the outdated dualism of economy versus protection through understanding the economic potential of heritage assets or natural amenity and preventing the erosion of these assets through insensitive development. This ethos, along with community-​focused wealth creation, is critical in avoiding what Mitchell (2013) terms ‘creative destruction’ (borrowing from Schumpeter) in amenity or heritage-​r ich areas, whereby a narrow focus on private economic gain can often lead to faux-​authentic or consumable landscapes with limited local benefits. Instead, generating economic capital should be valued in terms of creating communities and good rural places where people want to live.

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The land-​based rural Unpacking the capital This chapter explores how land is used and managed as a resource for rural places and for enhancing rural quality of life. We consider land as a fundamental and finite rural resource with human and non-​human dimensions. While land is central to shaping the function, economic role, ecological integrity and quality of life within rural places, its management is also of critical importance in addressing global environmental priorities. These include climate change mitigation and adaptation, addressing biodiversity loss, food and energy security and sustainable water management. Extensive land-​based resources are a central feature of rural places, with 86 per cent of land in OECD countries located in predominantly rural regions and a further 11 per cent in near-​urban rural regions (OECD, 2020b). In relation to land, Hibbard and Frank (2019, p 339) remind us that: Rural areas produce most of the world’s food and textile fibre. They are the source of most of its energy, minerals, water, and timber for construction and for paper pulp. They host the vast majority of the planet’s plant and animal species … Importantly, rural areas are undergoing a major transformation and are the locus of many of the most pressing planning issues, from climate change to biodiversity loss to land-​use conflict to rapid market fluctuations. Extensive land-​based resources, in addition to the amenity and heritage dimensions of landscapes, are a key point of departure and substantive focus for planning in rural contexts. Classical economics traditionally identifies land as a key capital stock, as a productive resource with value, for example for agriculture, mineral extraction or for absorbing waste (Chenoweth et al, 2018). However, similar to the built capital explored in Chapter 2, there is no discrete ‘land’ or wider environmental dimension within Bourdieu’s economic-​social-​cultural framework. While not addressed directly by Bourdieu, the environmental dimension of a capitals framework is often expressed through the concept of ‘natural capital’ (for example Castle, 1998). Emerging from the field of environmental economics, natural capital is now commonly used within policy to denote natural stocks from which ecosystem goods and services are provided. Natural capital is defined as the stocks of natural resources (renewable and non-​renewable) that yield a flow of benefits to people (Natural Capital Coalition, 2016), including ecosystems, geosystems and atmospheric systems (Farrell and Stout, 2020). In these terms, 71

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these services are assigned a monetary value or measured within an accounting model to value assets. More recently, an emerging body of literature has moved beyond narrow economic valuation to examine the social and cultural benefits flowing from stocks of natural capital (Bullock et al, 2018). From an ecological perspective, all other forms of capital rely on natural capital, which underpins planetary health and wellbeing. Within the rural development literature, there is less emphasis on ecosystem services valuation, instead focusing on environmental assets that benefit local place-​ based development. For example, in discussing economic development within rural localities, Courtney and Moseley (2008, p 309) refer to ‘environmental capital’ as comprising ‘natural and man-​made assets that are valorised by residents, investors and visitors; [and] location, embracing peripherality, perceptions of peripherality and proximity to other places’, combining environmental assets along with geographic context. Similarly, Emery and Flora (2006, p 20–​1) refer to natural capital as ‘those assets that abide in a particular location, including weather, geographic isolation, natural resources, amenities and natural beauty. Natural capital shapes the cultural capital connected to place’. Both of these definitions, therefore, place greater emphasis on the intangible dimensions of environmental or natural assets that relate to a sense of place and place identity. In this chapter, we use the term ‘land-​based capital’. The rationale for this approach relates to the traditional role of planning in managing and regulating land use, thus providing a meaningful lens through which to examine planning and place-​based interventions. This approach allows us to holistically examine the land-​use system, which embodies the relationship between human activities on land, socio-​economic conditions and the natural environment (Foresight Land Use Futures Project, 2010). We combine this land-​use focus with another traditional planning domain –​landscape –​as a tangible and intangible resource, alongside land-​based ecosystem services as nature-​based infrastructure to provide a holistic framework for the sustainable management of land use. As with previous chapters, we consider the flows of benefits from land-​based capital and the potential for converting or reinvesting benefits into other forms of capital to enhance rural quality of life and wellbeing. While we argue that land-​based capital should provide a key substantive focus for planning for rural places, planning practice over the past 60 years has instead been characterised by a minimal engagement with rural places and a fragmented policy approach to managing the land-​use system. As charted by Lapping (2006) and Lapping and Scott (2019), post-​Second World War rural planning debates have been dominated by the enduring primacy of agriculture and an emphasis on farmland preservation, justified by food security concerns and a view of farming as the backbone of the rural economy. This has led to a largely preservationist ethos towards protecting farmland, but also the exclusion of farming-​related activities –​ including the construction of farm-​related buildings or landscape modifications –​ from planning regulation. This evolved from an era when agriculture’s impact on nature was seen as largely benign, with urban encroachment viewed as the main 72

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threat to the countryside (Monbiot et al, 2019), and with physical development in rural places framed as an environmental detractor in terms of its visual impact on rural landscapes (Curry and Owen, 2009). As Lapping and Scott (2019) outline, this ethos often led to an unimaginative and minimal planning response within rural places along with the protection of land resources at the expense of economic and social welfare (Curry and Owen, 2009). However, by the end of the 20th century, the dominance of farming interests was increasingly being challenged on a range of fronts. For example, modern agricultural practices within many advanced economies were happening at an industrial scale (Monbiot et al, 2019), in turn accelerating biodiversity loss and landscape change, while eroding public trust in the traditional role of farmers as custodians of the rural environment (Wilkinson et al, 2010). Moreover, rural places were being transformed by new demands for land, often led by new consumption interests rather than agricultural production. For example, Marsden et al (1993) charted the demise of productivist agricultural models in the UK, opening up opportunities for substantial growth in demand for new uses for rural space (for example amenity, recreation, conservation, residential) and creating new conditions for actors to pursue their demands both in the market place and in the political system. Rural land-​use governance has too often been siloed across sectoral interests and policy agendas, leading to fragmented policy responses (Hetherington, 2019). As noted previously, farming activities are often exempt from land-​use planning systems, despite the industrial nature of modern agriculture. Physical development beyond farming, such as new housing and renewable energy infrastructure are, on the other hand, circumscribed by planning regulation. Landscapes are managed through a mix of planning policy and countryside management tools arrayed across the public, private and voluntary sectors. Nature is protected through wildlife management agencies with top-​down designation (for example, European Union Birds and Habitats Directives) for the protection of nature-​r ich sites, often transposed to planning policy resulting in an ‘islands of protection’ approach (Cowell and Owens, 2011). Ecosystem services, in contrast, are often managed through market-​based tools, for example as direct payments to farmers for less intensive farming practices as an aspect of agricultural policy. The need for a more holistic framework is critical for the sustainable management of land resources that benefit society in ways that recognise that rural people and communities are intimately connected with the land through employment, lifestyles and everyday interactions. Moreover, holistic approaches are urgently required to address global environmental imperatives, recognising that how we choose to use extensive rural-​ based land resources is central to addressing biodiversity loss, climate mitigation and adaptation, food and energy security, and sustainable water management. For example, a transition to a low- or zero-​carbon society will involve a greater emphasis on renewable energy infrastructure located in rural places, with the potential for creating a post-​carbon rural landscape comprising wind turbines, solar energy farms and farmland converted to planting bio-​energy crops. A post-​ carbon rural land-​use system also entails using land to create natural stores of 73

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carbon through afforestation and peatland or wetland restoration, while also requiring shifts in farming practices to reduce emissions, through a combination of improved livestock and soil management practices and also through the release of farmland from productive uses (Committee on Climate Change, 2018).

Exploring the sub-​components In identifying the sub-​components of land-​based capital, we focus on land-​ based assets with potential for converting or reinvesting into the other forms of capital to contribute to community prosperity, rural wellbeing and towards a good countryside. We recognise, however, that land is often a private asset and that the driving force behind land use is generally profit and individual wealth accumulation, which has been institutionalised through land-​use regulation, land and property ownership rights, land and inheritance taxes, and state subsidies relating to agricultural production or direct farm payments based on landownership (particularly within European Union member states). Extracting profits from rural land-​based resources has a long history, particularly in relation to non-​renewable exploitation, such as mineral extraction. As highlighted in the previous chapter, resource abundance does not always translate into local prosperity, with international mining companies dominating ownership rights and production, generating huge wealth while failing to reinvest profits locally. Non-​renewable resource-​rich areas have been characterised by boom-​ and-​bust cycles, economic underperformance in other sectors, environmental degradation and the displacement of local and indigenous peoples along with competing economic activities (for example, farming). We also highlighted in the previous chapter the growing financialisation of land assets. This is not a new phenomenon; Monbiot et al (2019), for example, highlight entrenched practices in the UK whereby land is valued as a financial asset rather than for its productive value. This includes the hoarding of land for financial speculation (often by volume housebuilders) with unearned profits untaxed; investment in land as a tax shelter, with farmland subject to 100 per cent inheritance tax relief, and now marketed as a safe haven for wealth; land managed for short-​term gains at the expense of local communities and nature; and land owned for reasons of status among financial elites. As a result, the price of farmland in the UK is often uncoupled from its agricultural productive value. The scale and transnational nature of land speculation and financialisation are accelerating. In transition and emerging economies, land ownership is becoming increasingly concentrated in large agricultural holdings. For example, Visser and Spoor (2019) demonstrate the extent and process of ‘land grabbing’ in the former Soviet Union in the wake of the collapse of collective farms, while recent research has highlighted how agricultural lands in Sub-​Saharan Africa are being acquired by both foreign state and corporate interests. These trends illustrate the importance of international flows of capital and their engagements with recipient state actors (especially those tasked to capture foreign direct investment) and agri-​businesses. 74

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A range of countries are implicated in such processes, including the oil-​r ich Gulf States and China (Borras and Franco, 2012). In relation to corporate interests, as recorded by White et al (2012), some land deals (for example those made by hedge funds and pension funds) may be purely speculative (see also the case of Dobromir, Romania, in Chapter 3), betting on rising global land values; investors put their money in land, as they might put it in gold, works of art or blue-​chip shares. However, the purpose of the great majority of corporate land grabs is to establish agricultural production on a large scale and to guarantee access to its products. While land grabbing has a long history, commentators have more recently noted the rise of so-​called green-​grabbing (in both the Global North and South) –​the appropriation of land for environmental ends (Fairhead et al, 2012) with the aim of extracting profit (Apostolopoulou and Adams, 2015). This involves, for example, applying market instruments to mitigate environmental degradation, such as land-​based carbon offsetting or biodiversity offsetting schemes, or the privatisation of publicly owned environmental assets, such as state-​owned woodlands. In contrast to framing land as a financial asset, we instead identify sub-​ components of land-​based capital with potential for generating local benefits for rural places to enhance local community prosperity, quality of life and just outcomes, while addressing urgent global environmental challenges. Therefore, to break down land-​based capital into its sub-​components, we identify three categories: (1) land as a socially productive asset; (2) landscape as cultural capital; and (3) nature-​based infrastructure. Land as a socially productive asset means using land in a way that creates pathways to more socially just outcomes, generating inclusive growth and societal benefits from the ownership, management and use of land resources. This suggests a focus on converting land as a stock resource into social and cultural capital, as an aspect of community wealth building, and as a key resource for supporting a just transition to a zero-​carbon society. Central to maximising socially productive and just outcomes from the use of land are key enabling and conversion factors. First, more diverse patterns of land ownership provide a means of redistributing wealth and ensuring the productive use of land. This includes an emphasis on local ownership to counter the external financialisation of land resources and extraction of profits. It also emphasises plural land ownership models beyond private interests, including public ownership, ownership by charitable trusts and community ownership, community trusts or the potential for community right to buy schemes for abandoned or underutilised land. This ensures a wider range of motives in managing land resources, which might be more focused on maximising a positive impact on nature or social outcomes, such as the provision of social/​ affordable housing by a community land trust. Second, a fair land taxation system would enable the redistribution of wealth, including via land value capture on unearned uplift and inheritance taxes. Third, ensuring that access to the countryside is protected and advanced is critical to enhancing the countryside as a public amenity, which is vital for capturing health and wellbeing benefits. Finally, effective governance 75

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for sustainable land use can ensure that competing demands on finite land resources are effectively managed, ensuring that land is used as a multifunctional resource, as an asset for sustainable livelihoods, and as a platform for transitioning to a zero-​carbon society. Landscape is defined as an area perceived as having an identifiable character, with that character being the outcome of the action and interaction of natural and/​or human factors (Council of Europe, 2000). In contrast to land as an owned asset, landscape may be considered a common resource, as a collective visual asset in rural places or as an aspect of common heritage. Landscape character makes an area unique and different (Atik et al, 2015), thus contributing to a sense of place and place-​based identity, which in turn can be a critical resource for tourism or for place-​based branding, including the local branding of ‘bespoke’ agricultural products (as illustrated by the Norwegian (Røros) and Appalachian (Fannin County) cases in Chapter 3). The interaction of humans and nature is critical in understanding landscape uniqueness. This may relate, on the one hand, to climatic conditions, geology and natural landform and biodiversity combined with, on the other hand, land use shaped by historic and contemporary social, economic and political systems. This includes the evolution of rural settlement patterns, farming practices, forestry, energy production and religious/​spiritual practices. These material processes and elements also interact with ‘perception’ and the intangible landscape experience, which may relate to memory, cultural preferences, and aesthetic preferences and perceptions; an example of this relationship in Japan is provided in Chapter 5. Landscapes are also ‘mediated’ by cultural agents, imbuing some places with significant cultural capital. This may include how landscapes are (re)interpreted through creative arts practice (for example film, poetry, painting –​ see also next chapter) or through their elite designation as prized or protected landscapes, such as UNESCO’s inclusion of some cultural landscapes in their list of World Heritage Sites, or through the establishment of a national park. However, it is also important to consider ‘ordinary’ landscapes (Rouse, 2009), which at the scale of everyday life provide important local resources, for example as places for recreation or as restorative environments. Nature-​based infrastructure (offering ‘nature-​based solutions’ to a variety of development or infrastructure challenges) relates to the natural processes and ecosystems underpinning rural places and wider society. This component, therefore, seeks to capture the concept of ecosystem services, broadly conceived as the benefits people obtain from ecosystems (MA, 2005), namely: supporting services, for example, nutrient cycling, water cycling, soil formation; regulating services, for example, air quality regulation, climate regulation, water purification and waste treatment; provisioning services (products obtained from ecosystems), for example, food, fibre, fuel, pharmaceuticals, fresh water; and cultural services (non-​material benefits), for example, recreation and tourism, aesthetic values, sense of place, cultural heritage values. In this context, nature-​based infrastructure refers to an interconnected and multifunctional network of nature-​based assets that conserves natural ecosystem values and functions, which are capable of delivering a wide range of environmental 76

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and quality of life benefits for local communities (Benedict and McMahon, 2006; Scott et al, 2016). In addition to local benefits, nature-​based infrastructure is critical for addressing pressing global challenges. Enhanced networks of nature-​based infrastructure can, for example, address the fragmentation of habitats, which is often a significant cause of biodiversity loss. Moreover, nature-​based infrastructure is crucial for the mitigation of climate change –​acting as carbon sinks –​and for adapting to climate disruption. The enhancement of upstream nature-​based infrastructure (such as a restored wetland or a new woodland) may, for instance, mitigate downstream flooding risks in towns and cities. Drawing on Weber et al (2006) and Davies et al (2006), nature-​based infrastructure incorporates assets at a range of scales, including: ‘hubs’, representing the most ecologically important large natural areas and important sites for biological diversification, including areas of wetlands, woodlands and sand-​dune systems, and may comprise large planned interventions such as ‘green wedges’ or ‘greenways’; ‘parcels’, forming smaller units than hubs, such as ponds and meadows; ‘corridors’, generally linear features such as river corridors or hedgerows which provide a networking function by linking hubs and parcels and by improving ecological connectivity, thereby addressing habitat fragmentation; and ‘land-​use buffers’ that act as transition areas, providing a layer of protection between hubs/​corridors and potentially damaging land uses –​they may comprise areas of conserved farmland that provides a buffer against encroaching urban expansion and offers migration pathways for wildlife. Nature-​based infrastructure is more than simply protecting nature –​interventions can also enhance or create new ecological networks or restore damaged or degraded ecological systems. Rural planning and place-​based policy should reflect the value of the goods and services provided by land and nature. Taken together, these sub-​components are used to illustrate the importance of land as a fundamental resource underpinning rural prosperity and wider quality of life. However, too often land is simply valued as a financial asset to be hoarded for its productive and private use value in the traditional land-​based rural economy. The disaggregation of land capital into its sub-​components points to land’s value as a socially productive asset, emphasising the importance of access and diverse ownership, its intangible value in relation to place attachment and identity and its foundational role in the provision of essential nature-​based infrastructure. A land-​use system that generates sustainable economic development, protects and enhances ecosystem services, and helps achieve social justice and a fairer society is fundamental to achieving a good rural place.

Low-​carbon transitions, payments for ecosystem services and land reform and community ownership Transitioning to a low-​carbon future:​the Midlands, Ireland Place-​based climate action has increasingly focused on the urban scale to examine both climate change mitigation and adaptation interventions, due to population 77

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and economic concentration, and the need to protect critical infrastructure and prime real estate from climate disruption (Gouldson et al, 2015). However, in contrast, rural places have been relatively neglected as a geographic space in which to explore climate policy, with only sectoral dimensions of the rural economy (that is, agriculture) receiving significant theoretical and policy attention (Phillips and Dickie, 2019). However, rural space and place are critical to society’s responses to climate change (Scott et al, 2019; Hibbard and Frank, 2019). Extensive rural land resources, for example, are essential to adapting to climate risks (for example, as carbon sinks or for upstream flood mitigation) and rural places are key locations for transitioning to a low-​carbon future (that is, renewable energy locations). Climate action has the potential to ‘disrupt’ traditional rural economic sectors, such as agriculture and resource extraction (causing a degree of conflict and discontent), while providing opportunities for a new rural economy (Gallent et al, 2019), for example, through PES (explored in the following case study). At the scale of everyday life, climate actions such as carbon taxes, will have a differential impact on rural dwellers, due to reliance on private cars and dispersed rural geographies (Beck et al, 2016). For others, rural places may serve as a refuge from climate change, particularly fuelling seasonal or permanent movements of people escaping summer overheating in cities. Climate change and climate action, therefore, has the potential to act as a significant ‘transgressive stressor’ (Matthews, 2012) –​causing severe and intense social, environmental and economic impacts felt at every level of society and throughout social and political institutions. Within a rural context, climate change and action have the potential to remake functional geographies that will transcend rather than align with traditional administrative boundaries, forging new urban–​rural and local–​global relations. The paucity of literature in this area leads to significant climate–​societal gaps for effective environmental decision making and the emergence of significant political opposition if rural places are perceived as experiencing additional costs with limited benefits of climate-​based and decarbonisation policies. For example, Van der Ploeg (2020) charts a rising tide of populism among Dutch farmers, with that populism perceiving climate action as ‘agri-​bashing’ and anti-​rural, threatening traditional ways of life or the established order. In that context, this case study explores an example of a ‘just transition’ within a rural resource-​based economy centred on the Irish Midlands region. A just transition approach recognises that a shift to a low-​carbon society and economy has the potential to create new vulnerabilities such as job losses in some sectors, displacement of jobs, or create spatially uneven additional costs of doing business because of climate legislation and regulation and more stringent climate targets. By adopting an anticipatory approach, a just transition seeks to mitigate any negative impacts arising from decarbonisation to generate a consensus, urgency and the buy-​in needed for sustained action. The ‘just transition approach’ has been gaining considerable traction within policy debates in recent years. It is now the centrepiece of the European Union’s flagship European Green Deal (CEC, 2019), which provides a policy blueprint 78

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towards becoming the first climate-​neutral continent by 2050. This ambition is to be coupled with economic growth in the form of greening existing jobs and creating new jobs in areas such as green energy or retrofitting in the construction sector, recognising that a zero-​carbon transition can only succeed through a fair and inclusive process. As part of this agenda, the European Commission (EC) has established a Just Transition Mechanism to mobilise around €100 billion of investments in regions most likely to be transitioning between 2021 and 2027. This includes a €7.5 billion Just Transition Fund, a Just Transition scheme under ‘Invest EU’, and a public sector loan facility with the European Investment Bank. The EC has also established a ‘Platform for Coal and Carbon Intensive Regions in Transition’ to provide a collaborative dialogue for the transformation of carbonintensive regions to unlock the available funds, with the Irish Midlands recently included as a target region. The Irish Midlands’ landscape is dominated by large raised peat bogs, which have been instrumental in shaping rural life and the economy of the region. Traditionally, peat resources have been exploited in Ireland to provide a cheap energy source for home fuel, with peat cut by hand as a low-​intensity method of extraction. This process has been increasingly replaced by mechanical cutting to sell peat turf directly to households, commonly used by around 20,000 rural households nationally today, including a disproportionate amount of low-​income families (Bullock et al, 2012). However, in the Midlands, since the formation of the independent Irish state in the 1920s, raised bogs also began to be cut on an industrial scale to generate electricity (Figure 4.1). As outlined by Bullock et al (2012), by the 1940s industrial harvesting was led by a new semi-​state body, Bord na Móna, with the aim of providing a rural economic stimulus to fund an ambitious rural electrification programme (in the 1940s and 1950s) and to secure an indigenous source of energy with the construction of ten peat-burning power plants across the Irish state. Together, the power plants and the industrial harvesting of bogs provided a key source of local employment in this predominantly rural region. Three power plants operated in the Midlands. However, recent decisions by the planning appeals board (An Bord Pleanala) to refuse an application for the continuation of a power plant operation on environmental grounds has led to the recent closure of two power plants and a growing emphasis on rehabilitating bogs rather than continued extraction, leading to immediate job losses. The closure of a third power plant, scheduled for 2025 –​together with other recent closures –​will lead to a total of 180 direct job losses within the power plants. Moreover, in January 2021, Bord na Móna announced the formal end of peat extraction on all its lands, potentially leading to concentrated job losses in the Midlands’ rural communities (NESC, 2020) with around 450 jobs at risk from the cessation of extraction activities. The closure of the power plants along with the halt to peat extraction marks the end of 70 years of state-​sponsored carbon-intensive enterprises in the Midlands. The foundation of Bord na Móna along with Electricity Supply Board (ESB)owned power plants fuelled rural in-​migration in the region and the creation 79

