This book is a must read for those interested in the role cooperatives play in fostering local rural development and alleviating rural poverty. Through conceptual pieces, case studies, essays and empirical work, the papers in this volume illustrate the complex challenges facing cooperatives as they attempt to address market failures, remain cost competitive vis-a-vis transnational agribusinesses, adopt good internal governance practices, navigate the political challenges in their local environments and adapt to and influence the institutional environment in which they operate.' - Murray Fulton, University of Saskatchewan, CanadaAgricultural cooperatives and producer organizations are institutional innovations which have the potential to reduce poverty and improve food security. This book presents a raft of international case studies, from developing and transition countries, to analyse the internal and external challenges that these complex organizations face and the solutions that they have developed. The contributors provide an increased understanding of the transformation of traditional community organizations into modern farmer-owned businesses. They cover issues including: the impact on rural development and inclusiveness, the role of social capital, formal versus informal organizations, democratic participation and member relations, and their role in value chains. Students and scholars will find the book's multidisciplinary approach useful in their research. It will also be of interest to policy-makers seeking to understand the wide diversity of organizational forms and functions. NGOs, donors and governments seeking to support rural developments will benefit from the discussions raised in this book. Contributors: J. Bijman, K. Blokland, M.L. Cook, J. Duncan, A.Groot Kormelinck, M. Hanisch, J. Hellin, G. Hendrikse, Y. Hu, X. Jia, B. Losch, R. Muradian, G. Muricho, D.J. O'Brien, S. Pascucci, D. Pesche, C. Plaisier, R. Ruben, J. Schuurman, B. Shiferaw, S. Singh, K. Wedig

Access to power and electricity is a vital resource for businesses and for sustaining the livelihood of consumers. However, producing reliable and renewable energy and distributing it in rural areas can be challenging. Such activities require special technical support measures for organizing a highly efficient and cost-effective production process. Renewable Energy and Power Supply Challenges for Rural Regions provides innovative insights into energy production, consumption, and distribution in rural regions and examines sustainable and renewable power sources. The content within this publication explores such topics as renewable energy, electrical network, and thermal energy storage. It is designed for electricians, policymakers, state officials, professionals, researchers, and academicians.

Settlements at the Edge examines the evolution, characteristics, functions and shifting economic basis of settlements in sparsely populated areas of developed nations. With a focus on demographic change, the book features theoretical and applied cases, which explore the interface between demography, economy, wellbeing and the environment. This book offers a comprehensive and insightful knowledge base for understanding the role of population in shaping the development and histories of northern sparsely populated areas of developed nations including Alaska (USA), Australia, Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Finland and other nations with territories within the Arctic Circle. In the past, many remote settlements were important bases for opening up vast areas for resource extraction, working as strategic centers and as national representations of the conquering of frontiers. With increased contemporary interest from governments, policy makers, multinational companies and other stakeholders, this book explores the importance of understanding relationships between settlement populations and the economy at the local level. It features international and expert contributors who present insightful case studies on the role of human geography, primarily population issues, in shaping the past, present and future of settlements in remote areas. They also provide analysis on opportunities and challenges for northern settlements and the effects of climate change, resource futures, and tourism. A chapter on the issues of populating future space settlements highlights that many issues for settlement change and functions in isolated and remote spatial realms are universal. This book will appeal to those interested in the past, present and future importance of settlements 'at the edge' of developed nations as well as those working in policy and program contexts. College students enrolled in courses such as demography, population studies, human studies, regional development, social policy and/or economics will find value in this book as well. Contributors include: P. Berggren, D. Bird, O.J. Borch, A. Boyle, H. Brokensha, F. Brouard, D. Carson, D. Carson, T. Carter, B. Charters, J. Cleary, J. Cokley, S. de la Barre, W. Edwards, S. Eikeland, M. Eimermann, P.C. Ensign, J. Garrett, G. Gisladottir, K. Golebiowska, J. Guenther, P. Hanrick, L. Harbo, S. Harwood, P. Heinrich, L. Huskey, G. Johannesdottir, I. Kelman, A. Koch, N. Krasnoshtanova, V. Kuklina, J. Lovell, R. Marjavaara, M. McAuliffe, R. McLeman, J.J. McMurtry, T. Nilsen, L.M. Nilsson, P. Peters, A. Petrov, G. Petursdottir, B. Prideaux, W. Rankin, J. Roto, J. Salmon, G. Saxinger, A. Schoo, P. Skoeld, A. Taylor, M. Thompson, P. Timony, A. Vuin, M. Warg Naess, E. Wenghofer, E. Wensing, D.R. White, D Zoellner