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Figure 4.1: An industrially cutaway bog

Source: Photo supplied by Marcus Collier and reproduced with permission

of new rural settlements and communities in close proximity to the bogs and power stations, which had created long-​term and well-​paid local employment opportunities, additional seasonal employment for local farmers and also indirect jobs in retail and services (Mulvey, 2020). To address these regional challenges, a series of just transition measures were announced as part of the state budget in 2020 in a €31 million package. These included: • €6 million to establish a Just Transition Fund for the Midlands region. The ESB contributed an additional €5 million towards this fund (€11 million in total); • €20 million allocated for a deep retrofitting of social housing for energy efficiency, concentrated in the Midlands region through an areabased approach; • €5 million for a peatland rehabilitation scheme managed by the National Parks and Wildlife Service. A ‘Just Transition Commissioner’ has also been appointed to work with key stakeholders to coordinate the delivery of the Just Transition Fund along with a newly established Midlands Regional Transition Team. Their work is further supported by the EC’s Secretariat Technical Assistance for Regions in Transition (START). While still at an early stage, the initial work plan is focused on mitigating potential job losses through developing alternative forms of job creation 80

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and currently involves profiling the region, identifying economic vulnerability and developing a pipeline of potential projects for funding. Much of this work involves capacity-​building at a local scale to enable communities to bring forward their own development strategies for transition (for example, developing remote working hubs) (Mulvey, 2020). These local transition measures are also complemented by an acceleration of Bord na Móna’s decarbonisation policy through its Brown to Green Strategy, launched initially in 2018. This strategy signals the body’s shift from being a traditional peat business to a so-​called ‘climate solutions’ company (Donnellan, 2021) focused on renewable energy, peatland restoration, recycling and the low-​carbon circular economy. In November 2020, Bord na Móna launched its Peatland Restoration Plan, funded through €108 million of state funding along with €18 million of its own funds. This plan aims to restore and rehabilitate industrially e​ xcavated bogs through rewetting to restore peat-​forming conditions (see Figure 4.2 for an example) and recreating biodiverse native habitats. The plan aims to protect 109 million tonnes of stored carbon and sequester a further 3.2 million tonnes of carbon emissions on 33,000 ha of Bord na Móna-owned bogs, while also creating new recreation opportunities along new walking tracks and trails. Importantly, this restoration plan also involves employing around 350 people, most of whom had previously been employed to harvest peat for power generation. The Minister for Communications, Climate and Communications, Eamon Ryan TD, has claimed that ‘bog rehabilitation and remediation is a Figure 4.2: Example of a peat restoration project

Source: Photo supplied by Marcus Collier and reproduced with permission

81

Rural Places and Planning Figure 4.3: Bord na Móna’s Mountlucas Wind Farm, including new amenity, walking tracks and trails for local community use (Offaly, Ireland)

Source: Authors

wonderful example of Just Transition in action, where workers who previously harvested peat for power generation will now be the custodians of our bogs’ (2020, media press release). Bord na Móna is also making substantial investments in renewable energy production, with seven operational wind farms across Ireland, including two in the Midlands producing 126 megawatts of electricity. Five further wind farms are under construction or at a planning stage in the Midlands, which will produce a further 400 megawatts. While opposition to new wind energy infrastructure has been growing in Ireland, Bord na Móna’s schemes have been underpinned by a just transition approach to ensure benefits for local communities. This includes Community Gain Schemes and Near Neighbour Schemes in conjunction with the local communities, and also the creation of new amenity and recreation facilities. Access to the countryside is limited in Ireland, and new Bord na Móna wind schemes have been accompanied by new access to rural landscapes for rural residents for health and wellbeing benefits. For example, the Mountlucas Wind Farm (see Figure 4.3) in the Midlands includes 10 km of new looped trails, which have recorded over 45,000 annual visits. The new amenities are primarily used by residents, including as a venue for a weekly community park run in the nearby village of Daingean. The case study illustrates the critical importance of rethinking rural land resources within the context of climate action while emphasising partnership with local communities and just outcomes. In this case, carbon-intensive land uses and the extraction of fossil fuel has been rethought, as exploited peatlands have been revalorised as places of carbon storage and sequestration, as sites for 82

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renewable energy deployment, as potentially biodiverse places, as a resource to mitigate downstream flood risks and as places with amenity value for health and wellbeing. This has involved a blending of local and extra-​local resources and ensuring that climate actions also lead to positive rural development outcomes. This includes access to national funding, technical assistance from within the EC, the importance of scientific evidence in demonstrating the environmental value of peatlands, and the development of bottom-​up strategies for endogenous enterprise and the development of a regional green economy. Payment for ecosystem services:​Yangliu Watershed, Yunnan Province, China PES is an example of applying market-​based instruments to sustainable land management. They are defined by Daniels (2019) as financial incentives that governments and non-​governmental actors offer rural landowners or managers (such as tenant farmers) to induce desirable land use or more sustainable outcomes. Market-​based instruments are well established within rural planning practice, particularly in the US where they are frequently used as a means of farmland preservation through financial incentives and are now extensively applied internationally within conservation and watershed management programmes. Juntti (2019) positions this growth of interest in a wider governance shift that has embraced market-​based instruments to complement traditional top-​down regulatory approaches as part of a neoliberal trend to scale down the role of the state and to use the market to coordinate the actions of large groups of stakeholders. In this context, PES are increasingly used to mediate the relationship between resource managers or owners and ecosystem service recipients, such as governments (and their citizens), water companies (and their customers) or groups who benefit from protected green space or landscape assets. In essence, PES provide incentives by paying land managers (for example, farmers) to maintain or improve the provision of ecosystem services over and above what would be provided in the absence of payment (DEFRA, 2013). This may prove particularly important where the activities of landowners or managers, in search of a livelihood or to maximise profit, can lead to an erosion of ecosystem services, such as biodiversity loss through intensive farming practices. A PES scheme provides an opportunity to put a price on previously unpriced ecosystem services, such as climate regulation, habitat protection or water quality regulation and, in so doing, bring them into the wider economy (DEFRA, 2013). The basic principle is that those who provide ecosystem services should be paid for doing so by the beneficiaries. In this way, PES can serve a dual purpose: first, through incentives, encourage more sustainable land management and enhance the flows of services from well-​managed ecosystems, while second, provide a source of rural income and, therefore, a potential pathway to rural prosperity. Economic valuation of ecosystem services is an important tool in the process of developing payment schemes; however, valuations do not determine the prices paid by beneficiaries 83

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of services, with those prices subject to negotiation between beneficiaries and providers, reflecting the voluntary nature of PES schemes (Smith et al, 2006). PES can be designed in different ways. Juntti (2019), for example, distinguishes between location-specific PES –​such as watershed management –​and ecosystem services not tied to a specific location, for example, carbon sequestration. Furthermore, Juntti identifies different forms of payments arising from PES, including: • direct payments to landowners or land managers (for example, farmers), which can be from a private company or as a public subsidy payment (for example, the EU’s agri-​environmental schemes); • reciprocal benefits as a PES in k​ ind, often applied in a Global South context, or when weak institutions exist. Examples may include beneficiaries supplying in-​kind labour or other services; • indirect payments for ecosystem services, focusing on the ability of communities to derive direct and indirect income from local ecosystem provision, for example, employment within the eco-​tourism sector. In this case study, we examine China’s Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP), one of the largest land retirement and reforestation programmes in the developing world (Bennett, 2008), which has been implemented through a PES approach. The SLCP was introduced in 1999 and marked a significant shift in conservation policy in China. The stimulus for the programme was a severe Yellow River drought in 1997 and widespread and hugely damaging flooding in the Yangtze River basin in 1999 (Bennett, 2008; Kolinjivadi and Sunderland, 2012), leading to a recognition from the Chinese state that upstream farming practices on steep slopes were leading to a deterioration of the ecosystem services that forests and grasslands otherwise provide on sloping lands, particularly in relation to mitigating water runoff and soil erosion. The focus of the programme was the upper Yangtze River and Yellow River basin and enhancing watershed management through restoring and enhancing ecosystem services. Thus, the stated goal of the programme was to reduce soil erosion and desertification and increase forest cover by retiring steeply sloping and marginal land from cultivation and agricultural production. While having the major goal of reducing land degradation, the SLCP also aimed to alleviate rural poverty by stimulating alternative economic development in rural regions (König et al, 2014). A pilot programme was first introduced in 1999, and the initiative was rapidly expanded, running to 2013. A second round of the SLCP was adopted in 2014, which ended in 2020. As recorded by Bennett (2008), the SLCP is ambitious by international standards, with a target of converting 14.67 million ha of cropland to forest, of which 4.4 million ha were on land with a gradient exceeding 25 degrees, and afforesting a similar area of wasteland by 2020. This represents a 10–​20 per cent increase in China’s forest cover and a 10 per cent decrease in its cultivated area. The programme operated across more than 2,000 counties and 84

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25 provinces, with a total budget of around USD$40 billion, and involved tens of millions of rural households. The SLCP operates as a public subsidy PES scheme, paid for by the central Chinese state. Farmers are incentivised to convert marginal cropland on slopes steeper than 25 degrees into ‘ecological forests’ (with primary ecological functions) and grassland; and on slopes between 15 and 25 degrees, the intention was to convert cropland into ‘economic forests’ or grassland, including fruit orchards, chestnut trees or timber plantations (König et al, 2014). Compensation was in the form of an annual in-​kind subsidy of grain and a cash subsidy of approximately USD$43/​ha and an upfront provision of tree seedlings (Kolinjivadi and Sunderland, 2012). The duration of the compensation provided was variable depending on the type of land conversion, with two years of compensation for converting cropland to grassland, five years for conversion to economic forests (by which time farmers would benefit from the shift to new products) and eight years for conversion to ecological functions (enabling farmers to find alternative rural employment). Participation in the scheme has been voluntary, with farmers inputting into the potential choice of land management adopted. However, as Feng et al (2018) note, China has a state-​owned and collective land tenure system, with local farmers only possessing land-​use rights, and power ultimately resting with state actors. Assessments of the impacts of the SLCP have suggested a mix of positive outcomes and remaining challenges. In ecological terms, Kolinjivadi and Sunderland (2012) note its positive effect in terms of retiring extensive areas of marginal cropland; however, they also suggest that the programme lacks nuance or any fine-​g rain evidence base for targeting the restoration or enhancement of ecosystem services. For example, they highlight the over-​simplification of land-​use dynamics and hydrological relationships that have often led to an overestimation of the ability of newly forested areas to reduce soil erosion. Moreover, some land conversion has resulted in a monoculture of new tree planting that often undermines water retention properties and impacts negatively on biodiversity. A lack of technical expertise frequently resulted in poor survival rates of newly planted trees. In relation to the programme’s socio-​economic impact, Lu and Yin (2020) provide a useful summary of an extensive body of evaluative work on the programme. They highlight the widely reported positive effects of the SLCP on household income and on incentivising off-​farm labour supply, as participating households were compelled to seek alternative job opportunities as more marginal cropland was retired. The same authors also show that the SLCP brought greater benefits for lower-​income households, implying a positive effect on poverty alleviation. However, over time, particularly as compensation ended, the impacts on income growth and job creation became less significant. In some cases, Wang and Maclaren (2012) noted that some ecological forests were converted back to cropland once the compensation ended, while finding secure employment and a viable livelihood remained a considerable challenge in areas lacking resources or technical capacity to stimulate economic diversification. 85

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Here, we use a case study of the Yangliu Watershed in the Baoshan Prefecture of Yunnan Province, south-​west China, to examine the implementation of the SLCP at a local level. Yunnan is a priority target region for the SLCP, situated in a critical upper watershed of six major national and international rivers in China and South East Asia (He, 2020a), thus providing essential watershed ecosystem services to downstream agriculture and industry (He and Sikor, 2015). As outlined by He (2020a), the region is one of the poorest in China and also one of the most ethnically diverse, with 25 unique ethnic minority groups. Entrenched poverty, alongside growing ecological degradation, are key characteristics of the rural landscape in the upland communities, which at the same time are under significant pressure to find alternative income sources that align with state environmental protection priorities. A detailed profile of the Yangliu Watershed and the operation of the SLCP is provided by He (2020a; 2020b), He and Lang (2015) and He and Sikor (2015; 2017). The watershed covers an area of approximately 54 km2 situated in a subtropical zone at an elevation ranging from 1,530 m to 2,640 m above sea level. In total, five villages are located within the watershed with a population of 1,640 people in almost 430 households. The local implementation of the programme had initially centred on the seeding of pear and walnut plantations as potential new cash crops, which replaced long-​established local practices of subsistence agriculture with barley and corn at higher elevations, and rice on terraced paddy fields in lower parts of the watershed (see Figure 4.4 for a typical upland landscape with small terraces). The first round of implementing the SLCP in Yangliu was in 2002/​03, involving the participation of 229 households. However, as noted by He (2020a), similar to the wider operation of the programme, the initial local implementation was top-​down in terms of land and species selection. Early emphasis was placed on pear tree planting to provide a higher value product for new income generation (see Figure 4.5). However, this early phase of implementation failed to deliver either ecological benefits or poverty alleviation. This failure was a direct result of top-​down decision making that neglected local norms and local participation, and failed to take account of local knowledge and established farming practices (He and Lang, 2015). For example, pear production was unsuitable due to distance from markets for this remote rural community, while locals resisted the imposition of a new monoculture that, while meeting the SLCP requirements, did not conform to established practices of intercropping. These issues were compounded by a lack of technical support and training for farmers being asked to embark on a radical shift in their farming and land management practices. However, as the programme progressed locally, He (2020a and 2020b) notes that many of these top-​down implementation gaps were resolved by imaginative solutions among county officials, who adapted the programme to meet local needs, and through engaging in participatory land management approaches. This involved a shift to high-​value walnut production through the development of unique patterns of tree planting that met the state’s ecological criteria while providing 86

The land-based rural Figure 4.4: Topography of the Yangliu Watershed where the SLCP was implemented

Source: Photo supplied by Jun He and reproduced with permission

opportunities for intercropping. Drawing on local knowledge also had the benefit of enhancing nutrient cycling, which in turn enhanced ecosystem services and delivered higher yields. Thus, a more decentralised form of decision making had enabled greater scope for local adaptation (to both ecological and social conditions) and provided opportunities for local negotiation and problem-​solving. Following the evolution of its implementation locally, the outcomes in terms of land-​use and livelihood change have been impressive (He and Sikor, 2015). For example, in 2002, agricultural fields covered 2,075 ha, nearly half of the upper watershed, while nine years later agriculture had contracted to 1,597 ha or 38 per cent of the total land area, with tree cover increasing by 600 ha. Some of these land-​use changes, notably the introduction of walnut plantations, also signalled a shift from subsistence farming to the production of higher-value products. In terms of social impact, between 2002 and 2010, local incomes increased four​fold, with many households diversifying their income to non-​farming sources and the PES subsidy contributed further to local incomes. These subsidies often enabled people to diversify into non-​farming activities (including participation in labour markets in nearby towns). These diversification efforts were also supported by the local government, which initiated a programme for local economic development and training for diversification. While the SLCP has more generally been criticised for its top-​down emphasis, the successes in Yangliu demonstrate how local action 87

Rural Places and Planning Figure 4.5: New tree planting within the Yangliu Watershed

Source: Photo supplied by Jun He and reproduced with permission

can adapt PES principles and modify them to fit with local context (He, 2020a), illustrating the importance of the interplay between top-​down and bottom-​up factors to generate positive conservation and development outcomes. In this way, local contextualisation, active participation and strong local institutional capacity were important in overcoming some of the shortcomings of the top-​down PES that negatively affected implementation elsewhere. Land reform and community ownership of land assets:​Aigas Community Forest, Scotland In this chapter, we have focused on land as a fundamental resource for reimagining rural futures and as a key arena for rural planning interventions. In addition to its value as an ecological resource, land is also a key economic asset underpinning rural prosperity; however, its ownership can be concentrated in the hands of a few, owned by external interests or as with the previous case study, centralised through authoritarian state control. In this case study, we examine attempts to diversify land ownership through land reform and community control of land assets in Scotland. Internationally, land reform has a long history (see Bryden and Geisler, 2007, for an extensive review) and often reflects efforts to address the unequal distribution 88

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of land in specific national or historical contexts (such as colonialism) (McCusker and Fraser, 2008). Redistributional state-​led land reform is often bound with wider debates on ‘development’ and poverty alleviation, particularly in Global South contexts, or to placate rural unrest rooted in landlessness (Bryden and Geisler, 2007). More common today is the use of ‘market-​led agrarian reforms’ to promote land redistribution rather than direct state acquisition of land assets. For example, Fraser (2008) examines how South Africa’s land reform programme sought to address the country’s legacy of apartheid, land dispossession and racially distorted ownership of agricultural lands. This process involves voluntary negotiation and full market compensation for white landowners, but often suffers low levels of landowner participation. In this case study, we focus on land reform in the context of transfers of land assets to community-​based organisations or community land trusts. As outlined by Moore and McKee (2012), community land trusts (CLTs) have a long history, first established in the US in the late 1960s to provide marginalised communities with greater access to land and asset ownership. Interest in CLTs has grown rapidly since the early 2000s. Community management and ownership of assets represent a local response to economic, social and environmental change in rural locations (Moore, 2019). In this context, rural communities often respond to the challenges posed by service withdrawal or market failure (due to low profitability) by assuming greater responsibility for the provision of services and amenities through direct ownership. CLTs are non-​profit, community-​led organisations constituted to deliver community facilities or amenities through the ownership of land assets. There is a growing body of literature examining the role of CLTs in England in delivering affordable housing in rural communities (for example Paterson and Dunn, 2009; Moore, 2019). This evidence suggests that CLTs are effective in overcoming some of the barriers to affordable housing provision in rural England, particularly community opposition to new housebuilding in rural localities through a focus on delivering local benefits. This includes meeting local housing needs and reinvesting rental and sales income into further community projects. Gallent et al (2020, p 547) suggest that the rise of interest in CLTs ‘can be viewed as both an outlet for community frustrations and ambition’, but has often been inhibited in England by land availability and a dearth of mechanisms for bringing land into community ownership. Land reform –​and the consequent transfer of land into direct community ownership –​has been the response to these challenges in Scotland. Land reform has evolved substantially in Scotland over the last 20 years which, following the devolution of powers to a Scottish Parliament, has introduced a series of land reform Acts. The drive for reform came from an increasing awareness of the extraordinary extent of land ownership concentration that is largely feudal in origin. Based on historical land seizures and enclosures, most land in Scotland remains in large private estates. Indeed, by the mid-​1990s, it was estimated that 57 per cent of all private land was owned by one hundredth of 1 per cent of the 89

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population, with half of privately owned rural land divided among 343 individuals (Hoffman, 2013). Moreover, as outlined by Satsangi (2007, p 36), there was also growing evidence that the outcome of concentrated land ownership was often an ‘aversion to investment [by land owners] or an unconscious neglect’. Through the Land Reform Act 2003, rural communities in Scotland with populations below 10,000 were granted the right of first refusal on the sale of private estates. The Act further granted ‘crofting communities’ (comprising smallholdings of tenant farmers) the right to buy their croftlands on a collective basis even where landowners did not wish to sell (Bryden and Geisler, 2007). A Scottish Land Fund was established to assist communities with the purchase of private land. More recently, the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 (Scottish Parliament, 2016) established a ‘community right to buy for sustainable development’ which, like the right given to crofting communities, compels landowners to sell land to a community (or nominated third party) if that sale is judged to support sustainable development. This assessment role is performed by a newly established Scottish Land Commission, which is also driving a programme of land reform based on a mission of creating a Scotland where land is owned and used in ways that are fair, responsible and productive. As outlined in its 2020 Strategic Plan: ‘We have a fixed amount of land, but the list of demands on that land is ever increasing. We need to share the benefits from Scotland’s land more widely across our growing and changing population’ (Scottish Land Commission, 2020, p 4). Furthermore, the Scottish government published its Scottish Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement in 2017, which further supports a more diverse pattern of land ownership and tenure, with more opportunities for citizens to own, lease and have access to land and to empower more local communities to have the opportunity to use buildings and land in ways that contribute to their community’s wellbeing and future development. Moreover, the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 (Scottish Parliament, 2015) gave community organisations a right to request the transfer of ownership or other rights in land from public sector bodies, where they can make better use of that land. Together, these legislative changes –​along with technical support from the Scottish Land Commission and funding through the Community Land Fund –​have enabled communities throughout Scotland to engage in novel community projects, including affordable housing developments, community energy schemes and new land-​based social enterprises. In the project considered in the following, we examine the case of a community-​owned forest combined with a social enterprise to illustrate the impact of community ownership. Aigas Forest is located alongside the River Beauty around 20 km west of Inverness in the Highlands of Scotland, adjacent to the parish of Kilmorack with a population of around 2,300. Aigas Community Forest is a community-​led social enterprise responsible for managing 260 ha of forest. Previously, Aigas Forest had been managed and owned by the Forestry Commission Scotland, which had engaged in tree planting in the 1960s on land adjacent to native woodland. The forest had been neglected and poorly managed over a 20-​year period, 90

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and by the late 2000s, the Forestry Commission notified the local Kilmorack Community Council that it would be putting Aigas Forest on the market, giving the local community first refusal on the sale. An initial community meeting was held in 2009 in which there was unanimous support for the creation of a steering committee tasked to explore the possibility of purchasing the forest. With funding from the local municipality and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, an initial business plan was developed that explored the viability of community ownership and the potential operation of a social enterprise that would balance sustainable timber extraction with the delivery of social and environmental benefits for the community. Following additional community consultation, the plan was presented at a further public meeting along with an organised forest walk for local community members, and after a community ballot, the decision was taken to buy the forest. The next step was to secure funding for the purchase. The forest was independently valued at £690,000, with seedcorn funding for the feasibility study coming from the local LEADER group and the Highlands Council. By 2014, £513,000 had been secured from the Scottish Land Fund with additional funds from a charitable trust to purchase the entire site of Aigas Forest, with the community taking direct ownership in 2015. The community’s vision for the forest is stated as follows: We hope to secure a legacy from this generation to the next and hopefully to the many after that. In 100 years’ time the residents of our community, who can all see the forest from their homes, will be looking out on a massively different woodland. A woodland balanced between native species and commercial planting, criss-​crossed with paths providing easy and enjoyable access, home to a wide diversity of wildlife and producing an income not just to reinvest in the forest but also to support other activity in the glen. (Aigas Community Forest, 2014) Aigas Community Forest seeks to deliver a mix of economic, social and environmental benefits (Aigas Community Forest, 2014). In relation to economic benefits, the project aims to manage and harvest timber to provide working capital for reinvestment in future projects. This includes adding value to timber before sale through drying and chipping for fuel, with dry wood logs for direct sales for domestic home fuel and woodchips for commercial biomass and pellet boilers. There are also plans to develop on-​site eco-​accommodation and ‘glamping’ (so-​ called glamorous camping) facilities to complement the local tourism sector. In addition to generating community income from the forest, conservation is central to the community’s plans. This includes restoring native woodland and regeneration of the oldest parts of the forest while enhancing biodiversity gain and species protection (particularly the native red squirrel population). The Forestry Commission had previously managed the forest solely for commercial 91

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purposes, primarily through the close planting of Scots pine to encourage rapid growth, thereby creating a largely impenetrable forest with low biodiversity. To enhance access and create a more biodiverse resource, the adopted forest design plan (Aigas Community Forest, 2016) involves the restructuring of the pinewoods to allow additional light and to enable the reintroduction of native hardwoods and more diverse habitats (see Figure 4.6). For example, trees have been removed from natural wetlands in favour of willows, and drains have been dammed to construct new ponds that will become wildlife hubs. Additionally, south-​facing meadow slopes and banks on mineral soils have been cleared to allow gorse to seed and to fix nitrogen in the soil, thereby encouraging the growth of wild flowers and providing cover for ground-​feeding birds and other wildlife. These environmental objectives intersect with the goal of enhancing the community’s access to nature and the forest’s amenities through new access schemes, establishing new pathways (including all-​ability universal access), working with local schools to deliver environmental education (including plans to establish forest school activities) and transforming the forest into an outdoor venue for artistic and cultural events. Aigas Community Forest has now engaged a development officer with responsibility for working with the board of trustees to deliver and lead community empowerment initiatives including engagement, access, recreation and education, and research into additional income streams. Volunteers are helping to deliver local training in the forest, adding to the capacity of a trust that now comprises ten directors and a further 55 company members (see Figure 4.7). There is clear evidence of substantial community buy-​in. The establishment of Aigas Community Forest illustrated the wider transformations made possible by Scotland’s land reform. This case shows how a local community has taken a neglected and poorly managed asset, owned by a state body, and reimagined it as the basis for new economic activities, as an ecological resource and as a focal point for community activities. This initiative is possible through the advancement of a new legislative framework alongside both technical capacity-​building and access to funding that allows local communities to take direct ownership and transform land into an asset for local prosperity and wellbeing. Encouragingly, the community trust is putting land to a socially productive purpose based on sound environmental management, through recycling of income into further community-​based activities. While the overarching policy framework is of critical importance, the early successes of the Community Forest also illustrate the important interplay and mutually reinforcing relationship between different forms of capital –​in this case, the area’s stock of social capital has been the foundation or enabler, supporting the expansion of economic and environmental capital. At the same time, the establishment of a community forest has been a key driver of community engagement, voluntary activity and local leadership, further enhancing the community’s capacity and know-​how for the next phase of the forest’s development. 92

The land-based rural Figure 4.6: Restructuring the Aigas Forest from a commercial forest to a local amenity resource

Source: Photo supplied by John Graham, Aigas Community Forest and reproduced with permission

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Rural Places and Planning Figure 4.7: Volunteers working at Aigas Community Forest

Source: Photo supplied by John Graham, Aigas Community Forest and reproduced with permission

What can be drawn from these cases? Land is a coveted asset, pivotal to the private accumulation of surplus value. Many social and economic challenges are rooted in the land question –​and have been for many generations. The unequal control of land is a source of entrenched socio-​economic inequality, and the abuse of land assets by institutional and private investors –​because of poor regulatory controls and through well-​documented land grabs –​poses a very substantial threat to the wellbeing of rural communities and places around the world. But through a reassessment of the value of land –​and how it underwrites other rural capitals –​and via new mechanisms for conferring collective title and control over that land, it is possible to chart very different futures for rural places. A number of lessons emerge from this chapter. The first lesson is how in many different places land is viewed not only as an economically productive asset (that is, for agricultural production, forestry or extraction) but also as a source of broader benefits and services that can be maximised through good management. In the case of the Irish Midlands, a landscape dominated by peat bogs has traditionally been exploited as a source of fuel, first for individual household use and then industrially harvested for use in peat-burning electricity power stations. While providing a source of well-​paid and stable employment, these practices are carbon-intensive 94

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and ecologically destructive. This region is now being reimagined as a post-​carbon landscape with a focus on peatland restoration as a means of carbon storage and sequestration and as a site for renewable energy infrastructure, including wind turbines and solar farms. China’s SLCP is an ambitious example of transferring land from agricultural production as a means of providing upstream ecosystem services for watershed management, involving a significant shift in local practices from exploiting marginal land for subsistence farming towards new commercial forests or through managing so-​called ecological forests. Both the Irish and Chinese cases provide examples of landscape-​scale, nature-​based infrastructure addressing global imperatives relating to climate action and sustainable water management. The third case involved reimagining a poorly utilised rural asset, a commercial state-​owned forest, as a socially productive asset to provide new access to nature, to provide new community and public amenities, as a source of local income through a new social enterprise and through enhancing biodiversity. In reimagining the use and value of land, each of these case studies also demonstrates the potential of addressing global challenges in ways that yield local benefits. This is particularly evident with the just transition approach in the Irish case study, which involved a rapid shift from a carbon-intensive economy to providing employment based on restoring and sustainably managing peat bog resources, and on renewable energy. In this way, the increased vulnerability to potential job losses has been mitigated through investing in a sectoral shift, which is critical in ensuring political and local support for decarbonising the rural economy. Similarly, the SLCP has placed rural poverty alleviation as a key goal alongside conservation in an attempt to secure viable rural livelihoods or to generate a wider rural economic diversification (albeit with mixed success). In different ways, each of these cases challenges the outdated dualism between rural economic development and environment protection, instead demonstrating the potential synergies between sound environmental management and rural community prosperity. The three case studies also demonstrate the importance of governance experimentation and risk-​taking. This includes the use of market-​based PES schemes for conservation, representing a significant shift in China’s environmental governance, direct community ownership of land assets (Scotland) and more entrepreneurial forms of rural governance in Ireland, involving new regional partnerships, an establishment of a Just Transition Commissioner, along with more established rural development methodologies of community empowerment and capacity-​building. All three cases are influenced by wider top-​down shifts or steers, although decentralisation of decision making is of critical importance. For example, some counties and provinces implementing the SLCP had limited success when reliant solely on top-​town decision making, with its limited knowledge of local contextual factors. Within the local case study of Yangliu Watershed, local council and forestry officials increasingly experimented with community engagement and negotiation as a means of designing and delivering more targeted interventions (in landscape terms), drawing on traditional farming practices and knowledge, 95

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and capacity-​building, both in terms of new land management practices and in rural diversification. The case study of land reform of Scotland demonstrates the intense relationship between social capital and reappraising the rural resource base. While supported by wider land reform changes, including legislation and funding structures, the Aigas Community Forest also displays considerable community confidence, skills and leadership in taking direct ownership of a land asset. Moreover, this asset is now the focus of further community building efforts (for example community engagement, events and so on) and a source of community income for further reinvestment. This raises challenges for rural places with lower social capital resources and the potential for uneven outcomes from community ownership initiatives. Finally, the case studies point to the need for a much more ambitious agenda for planning interventions for land-​based resources in rural places beyond narrow land-​use regulation. This includes taking a holistic approach to the land-​use system and to developing an integrated land policy that recognises the societal, economic and environmental benefits we derive from the sustainable use and management of land, and which gives communities opportunities to positively influence land-​use outcomes. Planning for rural places should be rooted in an understanding of the multifunctional value of land, with that understanding then guiding all decision making.

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The social and cultural rural Unpacking the capitals The critical development in Bourdieu’s (1986) theory of capital was his conceptualisation of new and distinct forms of capital, transmutable with economic capital and associated with higher positions in social life and with social class. In essence, social and cultural capitals are rooted in economic capital, in wealth advantage, but are also convertible into economic capital –​in many complex ways. As such, their presence and their form provide a means of understanding power structures across any social field. Specifically, social capital is (Bourdieu, 1986, p 21): the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition –​or in other words, to membership in a group –​which provides each of its members with the backing of the collectively-​owned capital, a ‘credential’ which entitles them to credit, in the various senses of the word. While no single definition is given for cultural capital, Bourdieu theorises its different components as a way to explain the complex ways cultural capital is also infused into power structures (1986, p 17): Cultural capital can exist in three forms: in the embodied state, i.e., in the form of long-​lasting dispositions of the mind and body; in the objectified state, in the form of cultural goods (pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments, machines, etc.), which are the trace or realization of theories or critiques of these theories, problematics, etc.; and in the institutionalized state, a form of objectification which [for example educational qualifications] confers entirely original properties on the cultural capital which it is presumed to guarantee. Social and cultural capital differ from each other in the way, for example, that social capital refers to privileged group memberships while cultural capital is practically ‘possessed’ by individuals (and in the Bourdieusian sense transferred primarily through family association). Cultural capital is the ‘passport’ for entry into elite networks and a path, therefore, to social capital accumulation (see Mohan and Mohan, 2002). However, at different scales (for example individual, social groups, socio-​spatial communities), these capitals become ‘entwined’ (Throsby, 1999). 97

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Both of these forms of capital have received considerable attention in academic debates across various disciplines (including planning and rural studies) and have been used to explain power asymmetries in processes of community development (Lee and Shaw, 2016). Although Bourdieu never linked his theory of capital with questions of place (Cresswell, 2002), the language of his text leaves room for different interpretations and further developments (Siisiäinen, 2003), which has also resulted in social capital becoming a ‘chaotic concept’ (Fine, 2001, p 438). Social and cultural capitals are invariably present in formulations of ‘place capitals’ developed by other authors (see Table 1.1 in Chapter 1; also: Castle, 1998; Bosworth and Turner, 2018). In this book, we have elected to bring them together in a single chapter, not because they are indistinguishable but rather because they are so interconnected in the context of place-​making that it is difficult to conceive of one without the other. Robert Putnam’s characterisation of social capital as being constituted in networks, norms and trust (1995a, p 664–​5) has become a principal reference for studies of social capital in place. For Putnam, social capital has positive effects both on individuals and their socio-​spatial communities (Mohan and Mohan, 2002), but it is easily eroded. The decline of voluntary associations in the US –​ mechanisms of social capital accumulation –​was presented as a threat to American social capital (Putnam, 1995b). He also sought to quantify how social connections or disconnections, and experiences, build or erode social capital: for example, every ten additional minutes of commuting, due to the increased separation between work and home, was said to result in a 10 per cent decline in social capital (Putnam, 2000). Putman has been extremely influential in positioning social capital at the centre of a wide range of public policy debates (including planning and rural policy). At the same time, however, his work has also been criticised for instrumentalising social capital, disconnecting it from wider power dynamics and its transmutable relationship with economic capital –​as originally theorised by Bourdieu (DeFilippis, 2001). Indeed, Fine (2002, p 799) has been fiercely critical of what he views as the ahistorical and asocial appropriation of social capital, by Putnam and others, and the ‘degradation of scholarship’ this represents. Many social scientists accept the ‘place-​ness’ of social capital, arguing that its application should be at the social-​spatial rather than the individual level (Portes, 1996). Notions of a ‘geography of social capital’ have also been widely debated in the literature (Mohan and Mohan, 2002; Naughton, 2013) with some community spaces viewed as crucial to the formation of social capital (these include ‘interactional’ spaces as discussed in Chapter 2 in the case study examining Kaniva, Australia). Ideas of the place-​ness of social capital are bound up with the material and symbolic construction of places –​and with the view that social capital is generated in a contested terrain of power relationships (Lager et al, 2015). The rural is also a political and contested space, interacting with and incubating social capital in ways that remind us that the rural is not just a neutral descriptor of space, but rather fused with meaning and practices that build or 98

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erode social capital. Paraphrasing Massey, we could argue that the rural ‘is not just an outcome; it is also part of the explanation’ (1984, p 4) as to how social capital works and what it achieves. Social capital is fundamental to understanding rural community development because ‘it places emphasis on the will and capacity of people to solve problems and improve their lives in a joint enterprise’ (Flora, 1998, p 503). Flora (1998) reviews the various ways that social scientists have elaborated the idea of social capital and, from a rural community perspective, advanced the concept of entrepreneurial social infrastructure as a driver of development (that is, entrepreneurial in the sense of representing ‘collective action for community development’) and as a container for questions of agency, equality and inclusion in the rural development process. There have been many similar attempts to connect rural development theory and practice to questions of social capital accumulation or depletion and a diversity of interpretations (see Falk and Kilpatrick, 2000; Lee et al, 2005; Shucksmith, 2000; Teilmann, 2012) that nonetheless ‘share the idea that social capital involves social interaction/​connection’ (Phillips, 2016, p 222). For Bourdieu (1986), cultural capital –​in its various guises but especially in its embodied forms (for example mannerisms, confidence, tastes and accent) –​ confers social status on the middle and upper classes and is transmitted from one generation to the next (see also Waters, 2006). Cultural capital is transmuted from economic capital with the intergenerational transfer of wealth being a source of class reproduction. On a wider canvas, Throsby (1999) reviews the different forms of cultural capital from an economic perspective and considers the various ways its theorisation interlinks with economic capital and its impact on the reconceptualisation and growth of cultural policies that seek to extend the role of culture in development studies beyond art and heritage policy. For Throsby, culture and creativity represent important sub-​components of cultural capital, which are discussed further in what follows. Cultural capital, expressed at the individual level through skills and knowledge owned by individuals, resembles what is called human capital in economics and development studies (Throsby, 1999). Human capital is present in the different assemblages of place capitals introduced in Chapter 1, encompassing the education, skills and related capacities (Castle, 1998; Courtney and Moseley, 2008; Emery and Flora, 2006) that Bourdieu (1986) might have labelled cultural or symbolic capitals. Throsby (1999) seeks to expand the notion of cultural capital to embrace assets, tangible and intangible, that embody the practices and the artefacts of culture: • tangible assets: including buildings, structures, sites and locations endowed with cultural significance (commonly referred to as cultural heritage) and artworks and artefacts existing as private goods, such as paintings, sculptures and other objects; • intangible assets: including ideas, practices, beliefs, traditions and values which ‘serve to identify and bind together a given group of people’ (Throsby, 1999, p 7). 99

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Cultural (and symbolic) capital –​as a form of capital that is linked to social status and reputation –​has long been identified in rural places. In the works of Burton, for example (Burton, 2004; Burton and Paragahawewa, 2011), it is cultural capital that underpins farmers’ rejection of agri-​environmental schemes that threaten or erode farming skills and practices that represent important cultural praxis. Cultural capital frames the notion of a ‘good farmer’, distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable practices (Sutherland and Darnhofer, 2012; Saxby et al, 2018). The remainder of this chapter is divided into three parts. In the next part, we attempt to unpack the ‘sub-​components’ or identifiable facets of these capitals: how they interact, and particularly why they matter in relation to our primary aim –​to understand how these capitals might work to ‘make’ better rural places. This is followed by three case studies that not only illustrate the interlinkages between these two forms of capital but also point to new ways of understanding the remit and potential of rural planning. The presented cases are as follows: first, a review of the co-​production of rural place through an art festival that aimed to address rural depopulation in Japan. Second, an investigation is presented of the role of social capital and networks in performing resilience during the COVID-​19 pandemic in rural Spain. And third, an exploration of queer lives in the countryside and wider LGBT experiences in Nova Scotia, Canada, which analyses narratives of inclusion and intersectionality in rural planning. The chapter ends by drawing out key lessons from the case studies and the contribution made by these place capitals to the co-​production of better rural places.

Exploring the sub-​components It is impossible to provide an exhaustive list of all the sub-​components of social and cultural capital that contribute to ‘making’ good rural places. Instead, we highlight here only those sub-​components that we consider critical for the practice of rural planning –​and accept that other attributes play important roles within rural communities. As such, we note the following categories: (1) social networks; (2) community capacity and active citizenship; (3) inclusive places; and (4) creativity and cultural practices. Social networks represent a particularly compelling expression of social capital, which, together with social norms, facilitate ‘collective action for mutual benefit’ (Woolcock, 1998, p 155). Networks are vital conduits for trust formation and information sharing (Fisher, 2013). However, they can promote either inclusion or exclusion (Flora, 1998; Portes, 1998), sometimes exhibiting a ‘darker side’ in the ‘form of lock-​in, path-​dependency, or entrenchment of incumbent power, all of which can depress opportunities for sharing knowledge or other resources’ (King et al, 2019, p 125). Social networks and the power dynamics among their actors have been central in framing new and ‘ideal’ models of rural development (see Lowe et al, 1995; Murdoch, 2000). Drawing on Murdoch (2000), the role of both ‘vertical’ networks (that is, connecting rural places with external actors, networks, institutions and 100

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markets) and ‘horizontal’ networks (that is, links within a rural locality) are critical to place-​based rural development. This thesis is further advanced by Van der Ploeg and colleagues (2008, p 2) who underscore the importance of a complex rural web as a central force in shaping desired development trajectories: The web that we refer to is the pattern of interrelations, interactions, exchanges and mutual externalities within rural societies … In short: the web interlinks activities, processes, people and resources and, simultaneously, it shapes the ways in which they unfold … The development of such a web, contributes to the performance of regional rural economies. Similarly, Ray (2001) flags the potential of social networks and the agency of rural communities to initiate and build networks for their own advancement, accepting that these networks are ideally conglomerations of both internal and external actors (commonly labelled ‘extra-​local’), implying regional or national groupings –​ that may link to urban and global actors. Importantly, this perspective takes into particular account the complex linkages among all members of these networks, rather than simply the most powerful actors (Murdoch, 2000). The emphasis on vertical and horizontal networks relates to the collaborative production of knowledge that needs to be reflexive, and the possibility of transferring lessons on place-​based rural development across different cultural or rural contexts (Gkartzios and Lowe, 2019) which are frequently multi-​scalar and multi-​sectoral, embracing new urban–​rural and local–​global relationships (Scott and Murray, 2009). Community capacity and active citizenship broadly refer to working with the communities of place in co-​producing plans and strategies. The disputed nature of community is of perennial concern across many branches of social science. In rural studies, we find Liepins (2000) particularly helpful, because she has offered a view of communities in production, as dynamic and constantly evolving ‘social collective[s]‌of great diversity’ (2000, p 27), which comprise people, meanings, practices and spaces. Liepins puts people at the centre of any community –​not only ‘local’ people but also external actors and groups able to exert influence over meanings, practices and spaces. Meanings refers to explorations ‘into the ways people discursively create sets of shared (and/​or contested) meanings about their connections and identities’ (2000, p 31). These meanings are not universally held by all members of a community, and they can be disputed across different stakeholders (for example residents, lobby groups and policy makers). Practices refers to the material manifestations, both formal and informal, of community interactions. Examples include the exchange of goods and services at a local store, the operation of a local government board or the creation of a social group. Spaces (and structures) refers to the physical or symbolic sites where community can be ‘exercised and enacted’. These can include, for example, schools, libraries, the village hall, pubs and also metaphorical spaces such as newspapers and the internet. Liepins’ approach provides a framework for understanding change 101

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across all these elements, ensuring that communities are seen as dynamic and heterogeneous rather than as singular entities with a uniformity of values and visions. These components of community can also be viewed as aspects of social capital, referencing the ways that communities interact, construct meaning and identity and also disagree about development paths. Liepins assigns a dynamic to community which is familiar with the practice of rural planning. In discussing a rural community in the making, ideas of active citizenship, community action (for example through voluntarism) and activism imply a community ‘rich’ in social capital and with a capacity to mobilise resources and skills, to tap into information and external funding, and to successfully shape development outcomes. For example, older, retired and wealthier residents in rural communities may support rural development outcomes through volunteering and other free-​of-​ charge activities (see Glasgow and Brown, 2008; 2012). But such practices can be exclusionary at the same time. Yarwood (2010), for example, observes how rural community policing schemes (including ‘neighbourhood watch’ projects) score well in terms of civic engagement and activism (signalling high levels of social capital) but also preserve exclusionary practices by rural elites (typically white middle-​ class men) who are given power to shape and police rurality on their own terms. Here, social capital is a source of privilege and exclusion at the community level (Portes and Landolt, 1996). Similar problems arise when communities are obliged to compete with one another for limited rural development funding. The white middle-​class communities secure the funding and those places with fewer resources and less of the networked social capital that provides privileged access to central funds lose out (Bosworth et al, 2016). A more complete understanding of the role of social capital in rural development needs to take account of the impacts wrought by these political and power structures (Lee et al, 2005). Inclusive places and inclusivity together provide another critical dimension of the social and cultural rural. Debates in this domain take ‘a critical view on which rural residents and needs are acknowledged and [which are] not’ (Bock, 2018, p 10), focusing on underlying processes of social inclusion and exclusion. Social exclusions are rooted in place and in the denial of full citizenship, limited access to services and constraints that impede individuals’ participation in decision making (Shucksmith, 2000; Shortall, 2008). The drivers of rural social exclusion, and inclusion, have been considered by Shucksmith (2018), whose corollary of the ‘good countryside’ is a rural place that is vulnerable to social exclusion because of restricted career opportunities, the closure of key services and gentrification arising from economic restructuring. While Bourdieu did not move beyond class struggles in his conceptualisation of capitals, social scientists have extended discussions of social class to embrace inequalities and power asymmetries that centre on race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age and disability (physical/​mental), while also seeking to spatialise such inequalities and view them as critical planning challenges in both urban and rural places (see Bock, 2018; Satsangi and Gkartzios, 2019). Recent work in this field includes: gendered constructions of rural places and gender inequalities in participative rural policy 102

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(Shortall, 2008; Bock, 2015); whiteness and the countryside in Western contexts (Neal and Agyeman, 2006) alongside racism in rural areas and anti-​racist policy development (de Lima, 2003; Chakraborti, 2010); the experience of disability in the countryside linked to service provision (Pini et al, 2017; Soldatic and Johnson, 2017); exclusions of both older and younger people, and ageism in rural planning discourse (Shucksmith, 2004; Jentsch, 2006; Bevan, 2019); and homophobia and heterosexism in rural lived experiences and within planning practice (Dominey-​ Howes et al, 2014; Yamashita et al, 2017). Because identities can be multiple, fluid and overlapping (McCall, 2005; Nash, 2011), so too are lived experiences of the rural and potential exclusions. This means that rural planning questions need to be approached through intersectional frames of analysis (for example Walker et al, 2019). This exciting field of research is grounded in anti-​racist, feminist and queer theory, addressing the need to challenge embedded biases and exclusions perpetuated by the ‘idea and practice’ of planning. Sectarianism, racism, sexism, transphobia and the heteronormative construction of community and family are well ​embedded in planning practice in many societies (Frisch, 2002; Sandercock and Forsyth, 2007; Forsyth, 2011; Flint-​Ashery, 2015; Doan, 2016). This reality presents us with important challenges that centre on the idea of planning –​and on planning scholarship and epistemological processes –​and on planning practice, including how professional planners and others address embedded bias. Creativity and cultural practices relate to a significant body of work that valorises culture in rural place development. Drawing on Throsby (2008), culture can either be defined in an ‘anthropological sense’ –​suggesting shared ways of life, values and customs –​or in a ‘functional sense’, focusing on artistic practice and expression (Throsby, 2008, p 219). Creativity on the other hand, following Throsby, refers to the expression of imagination, the generation of novel ideas and new ways of understanding the world. The fluidity of terms results from the way that ‘culture’ has been captured for economic purposes, with ‘cultural assets’ being mobilised to attract the so-​called ‘creative class’ or mobile capital. Such ideas have been well r​ ehearsed in metropolitan contexts, giving rise to new ways of thinking about innovation and implementing, for instance, urban regeneration projects, including through art-​led regeneration (Garcia, 2004; Mooney, 2004; Grodach, 2011) that is often linked to gentrification and the application of normative and neoliberal narratives to art and culture (Peck, 2005; Mathews, 2010; Lees and Melhuish, 2015). Our view is that this sub-​component emphasises the broader exploration of creativity and culture, extending to artistic practice, as a contributor to ‘better rural places’. While efforts to valorise place-​based cultural assets as part of new narratives of rural development are not new (see, for example, Bell and Jayne, 2010; Vik and Villa, 2010; Blichfeldt and Halkier, 2014), the context-​specific place of creativity, culture and art as pathways to development have been gaining increasing traction in academic literature and practice (Crawshaw and Gkartzios, 2016; Scott et al, 2018b; Argent, 2019; Saratsi et al, 2019). Thus, rural areas have been steadily moving out of the ‘silent majority of non-​creative places’ (Rantisi et al, 2006, p 103

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1794). Indeed, Richard Florida –​the principal proponent of the ‘creative city’ thesis observes that: The arts in rural places are not just a by-​product of the scenery; they play a key role in spurring the innovation that ultimately leads to economic development and rising living standards. The myth that urban areas are creative and rural areas are not is just that: a myth. (2018, np) Woods (2012), in discussing rural creativity in endogenous and place-​based terms, cautions against uncritically adapting ‘urban models’ of creativity to rural contexts, and observes how rural areas perform creativity on their own terms, from the ‘bottom-​up’. Rural creativity, according to Woods, stems from the way in which rural places have needed to cope with significant social and environmental changes, including rural restructuring and the climate challenge. They have an inherent leaning towards creativity which is evidenced in adaptive development strategies, extending from farm diversification, through new place-​based products, to alternative tourism ventures. They have also displayed significant creativity in the way they have attracted young people back to the countryside, promoting the role of the ‘creative class’ in entrepreneurialism, including various forms of microenterprises as well as artists. Woods also draws attention to the importance of creativity in the multiple forms of artistic expression that rural communities use to articulate a sense of identity, for example through storytelling, folk festivals or other media –​which are frequently amplified during times of economic and social crisis as rural areas assert their identity and continuing sense of place (Nerlich and Döring, 2005; Gkartzios and Scott, 2015). It was noted in Chapter 1 that artistic expression and practice in and about rural places has been gaining momentum in recent years, while previous cases noted the role of artistic practice in place reappreciation (for example in the Norwegian case study in Røros in Chapter 3, or in the process of valuing landscapes in Chapter 4). The countryside has become both a place to co-​produce art (Mitchell et al, 2004; Argent, 2019) and an important theme for artistic expression, with questions of rurality –​livelihoods, struggles and futures –​approached through artistic practice (see Tarlo and Tucker, 2019; Gkartzios and Crawshaw, 2019; Crawshaw, 2019). This shift provides both an important window onto rural lives and places (Gkartzios et al, 2019) and an opportunity to strengthen the role of culture and artistic practice in the co-​production of ‘better places’, which is the focus of the first of our presented cases.

Rural art festivals, social networks and resilience, and queer lives in the country Art and place-​based development:​the Echigo-​Tsumari Art Triennale in Niigata, Japan Woods’ (2012) reflections on creativity suggest that rural areas are not only dynamic but also possess inherent cultural place-​based capital which can support social and 104

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economic development. An example of the synergies between cultural and social capital, and particularly the adoption of artistic practice –​which is site-​specific and place-​based in collaboration with local and extra-​local networks seeking the improvement of rural places –​are the art festivals regularly held in rural Japan. In response to severe rural population decline and ageing (Yoshikazu, 1985; Onitsuka and Hoshino, 2018), state-​led regeneration efforts have embraced art initiatives and specifically, art festivals organised in remote, rural and generally marginal areas. Contradicting the popular and dominant urban imagery of Japan (Favell, 2015), the largest and most acclaimed outdoor art festival in the country is the Echigo-​Tsumari Art Triennale (or Art Field) (Demetriou, 2009; Maerkle, 2017; Whatley, 2018): Every three years since its inauguration in 2000, the Echigo-​Tsumari Art Triennale brings together art, ecology, and communities in the Echigo-​Tusmari region in Niigata province, Japan. Each edition results in a large number of site-​specific works of art installed in rice fields and empty farmhouses and schools in the satoyama landscape, as the region’s border zone landscape of cultivated, arable land between forested mountains is called. (Kitagawa, 2015, p 9) The art festival draws on the ‘anti-​urban philosophy’ (Favell, 2015) of art director, Fram Kitagawa, of the Tokyo-​based Art Front Gallery, a private art gallery. In response to the urban-​normative discourse of the ‘creative city’, Kitagawa imagined and realised a way that creativity, culture and artistic practice can coalesce in support of the development of rural places (Favell, 2015; Kitagawa, 2015). The festival does not make explicit reference to rural areas per se, as terms around rurality and the countryside can be either derogatory or too formal in the Japanese language –​and hence easily dismissed (Gkartzios et al, 2020). Indeed, the place reference most commonly employed in the festival’s communication channels is the popular Japanese notion of satoyama, which implies a special relationship and co-​dependency between nature and society (Favell, 2015; Machotka, 2018). This contrasts with the rural-​nature/​urban-​society binary that can be implicit in Western discourse (see, for example, Murdoch and Lowe, 2003). Satoyama refers to the area between the mountains and human settlements, a buffer zone of co-​ dependent, land-​use activities that merge into a complex but cohesive system: a ‘land-​use mosaic’ that has been created and sustained by human activity within the parameters of the natural environment (Takeuchi, 2000; Takeuchi et al, 2003). The festival acknowledges not only those dependencies between nature and society but also actively promotes the concept of satoyama by presenting humans as part of nature (and, vice versa, nature as the result of human activity) and imagining ways of bringing the Japanese ‘back to the countryside’ (Favell, 2015), countering an urban bias in Japanese cultural discourse that presents rurality as something parochial and subordinate (Gkartzios et al, 2020). As such, the festival’s philosophy offers support to rural planning that acknowledges and mobilises various forms of place capital (Echigo-​Tsumari Art Field, 2019): 105

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Local people here have been exploring how to engage with the inseparable relationship between human beings and nature while managing the tight-​knitted communities. This is the origin of the concept ‘human beings are part of nature’, which has become the overarching concept for every program. Regional development in the Echigo Tsumari region is advanced with the aim to present a model for how people can relate to nature. The festival is organised every three years in the prefecture of Niigata –​a marginal mountainous region of approximately 70,000 people that over the years has experienced depopulation and ageing as well as economic and political decline (Kitagawa, 2015). Indeed, the backdrop of such interventions in rural places is that villages in Japan have been literally dying (Yoshikazu, 1985), with Murakami and colleagues (2009) describing Japan as both ‘super-​ageing’ and ‘super-​urbanised’. The festival aims to capture the place-​based sensibilities of the region and support rural development through cultural production, which in turn is expected to support the visitor economy and the wider development of the region, for example by attracting young people to live there (Favell, 2015). Over the years, the festival has involved ‘numerous international figures, countless Japanese artists, and thousands of volunteers’ (Favell, 2017, p 5). More importantly perhaps, the art that is showcased in the festival might be described as ‘socially engaged’, ‘participatory’ or as a ‘new genre’ in which artists are less concerned with ‘making’ physical work and focused rather on engaging socio-​ spatial communities (Bishop, 2012; Gkartzios and Crawshaw, 2019). However, Favell (2017) differentiates the Japanese experience (locally termed as ‘art projects’) from Western socially engaged art forms, as the Japanese artists rarely engage with art theory discourses. Thus, Japan’s approach is more akin to ‘public art’ projects where artists offer answers to posed questions and engage intensely with local communities. The priority of the organisers is to ensure that artists appreciate and connect with the local context, and therefore with its place capitals, and develop artworks with the communities in place, often installed in community spaces or private agricultural lands. For example, in the competitive section of the festival, where artists submit their proposals for consideration, this approach to valuing local capitals is evident: ‘The chosen artworks are expected to highlight the unique history and culture of Echigo-​Tsumari region and feature distinctive and abundant nature that has the power to raise awareness of Echigo-​Tsumari internationally’ (Echigo-​Tsumari Art Field, 2020). The governance of the festival involves both local and extra-​local networks. Funding comes from regional and local government, and private sponsors, across a wide partnership (Klien, 2010). A new institute was created in 2008 to manage the festival and the artworks during and between the staged festivals. Responsibility for the execution of the festival rests with the Echigo-​Tsumari Satoyama Collaborative Organisation, a non-​profit organisation which is locally​ based and works between the Tokyo-​based Art Front Gallery, the local community 106

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and local government. The organisation and execution of the festival, rooted in the Niigata region, offers an example of neo-​endogenous or networked rural development (as discussed in Chapter 1) as it enables various actors (both internal and external to the local community), across different scales, to collaborate in the promotion of the wider rural area. As in all networks, this is also a terrain of power politics, hierarchies and imbalances. Artists are subordinate to funders and need to work within fixed parameters and towards goals set by others, which are judged relevant to the rural population (Favell, 2017). Since 2000, seven editions of the festival have taken place (the eighth edition was scheduled for the summer of 2021 but was postponed due to the COVID-​19 pandemic) culminating in more than 1,000 art-​led interventions in an area of 760 km2. As per the philosophy of the festival, the artworks are characterised not only by civic engagement but also by their connection with the natural environment (for example, of artworks conversing with the natural and social environment, see Kitagawa, 2015; Klien, 2010) (see Figure 5.1). The site-​specific artworks are usually exhibited in outdoor spaces, and sometimes in ‘lost’ community places, such as closed schools (11 so far; see research examples by Boven, 2016; Boven et al, 2017), abandoned houses (25 so far) and other spaces including private land and rice paddies. They are also displayed in formal gallery or art museum spaces in the region, which have been purpose-​built to support the festival since its inception (nine so far). These new physical spaces, available for other community uses, are another outcome of the festival’s 20-​year history (see also Figure 5.2). The festival, despite its scale, unique ambition and longevity, is relatively unnoticed in global (and characteristically anglophone) scholarly work, which can be attributed to the Western-​centric perspectives prevailing in both contemporary art and also rural studies (Favell, 2015; 2017; Gkartzios et al, 2020). It is difficult to make direct links between artistic practice and socio-​economic impact (Lees and Melhuish, 2015). This is also true of the Echigo-​Tsumari Art Field (Asai, 2019), although the few studies that have been undertaken suggest a supportive link. To offer some preliminary insights, Machotka (2018) discusses the impact of the festival in economic terms, for example through the growth of visitors to the area. She also notes how the festival successfully avoids confining its benefits to its opening period, as the festival commissions permanent as well as temporary installations (also from high-profile artists such as Marina Abramovic, Yayoi Kusama, James Turrell, Antony Gormley and Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, see also Figures 5.2 and 5.3) and supports year-​round events. Yahata (2019) observes not only changes in the local and visitor economy during the festival but also reports on the importance of such artistic processes from the community perspective, referring to the community becoming ‘alive’, the creation of new friendships and initiatives among residents, and the promotion of local culture which is particularly valued by residents (see also Klien, 2010). Leung (2019), drawing on qualitative interviews with farmers, notes how farmers value the festival’s artworks (usually placed in their fields) through their own interpretations and experiences with them. Problems reported refer to issues of funding due to local 107

Rural Places and Planning Figure 5.1: ‘For Lots of Lost Windows’ (2006) by Akiko Utsumi (permanent installation; Niigata, Japan)

Source: Authors

government budget constraints, management difficulties (for example the festival is held 51 days every three years but facilities need to be maintained continuously) and conflicts, particularly in the early editions of the festival when it proved difficult to convince members of the wider network (especially policy makers 108

The social and cultural rural Figure 5.2: ‘Tsumari in Bloom’ (2003) by Yayoi Kusama (permanent installation; Niigata, Japan)

Note: At the back, the Matsudai Nohbutai Centre is visible, a new cultural facility, designed by MVRDV architects, which seeks an ‘exchange between urban cities and rural regions’ (through workshops, events, selling local products and so on). Source: Authors

and farmers) that an art festival would deliver positive benefits for a marginal area (Asai, 2019; Kitagawa, 2015). More research is of course needed on the power dynamics across the network –​ between artists, policy makers, art professionals and community representatives –​ and what this festival means for the everyday experience of rural inhabitants (see also Jesty, 2017; Borggreen and Platz, 2019). Still, it would be myopic not to acknowledge the novelty and success of the festival, merging multiple place-​based 109

Rural Places and Planning Figure 5.3: ‘The Rice Fields’ (2000) by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov (permanent installation; Niigata, Japan)

Source: Authors

capitals with a pragmatic and almost emotional concern for the development of the region –​Kitagawa himself was born in Niigata, which also explains the original choice of the region for the festival’s first edition. 110

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Echigo-​Tsumari is not the only festival supporting place-​based development in Japan (Klien, 2010). Fram Kitagawa and Art Front Gallery are organising a series of other similar festivals (in terms of conception and governance) but in diverse rural locations: Setouchi Triennale (taking place across the islands of the Seto sea, including the famous ‘art island’ in Japan, Naoshima), Oku-​Noto Triennale (at the tip of the remote peninsula of Noto in western Japan facing the East/​Japan Sea), Northern Alps Art Festival (located at the foot of the 3,000 m Japanese Alps) and Ichihara Art x Mix (in the suburban areas of Ichihara, a satellite city to Tokyo). All of these festivals follow the same principles as Echigo-​Tsumari, promoting human-​nature relationships in combination with socially engaged artistic practice, and aiming to address the ‘centralization and homogenisation of space’ that affects metropolitan Japan (Kitagawa, 2020). They also co-​exist with new partnerships and new initiatives for regional socially engaged artistic interventions (ranging from festivals to residencies) that are now taking place everywhere outside of Japanese cities (see also Favell, 2017; Qu and Cheer, 2020; Sarale et al, 2020). COVID-​19, social networks and rural resilience:​Sierra Norte de Madrid, Spain In this case study, we explore the role of social capital and networks in building rural resilience in the face of the COVID-​19 global pandemic. The global health crisis was sparked by the emergence of a new coronavirus in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, and soon spread to other countries and continents. The World Health Organization declared a global pandemic in March 2020. For Matthews (2020), the pandemic provides an example of a rare event that causes severe and intense social, environmental and economic impacts felt at every level of society and throughout all social and political institutions. From a planning or place-​based perspective, the pandemic is not only a severe health crisis, but it also represents a significant economic and social rupture with uneven spatial consequences (Scott, 2020). Much of the early literature on this topic has focused on the urban scale, exploring the risks between urban density and contagion (for example Hamidi et al, 2020) or the short-​and long-​term mobility changes that may impact retail, the demand for commercial space or residential choices (Grant, 2020). Attention to big urban questions initially eclipsed concern for rural places. However, emerging evidence suggests that many rural places were among the most vulnerable to COVID-​19 health risks, often related to the underlying health characteristics of rural populations (Mueller et al, 2021). For example, Henning-​Smith (2020), in discussing the rural US context, notes that rural areas have older populations on average than urban areas, with more underlying health conditions and fewer economic resources. Also, a high share of the rural labour force is in essential occupations (for example agriculture, food processing) and find it difficult or impossible to work from home (OECD, 2020b). Moreover, COVID-​19 vulnerability also intersects with long-standing socio-​spatial inequalities between rural and urban places, manifest in limited access to health care services and the absence of secondary or even primary health care (Ranscombe, 2020). A report 111

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by the UK’s Nuffield Trust reveals that COVID-​19 has had a relatively bigger impact on rural compared to urban health trusts. This is because of existing staff and resource constraints, which have made it difficult for rural trusts to respond to increasing demand for their services (Palmer and Rolewicz, 2020). The economic and social impacts of COVID-​19 on rural places reflect existing and uneven socio-​spatial inequalities. For example, Pitkänen et al (2020) note how some rural places have become privileged refuges for affluent second homeowners escaping the city during various lockdowns. These movements have often been met with resentment from local populations (for example Gallent and Hamiduddin, 2021) due to the risks of further spread of the virus and the overloading of already stretched health care services. National media have also been reporting on increases in rural housing demand (for example Terzon, 2020) as more people work from home and seek more spacious properties, with larger gardens and the potential to convert garages or outbuildings to home offices. On the plus side, a pandemic-​ induced urban exodus to the countryside has the potential to attract new people, skills and investment to rural places. But on the other hand, new demands on a constrained housing stock may reduce the affordability of rural homes and exacerbate existing market exclusions. The repatterning of rural housing markets is likely to present a critical challenge to many rural areas long after the pandemic has subsided. It is also the case that rural tourist economies have been severely impacted by the pandemic, having faced a huge fall in visitor numbers and the cancellation of important festivals and events. Likewise, the rural retail sector, comprising a high proportion of sole traders in many rural places, has also taken a significant hit (Phillipson et al, 2020). These sole traders are less likely than the chain stores in urban settings to have an online presence –​or be able to develop that presence at speed. For these reasons, rural businesses tend to bounce back more slowly than urban ones. This was the case after the 2008 global economic crisis (Faulkner et al, 2019; Mueller et al, 2020) and is likely to be the same after COVID-​19. The pandemic will more widely impact affective wellbeing among rural populations, with older people experiencing greater isolation (Henning-​Smith, 2020), and younger people suffering a lack of interaction with their peers. These problems can of course be accentuated in some rural areas by poorer broadband services; the digital divide may have added to the sense of isolation and made it difficult for some families to access essential services. Spain was one of the most affected countries during the first wave of COVID-​ 19 (March–​June 2020) as the epicentre of the health crisis shifted from China to Europe, and the country also experienced an earlier and more pronounced second wave than other European countries (The Lancet Public Health, 2020). The economic fall-​out has also been severe, with widespread disruption to the country’s critical tourism sector and disproportionate impacts on labour-​intensive sectors (for example, food processing), contact-intensive services (for example personal services, arts and entertainment) and on agriculture, because of the ensuing seasonal labour shortage (EC, 2020). Data from the IMF (2020) show 112

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that the Spanish economy contracted by 12.8 per cent in the first half of 2020. This was the biggest contraction of any advanced economy. While Madrid emerged as a COVID-​19 hotspot during Spain’s first and second waves, we focus here on the efforts of a LEADER Local Action Group (LAG) –​ GALSINMA, working in the nearby Sierra Norte de Madrid –​to mobilise a networked response to the health and economic crisis. The Sierra Norte de Madrid area is located north of Madrid city. It comprises 42 separate municipalities with a population of 29,500 residents dispersed across numerous small towns and villages. The area registered the lowest rate of contagion in the wider Madrid region. The GALSINMA LAG played a crucial role in coordinating the immediate local response to the health crisis and its wider impacts (ENRD, 2020). At first, it focused on the health risks posed by COVID-​19 and worked with partners –​in the non-​profit and private sectors –​to coordinate a range of mitigations. It worked to understand the nature of local needs, allocated tasks to partners and initiated a programme of volunteering. The ENRD (2020) provides three illustrative examples. First, the LAG coordinated a volunteer-​led programme to manufacture and distribute homemade masks and basic personal protective equipment (for example, protective gowns) to the general public and frontline (non-​medical) workers. The purchase of supplies for this process was also coordinated by GALSINMA through securing donations of money and materials from local businesses or the wider public. Second, the LAG also coordinated the local manufacture of protective visors and screens, bringing together volunteers experienced in programming and robotics with businesses and education facilities that had access to 3D printers. Third, the LAG then organised teams of volunteers to support disinfection and cleaning activities in high-​use areas, such as local pharmacies and banks. While coordinating the local response to mitigating immediate health risks, GALSINMA also began to tackle the social consequences of the pandemic. These were addressed through establishing a local ‘solidarity campaign’, drawing on its networks of active citizens. This involved volunteers phoning older people experiencing isolation to provide some companionship, and also providing help and support in encouraging older community members to take up digital communication (such as Zoom and Skype) to sustain contact with the local volunteers or family members living outside the region. The solidarity campaign also saw volunteers collect and distribute food to vulnerable families, much of which had been donated by partner businesses and distributed from hubs by non-​profit groups. Central to this voluntary activity was the GALSINMA’s creation of an online platform –​Acción Sierra Norte –​to coordinate volunteers and donations. This illustrates the intersection of traditional active citizenship and community building with digital tools and the value of ‘online communities’, which can strengthen and extend the reach of place-​based community action. The capacity to take services online proved particularly important in the context of social distancing and movement restrictions. Through this platform, GALSINMA coordinated the distribution of over 85,000 masks (35 per cent homemade), 9,000 protective gowns (40 per cent homemade) and the production of 1,200 113

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protective screens for the local region (ENRD, 2020). The platform was also used to deliver additional learning materials to school children and their parents, many of whom were new to remote learning. Help was also provided on issues of internet connectivity, and town halls were turned into hubs from which teachers could distribute learning materials to families unable to access online services. More recently, the LAG has also been moving beyond this initial crisis management, towards coordinating a rural economic recovery. It has launched a ‘reactivating safe tourism’ programme that provides technical advice to businesses on staged reopening and has also agreed protocols with businesses that ensure the safety of workers and the confidence of customers. Targeted assistance has been provided to local farm producers who normally supply the local and Madrid restaurant sectors but have not lost their customers because of the extended lockdowns. GALSINMA has been coordinating the promotion of local products for direct sale to the public, often on behalf of farmers who lack the know-​how to engage in online sales. GALSINMA’s response has been rooted in its horizontal networks. These were vital for initiating action, mobilising voluntary contributions and also for signalling both a social solidarity and a real capacity to get things done. The networks brought together a range of sectors and were also effective at getting citizens involved in the rapidly expanding COVID-​19 response. They proved to be a critical place-​based asset, matched to local needs and able to respond to challenges in an appropriately scaled and targeted way. The networks stimulated and pulled together individual, collective and institutional action exactly when it was needed and in response to an unpredictable event. Social capital provided the bedrock of Sierra Norte’s immediate response to the crisis and also the foundation on which to build a longer-​term strategy for dealing with the medium and longer-​term fall-​out. It gave the area’s community the resilience it needed to weather the storm as best it could. Social capital was a critically important place-​based asset (Faulkner et al, 2020), rooted in a level of trust (between partners) that had accumulated during the many years before the pandemic when GALSINMA had coordinated various EU and national rural development programmes. This proved to be an invisible social infrastructure that, at a time of crisis, was able to support a range of initiatives that helped local communities. By mitigating impacts, it has set the stage for what will hopefully be a more rapid bounce-​back, as fewer producers have been lost and more businesses are ready for the eventual return of visitors. Sierra Norte de Madrid is typical of many rural areas faced with the COVID-​19 crisis. These rural places have been able to draw on existing community resources that developed in response to the longer-​term withdrawal of public services and private investment. There is often an abundance of active citizens in such areas who have dedicated time to filling service gaps and promoting local development. For Bock (2019, p 110), these actions provide examples of hands-​on practical governance that ‘focuses on what needs to be done in order to manage the community and take care of its needs … a defence against abandonment one could argue … inspired by love and care for rural life, pride, and confidence of being 114

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able to serve the community well’. While the GALSINMA case illustrates the potential coping capacity of rural places and the drive to manage a post-​pandemic recovery through a return to a pre-​crisis state, the COVID-​19 pandemic also poses wider questions for the future of rural places. For example, the pandemic has revealed how the pre-​crisis ‘normal’ was characterised by long-standing spatial inequities across and within regions, and that COVID-​19 was not a ‘great leveller’, with uneven impacts across race, class, gender, age and geography (Scott, 2020). For rural areas, long-​term challenges of an ageing population, poorer underlying health conditions, limited penetration of broadband and high-​speed mobile connectivity and lower incomes and financial resources all compounded the impacts of the COVID-​19 crisis. Therefore, the challenge for groups such as GALSINMA is to move beyond the short-​term response (and the return of ‘normal’ spatial injustices) towards a longer-​term positive transformation rooted in the deep social capital that such areas can draw upon, which is supported by governments at all levels. Queer lives in the country:​Nova Scotia, Canada The social construction of the rural has been long recognised to have an implicit politics of place that may act to limit gendered perspectives (Little and Austin, 1996) or exclude groups who do not fit with the ‘norms’ (Shucksmith, 2004). Following a seminal paper by Bell and Valentine (1995), much research has evidenced exclusionary processes faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in rural contexts (see Leedy and Connolly, 2007; Kazyak, 2011; Abelson, 2016), although discourses on sexuality and dealing with heterosexism seldom find their way into formal or ‘official’ rural development and planning policy debates (Watkins and Jacoby, 2007). The LGBT movement has taken significant steps in recent decades, with marriage equality gaining momentum across the Western world, leading to more inclusive discussions about the constitution of family and more open lives for people who identify as LGBT. At the same time, however, LGBT injustices, violence and homelessness are frequently reported in both grey and academic literature (Goh, 2018), particularly across the trans community whose experiences are only now receiving necessary attention (Pearce et al, 2020). Similarly, the application of queer theory in planning practice is growing, although this is primarily focused on urban debates and contexts, while the relationship between rurality and sexuality remains under-​explored (Kennedy, 2010), especially from a rural planning perspective (Doan and Hubbard, 2019; Doan, 2011). In the context of previous discussions around inclusive places and inequalities beyond (but not excluding) class struggles, this case study focuses on queer lives in the countryside, how they shape and are shaped by understandings of rural places, and how they are relevant to, and impacted by, rural planning. Like Lewis (2014), we use ‘queer’ as an umbrella term, mainly in Western contexts, to refer to individuals identifying as LGBT. We recognise other political uses of the term 115

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queer that embrace various experiences which challenge conceptions of biological sex, gender identity and sexual desire, beyond gender and/​or sexuality binaries. The case study focuses on the Canadian region of Nova Scotia. The choice of a case study exploring the intersection of queer livelihoods and rurality is not exactly random, but nor does it come from a large pool of choices. As Marple (2005, p 71) argues ‘the norm for queer experience in queer culture, academia and media is the urban queer experience’ –​a preoccupation that is often labelled metro-​normative (Halberstam, 2005). While LGBT groups reside everywhere in the global countryside, the literature on such experiences is geographically uneven, with research primarily emerging from Global North contexts (see also Stone, 2018). A few studies have examined rural queer lives within the particular context of Nova Scotia in Canada, albeit across different localities and with varying methodological frames, and for this reason, further evidence was drawn from other contexts where possible, in order to enrich the case study. LGBT people form an extremely diverse community and care should be taken not to simplify or generalise their experiences, identities and struggles. It is also the case that LGBT identities intersect with other identities, with race, ethnicity, class and age. The purpose of this case study is neither to simplify nor to generalise LGBT experiences in rural Nova Scotia, but rather to draw out some of the diversity of experiences and the implications for rural planning. Nova Scotia has no major cities but comprises three ‘regional municipalities’: Halifax (population approximately 400,000), Cape Breton (95,000) and Queens (10,000) (Statistics Canada, 2016). Outside its more urban parts, most rural towns have a population of fewer than 15,000 people. The area’s geography is not only shaped by rurality (approximately 43 per cent of the area’s population is classed as rural) but also by its proximity to the coast. For this reason, Nova Scotia is frequently listed among Canada’s ‘most rural provinces’ (Gibson et al, 2015). The region’s socio-​economic profile is also presented as disadvantaged in the Canadian context, performing worse on employment, educational qualifications and income generation markers than urban Canada (drawing on data referenced by Baker, 2016). Various rural settlements in Nova Scotia have featured as case studies in rural scholarship, and the region’s rural social and economic restructuring has been relatively well covered in the international literature, mirroring the trends found in most Western societies. For example, qualitative work has demonstrated diverse mobilities, with instances of entrepreneurial in-​migration (Mitchell and Madden, 2014) and also economic out-​migration (Harling Stalker and Phyne, 2014). Similarly, due to its rural and farming context, work has explored farming attitudes to agri-​environmental schemes (Atari et al, 2009), as well as issues of rural youth homelessness (Karabanow et al, 2014). Moving on to queer experiences, Baker (2016) provides an insightful account of LGBT rural livelihoods. The research, drawing on qualitative interviews, reveals largely positive experiences and ‘a high degree of acceptance’ (2016, p 31), including for both people who were born in the rural areas as well as rural i​nmigrants. This feeling of acceptance is linked to the increased ‘queering’ of public 116

The social and cultural rural Figure 5.4: Group of volunteers painting the first rainbow crosswalk in Mahone Bay, Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia at Pride 2020

Source: Photo supplied by Lunenburg PRIDE –​Lunenburg Co. and the Town of Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, and reproduced with permission

and private spaces (cafes, centres, pride events and parades, see also Figures 5.4 and 5.5), which is a political process that also helps to consolidate queer identities and make them more visible in the social world (Kjaran and Jóhannesson, 2015). 117

Rural Places and Planning Figure 5.5: Pride parade, Eskasoni First Nation, Nova Scotia (2019)

Source: Photo supplied by Pride Eskasoni, Nova Scotia and reproduced with permission –​in loving memory of Sherise Paul-​Gould who had taken this picture at Pride 2019

Furthermore, for many interviewees, homophobia was not an experience that was necessarily attached solely to rural places. This perhaps contradicts perceptions of rurality as static, repressive, conservative and consequently homophobic. This does not mean that no instances of homophobia were reported by participants in Baker’s (2016) study, but rather that it was not considered more prevalent in rural places. Indeed, instances of verbalised homophobia were rare, although the perception of institutional and ‘embedded’ homophobia was noted. One example of this was the nine-​year refusal of Truro town council to raise the pride flag during the gay pride week celebrations (Baker, 2016), in contrast to other Nova Scotia municipalities. However, that conservatism was upended by the 2016 Orlando shootings in the US, after which the council began flying the flag (CBC, 2019). Accordingly, homophobia is not only offered as something exclusive to the rurality of Nova Scotia but also witnessed in urban spaces and through the life course. Given the scattered geography of rural queers in dispersed and marginal contexts, interviewees in Baker’s study discussed the role of networks in sustaining relationships and promoting a sense of belonging. This primarily refers to the internet, which had been critical for many interviewees –​with a transgender participant calling it their ‘saviour’ (Baker, 2016, p 34) –​allowing them to blur 118

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the boundaries around socio-​spatial communities and, as a consequence, the urban–​rural boundary. From a policy perspective, one of the ways that this connectivity has been supported in the wider region is through the Broadband for Rural Nova Scotia Initiative, a public–​private partnership with internet service providers which has successfully delivered high-​speed broadband to ‘all rural Nova Scotians’ (Baker, 2016, p 45), although McMahon et al (2011) argue that this has not been the experience for rural and remote First Nations across Canada. Aside from the digital inclusion noted by Baker (2016), critical issues of service delivery for LGBT Canadians are highlighted in other studies. For example, Brotman et al (2003) report that LGBT groups in Canada ‘face considerable discrimination in health and social service systems’ (p 192). In a different research project, drawing on a rural focus group (although with an unknown rural location within Canada), Brotman et al (2002) report how LGBT people in rural settings have fewer opportunities to switch health providers if they encounter homophobia. In an empirical study that focused specifically on the experiences of senior queers, Brotman et al (2003) included a focus group of six participants in Nova Scotia, among four Canadian focus groups in total. This work is important because it explores the experiences of senior LGBT people, a group that grew up before significant advancements of LGBT social movements (2003, p 200): ‘Gay and lesbian elders today grew up in harsh conditions of discrimination that existed before the advent of the gay liberation movement, resulting in particular strategies of hiding to survive.’ As such, the experiences of future senior queers are likely to be different from the ones outlined in their research. For this particular cohort though, a lack of care from health service providers is characteristically reported. The research also suggested that queer groups (across all four focus groups) adjust to their age transition ‘more successfully than their heterosexual counterparts’ (Brotman et al, 2003, p 199), although not from a position of power and support, but because of long-​term discrimination that this group has experienced from public services. The suggestion appeared to be that as needs linked to ageing increase, services struggle to match those needs –​and queer people are just more used to services not being good enough. The authors, although not specifically drawing on the Nova Scotia focus group, reported that: ‘Most health care professionals are completely unaware of the specific needs of this population. Issues of sexuality are often overlooked when these clients are assessed by health care providers’ (2003, p 197). Other studies have confirmed gaps in health care provision affecting gay men. A study by Lewis (2015) –​which involved interviews with HIV/​AIDS service providers and gay men (HIV positive and negative) –​revealed significant gaps in access to anonymous testing in rural areas outside of Halifax city centre. This resulted in a fear of using rural services because of the stigma attached to HIV infection. Lewis (2015, p 133) concluded that the accounts of those interviewed ‘reveal the relative silence over both gay men’s sexualities and HIV/​ sexual health in the region, resulting potentially in both a lack of self-​care tools and the internalization of anti-​gay and anti-​HIV stigma among men living there’. 119

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The intersection between rural identity, mobility and sexuality was also explored by Baker (2016) in aspects of her work looking at perceptions of identity within urban and rural socio-​spatial communities and during urban–​rural movements. Baker notes, for example, that one of the interviewees described herself as a ‘country bumpkin’ and a ‘farmer’s daughter’ (2016, p 37) as a way of expressing her disengagement from urban-​based lesbian-​feminist communities and her belief that she lacked the cultural capital required to be part of a metro-​normative queer community, which required ‘a certain kind of knowledge, a certain vocabulary, and a certain type of taste’ (Baker, 2016, p 37). The move back to rural Nova Scotia was represented as natural –​a return home. Mobility experiences across urban and rural communities through the life course attached to sexual identities is something that is reported in other studies as well (including the experiences of rural Nova Scotian gay men, see also Lewis, 2014), highlighting that although rural LGBT groups might have moved to cities at some point in their life course, they can become disconnected from urban LGBT spaces, seeking to move to rural and suburban places (for example Annes and Redlin, 2012; Kirkey and Forsyth, 2001; Waitt and Gorman-​Murray, 2011). For those groups, their LGBT identity intersects with rurality, making their return to the countryside almost inevitable, contrary to the popular discourse of the metropolis as the single space of existence for LGBT groups: Having spent varying amount of time in the city, many rural participants did not actually feel part of the imagined urban community; experienced as exclusionary, insular, and in some cases as dangerous, the urban LGBT community was not always the ‘homeland’ it was promised to be. Class and cultural differences between urban and rural LGBT people overshadowed the sharing of a common. (Baker, 2016, p 44) These accounts are significant not only for highlighting a diversity of life choices but also because they place LGBT groups at the heart of rural places in accordance with many other studies on rural queer lives in Western contexts (see McClynn, 2018). However, this case is important beyond the rural LGBT experience. Queer theory provides a valuable lens to critically challenge planning practice by questioning long-​held assumptions and policy narratives underpinned by heteronormative accounts of the rural condition that often emphasise the importance of the so-​called nuclear family or assumed conservative social norms within rural communities. This includes traditional heteronormative accounts of rural mobility (for example, in-​migration triggered by key life cycle stages, particularly married couples with children), which is often translated into planning practices around prioritising housing need or the types of rural services perceived as critical as rural community infrastructure. This perspective also reveals the importance of recognition (Fraser and Honneth, 2003) as central to ensuring just planning practices, whereby the experiences of marginalised, and perhaps hidden, groups allow us to re-​evaluate 120

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notions of the good countryside. This includes challenging the rural experience as underpinned by a shared, monolithic identity, by illustrating the importance of intersectionality and the need to challenge planning professionals and practice to engage with struggles for inclusion and justice within rural places –​in other words, rural place-​making as an act of solidarity and hope.

What can be drawn from these cases? Social and cultural capital matter in the ‘idea and practice’ of rural planning, because they put people, their relationships and their immaterial assets at the heart of place-​making. For example, in the case of the art festival in rural Japan, utilising both cultural and social capital, we see a strong place-​based approach to inclusive development in a marginal rural area. Of course, the appropriation of artistic and endogenous cultural expressions as part of rural development narratives is not a new proposition (see Anwar McHenry, 2011; Waitt and Gibson, 2013; Mahon and Hyyryläinen, 2019). What makes the Echigo-​Tsumari Triennale exceptional, at least from a rural planning standpoint is, first, its desire to embed development in the endogenous cultural and environmental discourse of satoyama, which promotes the co-​existence and dependency between nature and society; second, its commitment to promote the idea of rural living in a country that has become disassociated with rurality and in tandem with state-​led promotion of counterurbanisation (Odagiri, 2019); and finally its scale –​as a significant investment for rural regeneration that is now being up​scaled as a wider formula for rural revitalisation across numerous marginal localities. Causal links between creative arts practice and economic development are always difficult to evidence and confirm. So, while artistic interventions in rural contexts are novel and experimental, and the many promising examples of practice that are appearing in the literature are growing (see Qu and Cheer, 2020), a cautious approach is needed when interpreting the role of artistic practice in regeneration as it is constructed with a different intent in different planning contexts to ‘solve’ community problems (see also Crawshaw and Gkartzios, 2016). Indeed, too great a responsibility is sometimes placed on the shoulders of that practice and, by extension, artists –​who are expected to break established rural pathologies, create new value and achieve significant development breakthroughs. In the Japanese and Spanish case studies, research reveals how rural populations are more vulnerable compared to urban populations, to both prolonged economic decline (in Japan) and an emergent health crisis witnessed with the COVID-​19 pandemic (in Spain) –​and characteristically how local resources, place-​based social capital and ‘neo-​endogenous’ networks can deepen the resilience of rural societies and economies to long-standing or sudden threats. Echigo-​Tsumari Art Triennale offers important insights into the creation and expansion of both local and ‘extra-​ local’ networks in support of rural places, comprising local communities, artists, volunteers, visitors and policy makers, by mobilising cultural capital through vertical and horizontal linkages. Similarly, the Spanish case illustrates how a 121

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network centred on a LEADER LAG fostered the trust and the relationships needed to successfully support a coordinated and essentially territorial approach to coping with COVID-​19, addressing not only material concerns during the pandemic (that is, distributing face masks and providing food) but also building a ‘network of care’ through interaction and digital communication with vulnerable people. Due to its crisis context, in particular, the Spanish case speaks of approaches to rural resilience too, with the ambition to move beyond a ‘return to the normal’ and to see this crisis and emergent response as an opportunity to pave the way for transformative change rooted in its social capital and the many opportunities for cooperation it presents. It is also interesting to note how both the Japanese and Spanish case studies have managed to upscale their networks effectively to include wider rural and regional development goals (in the Spanish case) or wider territories through similar place-​based approaches (in the Japanese case). Important spatial inequalities and exclusions also emerge from our cases. Not all rural places are experienced equally, or fairly, by rural residents. As Bock (2018) argues, while inclusivity has remained a priority in sustainable rural development, practice and research identify the existence of power asymmetries within rural communities and between key groups. In this context, our Canadian case study, focusing on queer rural experiences, draws out just a few of the issues faced by LGBT people –​a relatively understudied and diverse community, whose needs must be recognised by planners (Muller Myrdahl, 2011; Doan and Hubbard, 2019). Research in Nova Scotia shows that the experiences of LGBT groups are varied. Rural areas cannot be cast as inherently conservative or homophobic –​ and many LGBT people have identities bound up with rural places. It is vitally important not to present this group as somehow ‘urban-​displaced’ but as rural by right, part of the diversity and difference of the countryside. That being the case, there is a need to examine how heteronormative values might affect inclusion strategies (Doan, 2011). Research in Nova Scotia suggests the possibility of alarming service gaps and the need for urgent refinement of the way diverse needs are addressed. Our focus here on the LGBT community reveals unacknowledged challenges in servicing the needs of this community. Abelson’s (2016) research, for example, on transgender men shows that while they can be vulnerable to abuse across both urban and rural areas, they have far fewer options for local medical care in rural areas. Finally, attention to rural queer lives highlights important issues of intersectionality. The interactions of planning with rural places need to be sensitive to potential exclusions, to the experiences of women, ethnic minority groups and older and younger LGBT people. The social and cultural capital of rural places generates opportunities and responsibilities for the planning of those places.

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6

Conclusions Revisiting the proposition We began this book by articulating the ambition of making future rural places better or at least thinking through the different ways in which those places might become better through actions that respect the unique characteristics and dynamics of place. Our approach to analysing current rural places and place-​based interventions has been guided by Bourdieu’s theory of capitals (1986) –​and especially by the proposition that social energy, transmutable from economic resources, is at once a source of development opportunity and spatial and social inequalities. More broadly, and like other researchers (for example Castle, 1998; Emery and Flora, 2006; Courtney and Moseley, 2008), we have explored the ‘placing’ and spatial interaction of a broader array of capitals as a basis for unpacking the complex realities of rural places –​their materiality, symbolism and socio-​ economic practices. We have sought to understand how the ‘spatial energy’, rooted in capitals, can be channelled by planning and brought centre stage in the co-​production of rural places with communities. The book has been structured around four capitals that ‘make’ rural places: built, economic, land-​based and socio-​cultural capital. Our efforts to break these capitals into their constituent parts (a task undertaken in each thematic chapter) illustrates how each is inextricably linked to the others –​the built with the economic, land with socio-​cultural and so on. There can be no compartmentalising of these capitals; and yet in order to see how the smaller pieces, the assemblages, come together in the whole, it has been necessary to expose the individual parts and map the connections through case studies that hopefully reveal something of the nature of place capitals and also draw attention to the role of planning in its many guises, as a connective tissue that bonds and mobilises such capitals, framing the actions of different groups. Planning in this book has not been conceived solely as an instrument of land-​ use control –​there has been a preference for thinking about the idea of planning rather than specific planning ‘systems’ or national traditions, which are diverse and too complex to unpack in a single text. Our approach has been to view planning through the lens of place governance, as a sum of alliances and actions visible in the co-​production of places and rooted in concern for place-​based capitals and the creation of a better or a ‘good countryside’ (Shucksmith, 2018). Consequently, we have theorised planning as both an idea and a practice, drawing on Healey (2010), trying to connect planning with a broader ethic to mobilise material and immaterial resources (and, consequently, research) in ways that address the power and capital imbalances of rural places. 123

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Another important goal of this book has been to position rural planning as a discipline in its own right –​rather than a poor relation to urban enquiry and intervention. Rural planning is viewed as an episteme –​a body of accumulated knowledge and analysis seeking to expose the conditions and stresses that provide a focus for community action and planning intervention. Our 12 cases, assembled to give concise coverage of the field, explore the interactions between capitals and the challenges faced by planners of varying sorts. They acknowledge an important characteristic of the episteme of rural planning: that rural discourse is co-​produced by different actors, both professional and lay, within and beyond normative planning, and also within and beyond academia. Knowledge beyond ‘expertise’ is a critical part of the rural planning domain, with a diversity of voices having roles to play in the study of rural places (Gkartzios and Lowe, 2019; Lowe et al, 2019). The cases​– which are at once local and global –​offer insights, provocations, ambitions and omissions that inform and challenge the idea and practice of rural planning. They are local by virtue of being embedded in place but also global and relational in the sense used by Woods (2007) because they speak to wider challenges, which are often structural in nature and frequently shared across different geographies, and as such, offer opportunities for lesson-​sharing and reflexivity. The cases are not rooted in the detail or operation of planning systems but in the particular assemblage of place capitals found in a diversity of rural situations, including open countryside, villages, small towns and key service centres. Near-​urban and remote rural places are included among the cases, as are a multitude of different and intersecting identities, all bound into an analysis that treats rurality as an incubator of critical socio-​cultural and economic outcomes. We begin this final chapter by reasserting the importance of rural places in an ostensibly ‘urban age’, before examining the values that might underpin desirable rural futures and how these might be achieved.

Rural places in an ‘urban age’ Understandings of rural places and planning practice are dynamic and evolving rather than static and fixed. This book has sought to provide critical insights into this complex relationship at a key moment in time, when conflict in and about rural areas appears to be increasing, giving rise to new politics of the rural (Woods, 2006). These conflicts are largely framed by the contested meaning and regulation of rural places around the globe. Where once farming interests dominated the social and economic life of rural areas, contemporary countrysides are characterised by a multifunctional transition with ever ​more complex and overlapping uses of rural space (Frank and Hibbard, 2019) and an economic pluralism that matches the diversity of urban economies. That economic pluralism is now a feature of the ‘global countryside’ (Woods, 2007) in which the forces of globalisation are primarily responsible for ‘the creation, multiplication, stretching and intensification of social and economic relations between places, urban and rural’ (Woods, 2019, p 627). 124

Conclusions

In this multifunctional and global countryside, new issues and politics of place have emerged. Sometimes these include the closure of rural services, justified by declining profitability, but with far-​reaching impacts on communities, because of the mixed roles and benefits these services bring to rural places (for example Cedering and Wihlborg, 2020); the conflicting mobilisation of rural identities, aligning with contested practices such as hunting or with low-​carbon, low-​impact therefore righteous lifestyles (for example von Essen et al, 2019); conservation versus development debates, often exemplified by arguments centred on new housing and how planning systems should mediate development pressures (for example Scott, 2009; 2012); and the transformations of rural areas that are underpinned by global debates and forces, such as the potential role of rural resources within climate action or the argument that global investments –​in land and farming –​can save and bring new prosperity to otherwise fragile economies (for example Woods, 2011). These issues and the accompanying politics prompt familiar questions: what values should shape rural futures? What should those futures look like ‘on the ground’? And how might they be achieved? This focus on the future of rural places comes at a time of rapid and sustained urbanisation, albeit in different guises and consequences globally (Zhang, 2016); but while the world is becoming more urban, measured in terms of the number of people living in cities (UN, 2018), the question of how to deal with rural challenges has never been more important. The growth of cities, impinging on hinterlands and increasing rural–​urban dependencies has, in fact, brought the global countryside to centre stage in sustainable development discourse. It is in rural areas where pressures of food production, resource extraction and water supply will bite hardest, where climate change mitigation and adaptation will be focused and where environmental conservation will need to be prioritised if the world’s natural resources are to be protected for future generations. Rural areas are at the frontline of efforts to plot genuinely sustainable development pathways, but they are also areas of significant vulnerability and have suffered disproportionately from the many national and global emergencies witnessed since the millennium: from the UK’s 2001 Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak, through the banking and refugee crises of the 2000s and 2010s, all the way to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic (see Donaldson et al, 2003; Murphy and Scott, 2014; Phillipson et al, 2020; Gallent, 2020; Pelek, 2020). Yet, at the same time, they have also displayed remarkable resilience and, in some cases, a penchant for turning crises into opportunities (Nerlich and Döring, 2005; Gkartzios and Scott, 2015; Anthopoulou et al, 2017). One thing that many rural areas share is resistance to neoliberalism because unfettered market processes seldom produce good outcomes for rural communities. This can mean that at times of crisis, they fall back on a tradition of self-​reliance and a degree of introversion. This can make some rural areas appear backward and susceptible to the allure of populism or right-​leaning politics (see Edelman, 2021; Mamonova and Franquesa, 2020). But at the same time, some rural areas are, in fact, at the forefront of rethinking economic and social praxis (Shucksmith and Rønningen, 2011; Shucksmith 125

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and Brown, 2016), finding innovative solutions to development challenges in every part of the world. This means that while the declaration of an ‘urban age’ and the notion of ‘planetary urbanisation’ have become popular, albeit contested, rallying calls for urban studies (Brenner, 2014; Brenner and Schmid, 2014; 2017), there is continuing interest and excitement about the countryside and its future, not least from rural communities themselves, but it is also evidenced in the global processes of cultural production (art, festivals, filmmaking and architecture) (Gkartzios et al, 2019). Through a range of media, the countryside has become an important subject for public deliberation. The messaging has changed: rural places provide mixed and multifunctional opportunities, being arenas of culture, economy and sustainable livelihoods. Moreover, rural places are increasingly integrated into global circuits of capital, with countryside assets repackaged as investment vehicles to extract profit or as financial safe havens. There are dangers hidden among the many opportunities that rural places offer –​with the future of those places yet to be decided and realised.

The future of good rural places So, to the questions: what values should shape rural futures? What might those futures look like? And how might they be achieved? The case studies have drawn attention to different ways of mobilising and managing place capitals. We have tried to summarise how that mobilisation happens in Table 6.1. It starts with some agreement around guiding values. These values are discussed in greater length in the next section, in answer to our first question and ahead of answering the second and third questions posed previously. Values shape change through enabling structures, with those structures supporting actions which help deliver that change. Table 6.1 also tries to show that with the right enabling structures and actions, good outcomes become possible –​although they are not assured. Socio-​spatial planning, designed and delivered by a mix of partners, is our key enabler and plays a critical role in converting, mobilising, reappraising (the potential of) and balancing place-​based capitals. It is afforded its capacities by the wider regulatory environment, which helps or hinders the achievement of local objectives; by institutional capacity, which lends support to local action; by the coherence of spatial strategies and plans, which provide frameworks for coordination; by adaptive governance, which can work with local circumstances to achieve context-​specific goals; by human resources, which are entrepreneurial and innovative; and by the auspicious use of digitisation and technology, which supports deliberation rather than seeking to substitute it with data. While we have been largely focused on the agency of communities in this book, it is accepted that communities alone are not equally capable of achieving transitions to a better countryside. The extra-​local resource that planning can mobilise, in the form of capacity and expertise, is a critical conversion factor that can 126

Conclusions

support the practices and actions needed to effectively manage and enhance place capitals. With guiding values and appropriate support structures in place, there is an opportunity to take the actions needed to deliver something akin to the ‘good countryside’. These are noted in Table 6.1 and will broadly involve the enhancement of local assets in support of place-​based and place-​embedded transformations. Without going into the detail of what the ‘good countryside’ might look like, which is explored in what follows, our cases revealed broad forms of that countryside, both in terms of the processes needed to achieve it and in terms of outcome. The good countryside is distinguished by economic differentiation and resilience, the pursuit of just and healthy transitions, by creative problem-​solving and by the auspicious and appropriate use of smart technologies. While these are general characteristics, what form the actual existing ‘good countryside’ takes on the ground will be subject to local deliberation and aligned ultimately with the ambitions and values of communities. Even then, conflicting world views, varied lifestyles and agonism will play their parts in shaping outcomes and imprinting a mix of values on rural places. But in the absence of enabling structures, or if those structures are weak and unable to realise guiding values, a different future is possible. The ‘discordant countryside’ (Table 6.1 again) is the outcome of actions that deplete and erode place capitals. Political and policy failings give free rein to private interests at the expense of community wellbeing, even in instances where social capital appears abundant. This is because not all community-​based planning is benign; it may pursue private interests, privileging the ambitions of specific groups and excluding others. It may favour certain modes of behaviour and particular forms of development, admonishing practices that it considers out of place. This can happen where dominant or elite interests prevail and development to meet a broader spectrum of social need is blocked, or where whiteness and heteronormativity erect barriers against difference. While social capital can be a force for good, its rootedness in economic capital –​and therefore in the wealth of elites –​can result in a concentration of power and influence, or a ‘darker side’ of place capitals that can perpetuate poverty, social (and political) exclusion, poor governance (for example, clientelism and corruption) and diminished quality of life for a majority or significant minority of rural residents. These processes may be manifest in, inter alia, poor decision making, in the extraction of assets and value –​including in the form of land grabs –​and the breakdown of community cohesion and natural systems. There is no simple path to the ‘good countryside’. Our studies provide glimpses of good outcomes but also underscore some of the pitfalls that communities encounter during the process of transformation. The 12 cases cannot hope to capture all situations and possibilities. Every rural place is unique, with its own mix of place capitals and therefore a particular balance of risk and opportunity. There is scope, however, for careful learning from the ‘pluralistic universalism’ (Lowe, 2012) of the cases, particularly in respect of guiding values supporting place-​making actions. 127

Rural Places and Planning Table 6.1: Planning for the good countryside Capitals

Values

Enabling structures

Built capital: Spatial planning as an enabling Economic infrastructures (e.g. or conversion factor, comprising: workspace); nature-based infrastructures critical to Embedded identity settlement systems; social-cultural Regulatory environment infrastructures (e.g. housing, community facilities) Environmental and spatial justice Institutional capacity Economic capital: Spatial strategies and plans Physical productive infrastructures Negotiating neoliberalism (e.g. land assets); entrepreneurial Adaptive governance infrastructure (e.g. business links, value chains); community wealth- Participation Human resources building capacity Land-based capital: Inclusivity Land as a socially productive asset; landscape (e.g. tangible and intangible heritage); nature-based Territorial integration infrastructures (e.g. natural processes, ecosystem services)

Digitisation and technology

Socio-cultural capital: Social networks; community capacity and active citizenship; inclusive places; creativity and cultural practices

Reinvesting, reappraising and mobilising

Values for better places The values that guide the way people interact and work together in pursuit of ‘better places’ often become expressed as principles that underpin actions and collective projects which have a place-​shaping intent. There is a succession of values, principles, goals and outcomes that can be observed in place. Personal values are fashioned by social interaction, developing into shared principles and goals that can be seen in aggregate as belonging to a community of some sort, either socio-​spatial or interest-​based. Through open discourse, a broader sharing of principles and goals across more groups can happen over time –​until those principles gain general currency. The following values and principles emerged as critically important in our cases. First, the pursuit of rural futures rooted in embedded identity emerged as a core value across numerous cases. Identity derives from the particular assemblage of local capitals: environmental and natural resources, cultural heritage, industries that have been dominating an area, traditional food products linked to particular 128

Conclusions

Actions r Actions that enhance and reinvest

Outcomes The good countryside Differentiated Resilient

Strengthening, mutually reinforcing interrelationships across all four capitals

Just transitions Healthy transitions Creative problem-solving Smart

Actions that deplete and erode

The discordant countryside Poverty and social exclusion

Eroding capitals or antagonistic relationships between them

Loss of infrastructures Diminished quality of life Lack of participation Natural system breakdown Land grabs

farming practices and the broader local culture that all these things incubate. The mobilisation of identity is key to successful planning, working with, rather than against, the grain of place. Within our cases, identity stands out as a guiding value most prominently in Norway and Japan. Both embarked on development trajectories that drew on historical and cultural narratives embedded in place. In the Norwegian case, the future of the post-​industrial town of Røros was seeded in a legacy of copper mining, which became the cultural referent for the town’s reinvention. In the Japanese case, an art festival mobilised the concept of ‘satoyama’ –​a distinctively Japanese idea of rurality that links humans with nature –​to transform otherwise depleting rural places into arenas of celebration. These cases combined different versions of our four capitals to co-​produce and articulate new place identities –​a combination of socio-​cultural and built capital in Røros and a mix of environmental and social-​cultural capital in Niigata –​that provided the essential platforms for rural regeneration. Second, environmental and spatial justice emerged as another shared value, with communities often united in a desire to respond to climate change by replacing 129

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carbon-intensive and extractive activities with alternative land uses, particularly when clear local benefits are attainable. This value becomes more widely shared, and embraced by traditional actors, where it is clear that new urban–​rural and global–​local relationships provide an opportunity to reposition the countryside vis-​à-​vis the needs and priorities of urban places and national governments, under the pressure of high-​level climate agreements. The Irish case study focused on decarbonising the Midlands, and the Chinese case, concerned with land retirement and reforestation, both provide insights into the importance of delivering just transitions away from more intensive land uses. The ‘win’ at a national level must be matched by an equally convincing ‘win’ in rural places, with communities directly benefitting from new ways of managing and exploiting rural resources. The same was true in the Appalachian case, which demonstrates the ways in which the transition away from extractive industry –​timber and copper mining in that case –​towards sustainable consumption can be used to deliver new economic opportunities that support local livelihoods. All three cases expose the fallacy at the heart of traditional rural discourse: that there is a binary choice between protecting the environment or promoting the economy. Instead, the cases show that economic and environmental wellbeing are entirely co-​dependent and that just transitions are reliant on careful attention to the particular balance of place-​ based resource capitals, to the way they are managed and mobilised. Third, the careful negotiation or outright rejection of neoliberalism unites many rural places, which look to either constrain the power of the market or find workarounds that mean communities are less dependent on the private sector to deliver against their need for key services. Some communities choose to position their response to service decline in the communitarian space between public intervention (that may be either slow or inadequate) and ‘the market’ and we look at this in what follows. But rural places must live with a broader neoliberal ethic, which is sometimes useful in pricing environmental assets in ways that encourage their stewardship –​including through PES. This means that neoliberalism is negotiated. Traditional value-​seeking investments may be complemented by direct community action, with more ‘do-it-yourself ’ initiatives that are motivated by a mix of resistance to neoliberalism and also resignation, that communities must act in the face of ‘market failure’ (or limited market reach). Numerous examples of this have been narrated in this book, including the community buyouts of essential services in Australia and the ownership and stewardship of a community forest in Scotland. More broadly, the dangers of unfettered market access and poor regulation are underscored in the Romanian case where the community was unable to do more for itself, and external capital, hooking up with selected local elites, sought to extract surplus value in farmland and siphon it off to international investors. The Romanian case –​which is certainly our most discordant –​paints a bleak picture of market failure and the inability to resist profit extraction in a context of collapsing state services in a remote and marginal rural area. Fourth, participation (and social enterprise) in support of community action is underpinned by the scale of rural places and the desire to connect directly to 130

Conclusions

decision making. Many examples of this have been presented in the previous chapters: a community that came together to take control of a previously state-​ owned forest in Scotland, substituting an extractive business model with the sustainable use of the forest’s broader assets and amenity, and the creation of a cooperative in Kaniva that brought the town’s petrol station and roadhouse under community control. These cases are rooted in participation, or a participatory ethic, which is itself a reflection of the scale of place and the scale of challenges faced. In the case of Kaniva, the roadhouse served an economic and social function: its survival was bound up with the wellbeing of the community –​the risk of spending moving to other towns and the community losing an important interactional space needed to be mitigated. Community action was facilitated in both cases by institutional frameworks that allowed local people to perform collective buyouts. And beyond these cases, community action is observed wherever networks –​and particularly ones that cut across different sectors –​ have become established means of mobilising a mix of local and extra-​local resources. The Spanish case study, for example, evidences the value of existing networks that can be reconfigured to serve critical needs at a time of crisis. The horizontal networks built by a LEADER LAG were able to connect to public bodies and voluntary groups, thereby coordinating a raft of actions in response to local COVID-​19 fall-​out. In such cases, participation is channelled through networks. This was also the case in Finland, where another LAG responded to the challenge of leading a digital service transformation and setting up a ‘Digi-​ Hub’ to confront the digital divide through training delivery. As the Japanese case implies, art-​led experiments can be employed within governance structures to support community action. This is not necessarily targeted towards ‘solving’ long-​ term spatial pathologies but instead working with communities and creating new networks of participation. ‘Participative governance’ in these instances can take many guises, from more informal activities to the creation of community groups that take legal stewardship over assets and deliver key services. A participatory ethic is key to the success of such initiatives. But there is also, fifth, an ever-​present risk of the exclusion of some groups, which can mean that important initiatives achieve only partial reach and coverage. Inclusivity is a key value and principle underpinning actions in support of the good countryside. The discourse of inclusivity is about challenging whose needs are prioritised in policy formation, which groups might remain marginalised or even invisible and how planning policy can engage effectively with underrepresented groups in pursuit of inclusion and social justice. Extant and emerging literature highlights rural inequalities centred on gender, class, race, ethnicity, ability, age and their intersections. In the last chapter, we looked at the needs of LGBT people in Canada and how these are addressed in rural areas. There is certainly a need to challenge heterosexism in the co-​production of the good countryside, but unfortunately, the literature on this specific issue, and the lives of LGBT people in rural contexts, is not extensive. The key message from our case study, linking to inclusivity, was that LGBT lives and identities are embedded in rural places. 131

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The narrative of queer lives has, to date, been a predominantly urban one and part of a broader story of the liberal city, in which diversity is embraced, versus the conservative countryside, in which uniformity is the norm. But the case presented in this book shows that LGBT people, like everyone else, grow up, live their lives and age in rural places. They are also agents of change, contributing to shifting patterns of living in the countryside. It is important that planners let go of long-​held assumptions about communities and the heteronormative character of the ‘nuclear family’ and recognise how diversity, beyond sexual and gender binaries, is reshaping the countryside and changing the needs and aspirations of rural communities. A sixth principle, rooted in the view that rural places are not merely aggregations of disparate processes that can be separately tinkered with, is that rural policy and planning must be integrated to treat rural places as complete entities. Policy must be territorial and place-​based, not sectoral. This was illustrated in the Irish case, where the energy transition (an economic intervention) also addressed wider questions of wellbeing by establishing new rights to access and use of rural land. Integrated interventions of this sort implicitly adopt a capitals perspective, thinking through the benefits that can be harnessed from local resources, which deliver a mix of positive economic, environmental and social outcomes. The same lessons emerge from the Scottish case, with the accent placed on multifunctional reuse of an existing asset –​deriving broader mixed benefits in place of the singular focus on running a business. In the past, the forest was seen as an economic asset, whereas today it has become a socio-​cultural and economic resource that delivers health, training, education and income outcomes for a wide group of beneficiaries. There has been an unfortunate tendency in the past for rural planning practice to adopt a sectoral approach, to develop policies that attract external investment and to separate those investments from wider community benefit. But communities themselves –​comprising people with different needs and ambitions –​seldom think in such a siloed way. Rather, they try to combine a range of goals and in doing so, seek more integrated outcomes from their interventions and investments. Co-​production is itself a means of vacating siloes and developing broader ambitions for rural places. These values-​cum-​principles –​of embedded identity, justice, negotiating (and adapting to) neoliberalism, participation (and the tendency towards social enterprise), inclusivity and integrated thinking (see also Table 6.1) –​can provide a foundation for advancing the good countryside. Each has the potential to guide the effective management and mobilisation of capitals in ways that avoid the disruptions that some places suffer. But in practice, this ideal is not commonplace. Where rural regeneration is pursued without attention to identity, with no concern for justice, and perhaps by uncritically embracing neoliberal instruments, by disregarding the power of participation and social enterprise, and by riding roughshod over issues of inclusivity and integration between goals and across sectors, discordant outcomes are far more likely. This nightmare scenario, in which every possible good practice is rejected, might never materialise. But the 132

Conclusions

case studies show how good intentions can deliver poor outcomes where there is insufficient attention to context. China’s SLCP, for example, limited its own success by not connecting to local context or to established farming practices. It later corrected that oversight through enhanced participation. In Finland, the technological focus on laying cables delivered the potential of enhanced service provision. But that potential was only realised for older people after they were provided with bespoke training –​after the issue of inclusivity was specifically addressed. Attention to such issues means that critical exclusions are avoided. In most of our cases, rural places were on a path to sub-​optimal outcomes. Capitals were being undermined or lost and it was only after interventions to protect or save those capitals that the places shifted onto a different path. Kaniva faced losing a key piece of its built capital, but actions to save the ‘roadhouse’ were both materially successful and catalysed wider benefits in the form of social enterprise. Appalachian communities were on a path to economic ruin until a much broader perspective on socio-​economic wellbeing stemmed job losses and delivered wider health benefits. The good countryside is built on the mobilisation of important values, elevated to the status of shared principles and on a view of rural places as assemblages of capitals that need to work in unison. The closest case to our nightmare is that of Dobromir, where a complete lack of connectivity to context and an absence of supportive regulation has resulted in the displacement of local farmers and the hijacking of investment benefits by local elites. If there is a darker side to place capitals, it is rooted in the power of elites –​who wield exclusive social capital –​to manipulate circumstances and opportunities in ways that consolidate their own power and wealth, to the detriment of wider community interest. What might those futures look like? Good rural places support communities, expressing how people want to live and work. What they look like on the ground is context-​specific and this means that the path to their achievement will be different from one place to the next. The good countryside will be differentiated, being rooted to varying degrees in creativity (innovation and the sustainable exploitation of cultural capital), in smartness (economic and social transformations based on new technologies), in just energy and food transitions (delivering a mix of global and local benefits), in health priorities (and the promotion of lifestyle opportunities) and in resilience through diversity. Diversity and social justice are foundational to the good countryside suggested by our cases. In nearly all of those cases, the good countryside is diversified in terms of economic opportunities and land uses. This diversity arises out of the shift that many successful places have experienced from traditional production to a mix of new productive activities and consumption embedded in local place capitals. The Scottish case points to a greater diversity in land ownership, which itself supports a broadening of land uses. Community ownership is quickly becoming associated with innovation –​mixing new forms of production with eco-​tourism 133

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and greater attention to the stewardship of community assets. Land was the core capital in that case, as it was in the Romanian example. But these two development pathways –​or rural futures –​could not look more different. In Scotland, community ownership opened up a world of opportunity. In Romania, private expropriation meant exclusive control and a denial of all potential community rights. Diverse futures are not entirely dependent on community control of land, but they do require that different interests are not sidelined by autocratic politics that dismiss community rights or regulate to protect only private interest. Diversity is possible where there is a partnership between local and extra-​local actors. In Japan, the art festivals have been emblematic of that partnership, with local cultural capital becoming the inspiration, object and agent of culture-​based regeneration that is place-​based, socially engaged and has introduced a completely new economic opportunity to areas previously reliant on farming. Our other cases convey similar stories of diversification: from redundant copper mining in Norway to heritage-​based tourism and culinary experience; from depleting extractive industries in Appalachia to an amenity-​based economy that is attracting entrepreneurs and seeding new economic activity. There is a resilience in diversity argument at the heart of the good countryside, which is rooted in an interplay between capitals and rejects the development versus preservation paradigm that dominated rural planning in the 20th century. Good rural places embrace a diversity of development opportunities and, in doing so, protect their land-​based, built and socio-​cultural capitals. Social justice begets diversity, sustaining it and ensuring that there is broad access to opportunity, and that communities and individuals are afforded fundamental rights, including the right to shape their own futures through control over critical processes, including planning and assets. The notion of the just countryside also connects to the diversity of rural residents and their needs, working to eliminate socio-​economic exclusions. Social inclusion can be a vague policy goal, detached from mechanisms for its achievement (Shortall, 2008), but what we have tried to illustrate through our cases is that more diverse rural futures are built on social justice. That diversity brings resilience but must be grounded in an acknowledgement of lived experiences and how these might be improved. That was the intent of the Canadian case –​to challenge the trope of a heteronormative countryside, populated by people who are all broadly alike. There are many aspects of examining diversity. We could have looked at ethnicity and the presumed whiteness of some rural areas, at gender and the androcentrism of aspects of rural life and planning, or at intergenerational divisions and conflicts, particularly centred on control of assets, mainly housing and unequal empowerment through closed or exclusive governance processes. But it is enough, in a book of this length, to illustrate diversity and questions of social justice by examining one potentially marginalised group –​which is not to suggest that other groups do not face their own challenges or should not be counted among the diversity of rural places. There is also another form of justice in rural places: the justice that comes from giving careful consideration to the ways in which economic and environmental 134

Conclusions

transitions may impact on different groups, and particularly groups hitherto reliant on extractive industries. The energy transition in the Irish Midlands needed to be a just transition if it was to mitigate the impacts on rural communities. We noted at the beginning of this chapter that the answers to many global questions, not least relating to the climate emergency, are to be found in rural areas and through new approaches to rural development. But there is no justice in asking rural communities to foot the bill for energy transitions that deliver broader environmental benefit but undermine rural livelihoods. Post-​carbon rural futures will play a very significant role in combatting climate change at a planetary scale; but their delivery, in partnership with rural communities, is a broadly shared responsibility. The presentation of rural areas as culturally and technologically backward is borne out neither by prior research (Murdoch et al, 2003), nor by our own case studies. In terms of community governance and propensity towards social enterprise, rural places are both forward-​looking and innovative. And although sometimes affected by shortcomings in digital connectivity, the future of rural areas will be shaped by the take-up and innovative use of smart technologies. The potential of those technologies to transform rural economies and lives was revealed in the Finnish case, which imagines rural places that are better connected to each other and to much wider opportunities. Despite some efforts to translate ‘smartness’ for rural contexts, the idea of the smart village remains narrowly preoccupied with broadband connectivity and the delivery of online services. A more expansive view of the smart countryside is one in which technological innovation supports a more general inclination towards problem-​solving and innovations that deliver diversity in economic and social opportunity. Technology has a capacity to advance economic, social and cultural goals. It can help strengthen participatory governance, add value to social enterprises and new economic activities (enabling rural producers and entrepreneurs to extend their market reach) and promote social inclusion. But strategies to advance the roll-​out of new technologies, and the replacement of old technologies and ways of working, need to be carefully planned if they are to avoid seeding new inequalities. This was again illustrated in the Finnish case, where the roll-​out of that technology was community-designed and -led and where care was taken to ensure widest possible access to the opportunities offered by the smart village. Our case studies give glimpses of good rural futures in which diverse economic opportunities are a source of resilience and in which diversity, more generally, is underpinned by social justice. Post-​carbon rural futures will be a crucial part of national responses to climate change. But the imposition of those futures, without place-​based leadership, would risk significant disruption to rural economies and communities. The big picture in relation to rural futures is the need for a just transition to a post-​carbon countryside. Many countries are moving, at different speeds, towards this goal. China’s retirement of farmland, Ireland’s energy transition, and Scotland’s land reforms (seeding more sustainable land management practices) point to different reasons and means of moving in roughly the same 135

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direction: towards post-​carbon rural futures that deliver local benefits. Smart technologies, that reduce personal travel, will play a part in that transition. But it will only be a just transition if it is underpinned by place-​based leadership. That is not to suggest that rural places will set all the rules and go it alone, but rather that they will take some significant responsibility for setting the direction and speed of travel, ensuring that rural futures meet their particular needs and aspirations while contributing to the big challenges previously noted. But beyond an element of place-​based leadership, what factors are likely to contribute to the realisation of the good countryside? How might these rural futures be achieved? In other words, what lessons can we draw from the 12 presented cases? The first lesson is that rural areas are subject to multiple competing forces. This can be a cause of conflict, as different and sometimes incompatible interests are pursued. But it can also be an opportunity. Even in the case of land investment in Romania, the intent of extra-​local actors –​that is, the investment bank –​was to support local development through an acquisition and lease​back scheme that unlocked capital investment in support of new farming practices. The programme came unstuck because of undeveloped governance arrangements. Rather than connecting with local communities, the bank relied on ultimately corrupt intermediaries to try to deliver its investment goals. None of the actors were connected in any meaningful way and were left to pursue private interests. It is in the nature of ‘financialisation’ to seek to overcome ‘spatial fixity’ by treating place-​based assets as collateral for the generation of income through financial channels. While some forms of sustainable investment will have a part to play in shaping good rural futures, economic activity needs to be place-​embedded, connecting with networks of local interest. Those networks are crucial to the delivery of shared benefits and, before that, to the design of projects that have broad community buy-​in. Networks and the social enterprise they incubate have been revealed to be vital for the efficacy of rural planning. In the introduction to this book, we argued that rural development is dependent on the existence of networks that bring together local and extra-​local agency; that are able to look broadly across different capitals; that can understand dependencies; and that can design and orchestrate responses to rural challenges that are ‘place-​based’ (meaning that they acknowledge and respect the particular assemblage of place capitals). Planning that works within that framework benefits from institutional capacity, adaptive governance, the ability to mobilise external resources and the possibility of driving positive social change through partnership. It is connected to a broader ‘spatial energy’ that contributes to both the idea and practice of planning in different places. Planning’s contribution to the delivery of better rural places will be dependent on the full list of attributes presented in Table 6.1. It will need a regulatory environment that is robust enough to define and defend community interests, which appeared lacking in the Romanian case. It will need extra-​local institutional 136

Conclusions

support, of the type present in Australia (enabling the formation of community cooperatives) and in Scotland (advancing the funds needs to bring private assets under community control). Rooted in a participatory governance, it will embark on a process of strategy and plan making with communities. The governance arrangements that scaffold planning will adapt to local circumstances, treating the complete range of community groups –​including cooperatives –​as full partners in the planning process. It is these foundations that give planning its capacity to mobilise resources, negotiate urban and rural relationships, respond to the social changes and challenges that community partners are well placed to understand, and ultimately transition from unsustainable development pathways. Our cases illustrate the significance of each of these frameworks, attributes or capabilities. Regarding the regulatory environment, higher framing can catalyse community action. The EC’s Just Transition Mechanism and Just Transition Fund provided framework for decarbonisation in the Irish Midlands and all the other community-​based actions and benefits that this produced. Legal frameworks that give charitable status to community enterprises exist in many parts of the world and these provide the means of taking control of important community assets. The success of such enterprises is often dependent on institutional capacity. This can mean the capacity to lend in-​kind support to community initiative. This was provided by CDS in Australia. Elsewhere, supra-​national organisations have lent support to place-​based initiatives. The designation of Røros as a World Heritage Site in 1980 and the subsequent extension of that site in 2011 to embrace nearby cultural landscapes was a significant trigger for an array of local actions. Sometimes, institutional capacity is manifest in direct funding: one example of this is the Scottish Land Fund, supporting community land purchases; another is the Chinese state’s support for the SLCP in Yangliu; and yet another is Finland’s Broadband for All programme. Rural communities can do a lot for themselves, but the catalyst provided by institutional support and capacity, as enabling structures, is often significant. But while the institutional nudge can catalyse action, it is still the mobilisation of local actors that delivers direct results. Planning is traditionally about strategising and making plans, but the delivery of those plans usually depends on the actions of significant others. We have looked at very few plans in this book. Fannin County’s Comprehensive Development Plan is a notable exception, providing a blueprint for the management of environmental and cultural resources through a collaborative process. Such plans are essentially agreements with local communities –​setting out the vision being pursued and how it would be delivered. A very different kind of plan was Upper Eden’s NDP, which was the communities’ reaction to formal planning in the district. That formal planning was considered to run counter to the community interest and was therefore modified through the neighbourhood planning process. Neighbourhood planning in England is perhaps an outlier in this book, representing an attempt to instrumentalise community action in a way that serves a statutory planning process. But some communities have seen it as an opportunity to seize control of that process, realigning it to local interest. 137

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In a sense, planning becomes adaptive to local circumstances through the control ceded to community actors and through its assimilation into more flexible governance arrangements. In the English case, those communities assumed partial responsibility for delivering against those plans. But elsewhere, that delivery was a more central part of the planning process. The delivery of plans, where they are made, is frequently dependent on community action rooted in participatory processes and in place-​based social capital. While the Irish Midland’s decarbonisation strategy was coordinated by the Midlands Regional Transition Team, it is local communities that are finding ways to deliver that strategy on the ground. One of the most compelling examples of adaptive community governance was uncovered in Spain, where a LAG established to deliver rural development turned its hand to crisis relief during the COVID-​19 pandemic. In a similar vein, Røros’ ‘Food from the Mountain’ network illustrates the organisational prowess of local actors, which were able to construct a complex network between local government regulators, local producers/​farmers’ cooperatives, food processors and retailers with the purpose of growing revenues and retaining value locally. Networks in Fannin County had similar goals, and in Finland, the cooperative formed by several villages in the Kumho region worked with private and public partners to deliver a significant upgrading of local infrastructure. Facilitators can play pivotal roles in mobilising communities. A development officer supported the Aigas Community Forest in Scotland, helping realise its development goals. A local IT enthusiast supported the Digi-​Hub in Finland. And the Echigo-​Tsumari Satoyama Collaborative Organisation appointed expert community facilitators in Japan. Some analyses of community action suggest that boundary-​crossers are key to the success of these sorts of mobilisation, but our studies attribute success to collective effort and energy. In the case of the Aigas Community Forest, the development officer was tasked to connect to external resources (these sorts of trusts often appoint development specialists with an outreach remit). The ability to mobilise local resources in support of place-​based actions is another precondition for successful planning. Those local resources can be routed through vertical linkages from government, the charities sector or from major private players –​of the type that supported the broadband roll-​ out in Kumho. On the other hand, they may arrive via horizonal linkages, with communities eliciting the support of neighbours or local interests in pursuit of shared development goals, as happened in the alliance of Upper Eden parishes. The alliance of local and extra-​local actors is important for the delivery of better rural places, but it is apparent that local knowledge needs to be privileged in development strategies, with top-​down strategies allowed to flex and adapt to local circumstances. This eventually happened in the Yangliu Watershed, with state officials persuaded of the need to work with local officials and farmers on the adaptation of their land retirement programme to local cropping practices. We have not provided a significant focus on urban–​rural relationships in this book, but that relationship is critical to the just transitions that will usher in alternative rural futures. That relationship is not merely an economic one, concerned with production and 138

Conclusions

consumption, or even one rooted in new mobilities with rural areas importing ex-​urban residents. These are likely to be features of the urban–​rural dynamic in the years ahead, but one of the most important urban–​rural relationships today takes the form of a contract that will see rural areas play a broader role on behalf of society at large in the mitigation of climate change impacts. We have perhaps given insufficient attention to this contract, although the essence of it is captured in the concept of the just transition –​exemplified in the Irish Midlands case. The final requirement for planning, enabling it to contribute effectively to good rural futures, is the ability to respond to and shape social change. At different levels, planning has been proactive in supporting sustainable development pathways. Scottish land reforms have opened up new possibilities for rural communities. And despite the shortcomings of the ‘exceptions’ approach, which allows the development of affordable housing on farmland in England, it illustrates the ways that planning practice, which has not been the major focus of this book, can help support communities in their pursuit of fairer housing outcomes. While the needs, ambitions and energies of communities should occupy centre stage in rural planning, the broader importance of planning policy and practice in facilitating the delivery of community-​led solutions should be acknowledged. Public planners have become more concerned with social change and social outcomes and many have been working hard with communities on the development of plan policies that support the ambitions of those places. While the outdated orthodoxies of planning systems may erect barriers to social justice, sometimes privileging private property interests, planners at the coalface have been instrumental in the search for solutions to the challenges of rural housing, employment and amenity. They are also part of the communities with which we have been centrally concerned in this book. But the broader goal of Rural Places and Planning has been to present good planning as a socio-​spatial process that is anchored in local aspiration and creativity, and that ultimately finds expression in plans and projects that are frequently taken forward by community-​based actors. A number of theoretical propositions helped us construct this view of planning, starting with that of place capitals –​borrowed from Bourdieu (1986) and subsequently developed by other scholars. We have tried to unpack the materiality, social construction and practices associated with rural places through a series of cases from different parts of the global countryside that illustrate the unique assemblages of place capitals –​built, economic, land-​ based and socio-​cultural –​in different places. Shucksmith’s idea of the ‘good countryside’ (2018) also provided a valuable guide for our analysis. We have also argued that planning is not a silver bullet. Regulatory planning that sits within a system circumscribed by law and operated by the national and local state has limited reach. But planning can also be thought of as something far broader –​ as something embedded in place and broader social processes. Good planning is inseparable from place: an unavoidable social practice –​or higher instinct of preparedness (to meet and confront critical challenges) –​that is not dependent on any underlying bureaucracy or system. This is the overarching message that we have tried to convey in this book. 139

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Wilkinson, K., Lowe, P. and Donaldson, A. (2010) ‘Beyond policy networks: policy framing and the politics of expertise in the 2001 foot and mouth disease crisis’, Public administration, 88(2), 331–​45. Wilson, G.A. (2007) Multifunctional Agriculture: A Transition Theory Perspective, Wallingford: CABI. Wilson, G. (2010) ‘Multifunctional “quality” and rural community resilience’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 35: 364–​81. Wirth, L. (1938) ‘Urbanism as a way of life’, American Journal of Sociology, 44(1): 1–​24. Woods, M. (2005) Rural Geography, London: Sage. Woods, M. (2006) ‘Redefining the rural “question”: the new “politics of the rural” and social policy’, Social Policy and Administration, 40(6): 579–​95. Woods, M. (2007) ‘Engaging the global countryside: globalization, hybridity and the reconstitution of rural place’, Progress in Human Geography, 31(4): 485–​507. Woods, M. (2010) Rural, London: Routledge. Woods, M. (2011) ‘The local politics of the global countryside: boosterism, aspirational ruralism and the contested reconstitution of Queenstown’, New Zealand, GeoJournal, 76: 365–​81. Woods, M. (2012) ‘Creative ruralities’, paper presented to the ‘Creativity on the Edge’ Symposium, Moore Institute, National University of Ireland Galway, June 2012 [online], Available from: https://​www.glob​ al-r​ ural.org/w ​ p-c​ onte​ nt/u ​ plo​ ads/​2018/​11/​Creat​ive-​Rur​alit​ies.pdf [Accessed 25 January 2021]. Woods, M. (2019) ‘The future of rural places’, in M. Scott, N. Gallent and M. Gkartzios (eds) The Routledge Companion to Rural Planning, London: Routledge, pp 622–​32. Woolcock, M. (1998) ‘Social capital and economic development: toward a theoretical synthesis and policy framework’, Theory and Society, 27(2): 151–​208. Yahata, S. (2019) ‘A Change in Rural Areas by Art: The Case of Echigo-​Tsumari Art Triennale’, presentation at the UK-​Japan Symposium on Contemporary Arts in Rural Development, 18–​20 February, Newcastle upon Tyne: Newcastle University. Yamashita, A., Gomez, C. and Dombroski, K. (2017) ‘Segregation, exclusion and LGBT people in disaster impacted areas: experiences from the Higashinihon Dai-​Shinsai (Great East-​Japan Disaster)’, Gender, Place and Culture, 24(1): 64–​71. Yarwood, R. (2010) ‘An exclusive countryside? Crime concern, social exclusion and community policing in two English villages’, Policing and Society, 20(1): 61–​ 78. Yoshikazu, H. (1985) ‘The dying Japanese village’, Japan Quarterly, 32(3): 316. Zavratnik, V., Kos, A. and Stojmenova Duh, E. (2018) ‘Smart villages: comprehensive review of initiatives and practices’, Sustainability, 10(7): 2559. Zhang, X.Q. (2016) ‘The trends, promises and challenges of urbanisation in the world’, Habitat International, 54(3): 241–​52.

168

Index References to tables and photographs appear in italic type

A Abelson, M.J.  122 access to countryside  75, 82, 91–​2 active citizenship  102, 113, 114 affordable housing  30, 31, 32, 89 agricultural land  see farming/​farmland Aigas Forest, Scotland  90–​6, 93–​4, 132, 133–​4, 137, 138, 139 Albrechts, L.  19 Appalachian Region, US  59–​65, 70, 130, 133, 134, 137, 138 art festivals  16, 103–​11, 108–​10, 121, 129, 131, 134, 138 Art Front Gallery  105, 106, 111​ assets-​based approach  48 Australia  28, 41–​5, 131, 133 Azaryahu, M.  12

B Baker, K.  116, 118–​19, 120 Bell, D.  115 Bennett, M.T.  84 biodiversity  77, 81, 91–​2 Bock, B.B.  102, 114–​15, 122 Bord na Móna  79–​82 Bosworth, G.  51 boundary-​crossers  37, 40, 138 Bourdieu, P.  4–​5, 7–​8, 47, 97–​9, 102 branding  52, 57, 58, 69–​70, 76 broadband  27, 35–​40, 46, 112, 119 Brotman, S.  119 Bryden, J.  47 built rural capital  9, 11, 25–​46 the capital  25–​6 community-​based planning  29–​34, 34–​40, 137–​8 cooperative community spaces  40–​5, 131, 133 economic infrastructures  27 environmental infrastructures  27 and good countryside  128–​9 integral nature of  45 place-​based community focus  45 smart villages  34–​40, 131, 133, 135 socio-​cultural infrastructures  28–​9 sub-​components of  26–​9 Bullock, C.H.  79

Burton, R.  100 buyouts  41–​5

C Canada  116–​21, 131–​2, 134 capitals  4–​12, 7–​9 built rural  9, 25–​9 cultural  4, 5, 7–​8, 47, 76, 97–​104 economic  4, 5, 7, 47–​53 environmental  5, 9, 50, 64, 70, 72 financial  7 framing of  11–​12 human  6, 8, 99 land-​based rural  71–​7 natural  6, 9, 71–​2 and place  5–​6, 7–​9, 10, 25, 48–​9, 98 political  7–​8 social  4, 5, 7, 25, 36, 47, 96, 97–​104, 127 sub-​components of  26–​9, 49–​53, 74–​7, 100–​4 symbolic  4, 55, 99, 100 Caragliu, A.  34 carbon emissions  green grabbing  75 low-​carbon transition  79–​83, 94–​5, 130, 132, 135–​6, 137, 138, 139 post-​carbon landscape  73–​4, 135–​6 carbon taxes  78 Castle, E.N.  6 China  84–​8, 95, 130, 133, 137, 138 Christophers, B.  65 class  4–​5, 14–​15, 99, 102 clientelist countryside  17, 30 climate change  environmental and spatial justice  129–​30 impact on rural places  78, 125 just transition approach  78–​83, 95, 134–​5, 137 low-​carbon transition  79–​83, 94–​5, 130, 132, 135–​6, 137, 138, 139 post-​carbon landscape  73–​4, 135–​6 Cloke, P.  13, 15, 16 communication sites  40, 44–​5 communities in production  101 community-​based planning  18, 20–​2, 45–​6, 101–​2, 127, 130–​1, 137–​8 cooperative community spaces  40–​5

169

Rural Places and Planning

housing  29–​34 smart villages  34–​40 see also community land ownership; community wealth-​building capacity  community-​based cooperatives  40–​5 community businesses/​buyouts  41–​5 Community Capital Framework  6 community development  6, 99 Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015  90 community land ownership  89–​93, 95, 96, 131, 132, 133–​4, 135–​6, 137, 138 community land trusts (CLTs)  89 community spaces  40–​5 community transaction centres  42–​3 community wealth-​building capacity  51–​3 heritage-​led development  53–​8 natural resource economy  59–​65 conservation  community forests  91–​2 heritage-​led development  53–​8 payment for ecosystem services  83–​8 Constantin, C.  68 contested countryside  17 cooperatives  35–​7, 40–​6, 57, 58, 131, 133, 137, 138 counterurbanisation  15, 51, 121 Courtney, P.  6, 7–​9, 26, 72 COVID-​19  111–​15, 121–​2, 131, 138 creativity  16, 103–​11 Cresswell, T.  12 cultural capital  4, 5, 7–​8, 47, 76, 97–​104 see also social and cultural rural capital  cultural practices  103–​4 art festivals  16, 104–​11 heritage-​led development  53–​8 landscape  76

D Dale-​Harris, L.  67–​9 Daniels, T.  83 Davies, C.  77 decapitalisation  6 decarbonisation  78–​83 decentralisation  87, 95–​6 deficits-​based approach  48 development orders  29 differentiated countryside  16–​17 digital infrastructure  see technology discordant countryside  127, 129, 132–​3 diversity  133–​4 Dobromir, Romania  66–​9, 70, 130, 133, 134, 136 Duncan, C.M.  60

E Echigo-​Tsumari Art Triennale, Japan 105–​11, 121, 129, 131, 134, 138 ecological forests  85 economic capital  4, 5, 7, 47, 49–​53 see also economic rural capital economic forests  85 economic infrastructures  9, 25, 26–​7, 128 economic rural capital  7, 11, 47–​70 the capital  47–​9 community wealth-​building capacity 51–​3 enterprise infrastructure  51 financialisation of rural assets  65–​9, 70, 74–​5, 130, 133, 136 and good countryside  128–​9 heritage-​led development  53–​8, 69–​70, 129 natural resource economy  59–​65, 70, 130, 133 new rural economy  48, 48 and other capitals  49–​50 physical productive infrastructure 50–​1 place-​based perspective  52–​3 sub-​components of  49–​53 ecosystem services  72, 73, 76–​7, 83–​8 Edelman, M.  60 Eden District, England  30, 30–​4, 137–​8 Edwards, G.  13 embedded identity  128–​9 Emery, M.  7–​9, 25, 72 emotional capital  5 endogenous development  20–​1, 48–​9 energy production  27, 79–​83, 94–​5 England  29–​34, 89, 137–​8, 139 ENRD  35, 36, 37–​8, 113 enterprise infrastructure  51 entrepreneurial capital  5 entrepreneurial social infrastructure  99 environmental and spatial justice  129–​30 environmental capital  5, 9, 50, 64, 70, 72 environmental infrastructures  27 Eskasoni First Nation, Canada  118 European Union  farming subsidies  67–​8, 68–​9 just transition approach  78–​9, 80, 137 land grabs  69 LEADER programme  20–​1, 38, 48, 91, 113–​15, 121–​2, 131 Smart Village Initiative  34, 35 extractive industries  and heritage-​led development  53–​8

170

Index

and natural resource economy  59–​60, 70 peatland  79–​83, 94–​5

F facilitators  138 Fannin County, US  60–​5, 70, 130, 133, 137, 138 farming/​farmland  affordable housing on  32 and climate change  78 community land ownership  90 COVID-​19 pandemic  114 cultural capital  100 financialisation of  65–​9, 70, 74–​5 outbuildings  32, 33 payment for ecosystem services  83–​8, 95, 130, 133, 137, 138 and rural planning  72–​3 subsidies  67–​8, 68–​9, 85 Favell, A.  105, 106 Feng, D.  85 financial capital  7 financialisation of rural assets  65–​9, 70, 74–​5, 130, 133, 136 Fine, B.  98 Finland  35–​40, 131, 133, 135, 138 Flora, C.B.  6, 7–​9, 25, 72 Flora, J.L.  99 Florida, R.  104 Food from the Mountain  57, 138 food production  52, 53, 57–​8, 62, 69–​70, 114, 138 Foote, K.E.  12 forests  community-​owned  60–​1, 90–​3, 95, 96, 132, 133–​4, 137, 138, 139 reforestation  84–​8 Foucault, M.  14 Frank, K.I.  71 Fraser, A.  89

G Gaventa, J.  59 global countryside  1, 13, 124–​5 global financial crisis (2008)  49 globalisation  13, 47, 49 good countryside  6, 10, 23 28, 127 future appearance of  133–​6 guiding values  128–​33 planning for  128–​9 Granovetter, M.  65 green-​grabbing  75

Guggenheim  16 Gunnoe, A.  65

H Haarstad, H.  55, 58 Halfacree, K.  14, 16 Hall, R.  66, 69 Haroon Akram-​Lodhi, A.  65 He, J.  86 Healey, P.  3, 12, 17, 19 health  COVID-​19  111–​15, 121–​2 LGBT groups  119, 122 Hedlund, M.  14 Henning-​Smith, C.  111 heritage-​led rural development  53–​8, 69–​70, 129, 134, 137, 138 heteronormativity  103, 120–​1, 122 Hibbard, M.  64, 71 HIV/​AIDS  119 Hoggart, K.  14 Hollands, R.G.  34 homophobia  118, 119 Honkaniemi, T.  36 housing  affordable  30, 31, 32, 89 allocation of  32–​3 community land trusts (CLTs)  89 heritage-​led rural development  58 housing stress  31 infrastructures of  26–​7 neighbourhood planning  29–​34, 46 second homes  30, 31, 32, 112 human capital  6, 8, 99 human resource  51

I identity  120, 128–​9 in-​migration  51, 79, 116, 120 inclusivity  45–​6, 102–​3, 122, 131–​2, 134 queer lives  115–​21 India  34, 35 inequality  COVID-​19 pandemic  111–​12, 115 financialisation of rural assets  66, 69 housing  31 land ownership  94 queer lives  115–​21, 122, 131–​2, 134 rural communities in US  59–​60 smart villages  36–​7, 38 and social capital  102–​3 infrastructure(s)  built rural  26–​9 171

Rural Places and Planning

concept of  25–​6 economic rural  50–​3 interactional  40–​5 land-​based rural  76–​7 institutional capacity  137 interactional infrastructure  40–​5 Ireland  79–​83, 94–​5, 130, 132, 135–​6, 137, 138, 139

J Japan  105–​11, 121, 129, 131, 134, 138 Johnson, K.M.  60 Juntti, M.  83, 84 just countryside  134 just transition approach  78–​83, 95, 134–​5, 137 Just Transition Mechanism (EU)  79, 137

K Kabakov, Ilya and Emilia  110 Kaniva, Australia  41–​2, 43, 131, 133 Kilpatrick, S.  28, 40 King, B.  100 Kitagawa, F.  105, 110–​11 Kolinjivadi, V.K.  85 Koolhaas, Rem  16 Kuhmo, Finland  35–​7 Kunzmann, K.  19 Kusama, Yayoi  109

L land-​based rural capital  9, 11, 71–​96 broad benefits of land  94–​5 the capital  71–​4 global challenges with local benefits  95 and good countryside  128–​9 land as a socially productive asset  75–​6 land reform and community ownership  88–​93, 95, 96, 132 landscape  76 low-​carbon transition  79–​83, 94–​5, 130, 132, 135–​6, 137, 138, 139 nature-​based infrastructure  76–​7 payment for ecosystem services  83–​8, 95, 130, 133, 137, 138 sub-​components of  74–​7 land grabs  65–​9, 74–​5 land ownership  community ownership  21, 90–​6, 132, 133–​4, 137, 138, 139 diverse patterns/​models of  53, 75 financialisation of rural assets  65–​9, 70, 74–​5, 130, 133, 136

land reform  88–​93, 95, 96, 132 Land Reform Act 2003  90 Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016  90 land use, changes to  29 land use planning  18 land value  50 financialisation of rural assets  65–​9, 70, 74–​5, 130, 133, 136 landscape  72, 76 Lang, R.  86 Lapping, M.B.  19, 72, 73 LEADER programmes  20–​1, 38, 48, 91, 113–​15, 121–​2, 131 Lefebvre, H.  16 legacy  6 legal frameworks  21, 29, 45, 69, 89–​90, 137 Leung, N.  107 Lewis, N.M.  115, 119 LGBT lives  115–​21, 122, 131–​2 Lichter, D.T.  60 Liepins, R.  101–​2 Lillevold, K.  55, 58 Little, J.  16 Localism Act 2011  29 Loechel, B.  40 low-​carbon transition  77–​83, 94–​5, 130, 132, 135–​6, 137, 138, 139 Lowe, P.  3 Lu, G.  85 Luoto, I.  36 Lurie, S.  64

M Machotka, E.  107 Maclaren, V.  85 Mahone Bay, Canada  117 markets  125, 130 market-​based instruments  21, 83–​8 Marple, L.  116 Marsden, T.  73 Marshall, L.  59 Massey, D.  12, 13, 99 materiality of place  12 Matthews, T.  78, 111 Mazzucato, M.  65 McKee, K.  89 McMahon, R.  119 meaning of places  12 meanings  101 mining  see extractive industries Mitchell, C.J.A.  70 mobilities  15 Monbiot, G.  74

172

Index

Montgomery, N.  41, 42, 43, 45 Moore, T.  89 Moseley, M.  6, 7–​9, 26, 72 Mountlucas Wind Farm, Ireland  82, 82 Munro, G.  47 Murakami, K.  106 Murdoch, J.  30, 100

N natural capital  6, 9, 71–​2 natural resource economy  59–​65, 70, 130, 133 137, 138 nature-​based infrastructures  27, 72, 76–​7 see also land based rural capital neighbourhood planning  29–​34, 46, 137–​8 neo-​endogenous development  21, 48 neoliberalism  10, 34, 65, 83, 125, 130 Netherlands  78 networks  see social networks New Rural Development Paradigm (OECD)  48 new rural economy  48, 48 New Zealand  6 NIMBYism  15, 32 Norway  53–​8, 69–​70, 129, 134, 137, 138 Nova Scotia, Canada  116–​21, 131–​2, 134 Nuffield Trust  112​ Nuriootpa, Australia  43

O

global sense of  13 loss of  13 and mobilities  15 place-​making  13 rural places  13–​17 sense of place  12–​13 place identity  53, 57, 58, 69–​70, 76 planning (general)  17–​19, 23–​4, 103, 123 see also rural planning planning permission  29, 31, 32 Plunkett Foundation  41 pluralistic universalism  3 policy/​policy making  and academia  16 assets-​based approach  48 deficits-​based approach  48 endogenous development  48–​9 integration with planning  132 just transition approach  78–​9 modernisation agenda  47–​8 and rural wellbeing  10 political capital  7–​8 positivism  13–​15 post-​carbon rural futures  73–​4, 135–​6 post rurality  15–​16 poverty  59, 66, 86, 95 power  14, 16–​17, 97–​8 practice of place  12 preserved countryside  17 Pride parades  118, 118 Putnam, R.  98

OECD  10, 38, 48

P Pahl, R.E.  14 parish plans, England  29 participatory processes see community-​based planning paternalistic countryside  17 payment for ecosystem services (PES)  83–​8, 95, 130, 133, 137, 138 peatland  79–​83, 80–​1, 94–​5, 130, 132, 135–​6, 137, 138, 139 Pendlebury, J.  53 performance measures  6, 10 Phillips, M.  99 Philo, C.  16 physical productive infrastructure  7, 50–​1, 128 Pitkänen, K.  112 place  12–​17 capitals  5–​6, 7–​9, 10, 25, 48–​9, 98 concept of  12 counterurbanisation  15

Q quality of life  6, 10 queer lives  115–​21, 122, 131–​2

R Rabo Farm  66–​9 Rantisi, N.  103 Ray, C.  101 reforestation  84–​8 regulatory environment  137 representations of rurality  14 resilience  46, 125, 134 and social networks  111–​15, 121–​2, 131 Romania  66–​9, 70, 130, 133, 134, 136 Røros, Norway  53–​8, 69–​70, 129, 134, 137, 138 rural places  13–​17 future of  126–​39 new issues and politics of  125 the rural, functions of  19 in an urban age  124–​6 173

Rural Places and Planning

rural planning  17–​22, 123–​39 actions to deliver change  126–​7, 129 and better rural places  136–​7 community-​based focus  20–​2 and community capacity  101–​2 as discipline in own right  3, 124 economic rural  58, 62–​5, 70 enabling structures  126–​7, 128 and functions of the rural  19 heteronormativity of  103, 120–​2 guiding values  126–​7, 128–​33, 128 as idea and practice  17–​18, 123–​4 and inclusivity  102–​3, 115 integration with policy  132 land-​based rural  72–​3, 77, 79, 80–​1, 83, 90–​2, 96 land-​use planning  18–​19 mobilisation of local resources  138 neglect of in planning theory  3 neighbourhood planning  29–​34, 45–​6 participatory governance  137–​8 planning for good countryside  126–​39, 128 scope of  20, 21 and sexuality  115, 120–​2 and social change  139 socio-​spatial  18–​19, 126–​7, 139 rural typologies  13–​15 rural-​urban relations  52, 125, 138–​9 rural webs  101 rurality  1, 3, 13–​17 Ryan, E.  81–​2 Rydin, Y.  3

S satoyama  105, 121, 129 Satsangi, M.  90 Scotland  89–​93, 95, 96, 132, 133–​4, 137, 138, 139 second homes  30, 31, 32, 112 Semeniuc, S.  67 sense of place  12–​13 Shaw, D.  30, 31–​2, 33 Shucksmith, M.  10, 21–​2, 23, 28, 102 Sierra Norte de Madrid, Spain  113–​15, 121–​2, 131, 138 Sikor, T.  86 Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP)  84–​8, 95, 130, 133, 137, 138 Smart Village Initiative (EU)  34, 35 smart villages  34–​40, 131, 133, 135, 138 social and cultural rural capital  7, 11, 97–​122 active citizenship  102

art festivals  104–​11, 121, 129, 131 the capitals  97–​100 community capacity  101–​2 creativity and cultural practices  103–​4 and good countryside  128–​9 inclusivity  102–​3 queer lives  115–​21, 122, 131–​2 social networks  100–​1, 111–​15, 121–​2, 131 sub-​components of  100–​4 social capital  4, 5, 7, 25, 36, 44, 47, 96, 97–​104, 127 see also social and cultural rural capital social class  4–​5, 14–​15, 99, 102 social constructionism  14 social enterprise  90–​3, 130–​1, 132–​3, 135 social exclusions  102–​3, 134 social justice  134 social networks  100–​1, 136 queer lives  118–​19 and resilience  111–​15, 121–​2, 131 socio-​cultural infrastructures  28 socio-​economic justice  46 socio-​spatial planning  18–​19, 126–​7 see also community-​based planning Sohlberg, Harald  55 soil erosion  84 solidarity campaign  113–​14 South Africa  89 Soviet Union  74 spaces, community  40–​5, 101 Spain  112–​15, 121–​2, 131, 138 spatial planning  18–​19 Spoor, M.  74 Sturzaker, J.  30, 31–​2, 33 Sunderland, T.  85 Suodenniemi, Finland  37–​8, 37 supra-​national organisations  137 sustainability trap  32 symbolic capital  4, 55, 99, 100

T taxation  52, 75 Taylor Review  32 technology  39, 135 online communities  113–​14, 118–​19 smart villages  34–​40, 131, 133, 135, 138 Tewdwr-​Jones , M. 18  Throsby, D.  99, 103 timber production  91 Tönnies, Ferdinand  14 tourism  community forests  91 and COVID-​19 pandemic  112, 114

174

Index

heritage-​led development  53–​8, 69–​70, 129, 134, 137, 138 landscape  76 natural resource economy  59–​65, 70, 130, 133 137, 138 transgressive stressors  78 transition economies  65, 68–​9, 74

U Ulrich-​Schad, J.D.  60 United Kingdom  29–​34, 41, 89–​93, 137–​8 United States  34, 59–​65, 70, 130, 133, 137, 138 urban-​rural relations  52, 125, 138–​9 urbanisation  125, 126 Utsumi, Akiko  108

V Valentine, G.  115 values  126–​7, 128–​33, 128 Van der Ploeg, J.G.  78, 101 van Eupen, M.  14 Visser, O.  74

W Walbundrie, Australia  43–​4, 44

Wang, C.  85 Ward, N.  48–​9 Weber, T.  77 wellbeing  6, 10, 31, 38, 46, 7 access to countryside  75, 82, 91–​2 COVID-​19 pandemic  112, 113 White, B.  75 wind farms  82, 82 Wirth, L.  14 Woods, M.  1, 13, 104, 124 Woolcock, M.  100 World Heritage Sites (UNESCO)  54, 55–​6, 57, 58, 137

Y Yackandandah, Australia  43 Yahata, S.  107 Yangliu Watershed, China  86–​8, 87–​8, 95, 130, 133, 137, 138 Yarwood, R.  101 Yin, R.  85 Yunnan Province, China  86–​8, 95, 130, 133, 137, 138

Z Zavratnik, V.  34, 35

175

“Accompanied by inspiring case studies, this book compellingly explains which values guide community engagement and what role rural planners may play in realising a good countryside using place-based capitals.” Bettina Bock, Wageningen University “This book offers crucial insights into the study of rural planning, with a particular emphasis on the interconnectedness of the global countryside. It moves beyond the Anglophone world and provides a fresh perspective for both Global South and Global North rural researchers, and for practitioners pursuing the ‘good countryside’.” Chi-Mao Wang, National Taiwan University “A radical new take on rural place that escapes traditional national silos in planning research to present a global perspective, emphasising interconnection and relationality. A fresh and stimulating read.” Michael Woods, Aberystwyth University Rural Places and Planning provides a compact analysis for students and early-career practitioners of the critical connections between place capitals and the broader ideas and practices of planning, seeded within rural communities. It looks across twelve international cases, examining the values that guide the pursuit of the ‘good countryside’. The book presents rural planning – rooted in imagination and reflecting key values – as being embedded in the life of particular places, dealing with critical challenges across housing, services, economy, natural systems, climate action and community wellbeing in ways that are integrated and recognise broader place-making needs. It introduces the breadth of the discipline, presenting examples of what planning means and what it can achieve in different rural places. Menelaos Gkartzios is Reader in Planning and Rural Development at Newcastle University. Nick Gallent is Professor of Housing and Planning at University College London. Mark Scott is Professor of Planning at University College Dublin.

ISBN 978-1-4473-5637-0

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