Promoting rural entrepreneurship is a necessary step to limit the negative effects of classical agricultural policy based on a linear process and attracting secondary resources to the economic process. The analysis of agricultural policy and rural development in conjunction to entrepreneurship in terms of production may represent a further step in understanding the role and importance of diversifying the rural potentials in contemporary economies. The Handbook of Research on Agricultural Policy, Rural Development, and Entrepreneurship in Contemporary Economies is an essential publication of academic research that examines agricultural policy and its impact on shaping future resilient economy in rural areas and identifies green business models and new business patterns in rural communities. Covering a range of topics such as entrepreneurship, product management, and marketing, this book is ideal for researchers, policymakers, academicians, economists, agriculture professionals, rural developers, business investors, and students.

Chen provides an analysis of the political economy of rural development in China during the reform era. Revolving around the central theme of statecraft, Chen's study gives a concise and comprehensive treatment of the interaction of ideology and politics with central policy and economic growth. He examines China's economic reform in historical perspective, characterizes China's economic and political transformation since the reform, and proposes that the Chinese Communist Party is being transformed into a party of economics while China's ideology is becoming market-oriented communal socialism.

In addressing the issue of the Chinese path of development, Chen discusses the role of local party organizations in China's modernization drive and the microform of market-oriented communal socialism in the newly emerged village conglomerate, highlights the challenges that China faces at the turn of the new century after 20 years of economic reform, and analyzes the context of the introduction of village elections in 1990, and the establishment of Deng Xiaoping's Theory as a new ideological discourse at the 15th National Congress as well as the rationale behind them. In examining the connection between the two goals of statecraft --improving people's welfare and strengthening the state--and between central policies and local initiatives, Chen provides a study that will be of great interest to scholars, students, and other researchers involved with contemporary Chinese politics and development.

Technology has always played a decisive role in humanity's progress. Throughout history, it has not only strengthened economic development but has become a powerful tool for human development. Nevertheless, the positive impact technology has on human development may become tainted by the risks it entails.ICT Influences on Human Development, Interaction, and Collaboration creates awareness on how ICTs contribute to human development in multiple areas. This publication describes the link between ICTs and human development, which includes economic, social, and political development. It identifies potential applications for the development of human beings and provides insightful analysis about those factors (also contextual and institutional ones) that affect ICTs for human development initiatives. This book addresses future challenges, proposing strategies to both governments and international cooperation organizations for moving forward.

investigates the relationship between mining, mine closure and housing policy in post-apartheid South Africa argues that the dependencies created by the mining industry and mine housing policies while a mine is operational causes serious societal problems when it closes applies the concepts of place attachment, asset-based development and social disruption will be of interest to students and scholars researching the social impacts of mining and the extractive industries, social geography and sustainable development, as well as policymakers and practitioners working with mine closure or social impact assessments.

For over a century, Yellowstone National Park has been a monument to wildness in America. But long before flames swept through Yellowstone in 1988, that wildness had come under fire from encroachments that were making the park one of our nation's most commodified pieces of real estate.

For as long as they've existed, parks like Yellowstone have been the scene of some of the most intensive commercial activity in the American West. Selling Yellowstone recounts the story of such activities in our oldest park from the 1870s through the 1960s. It is the first book to examine critically the place of business in the development of America's national parks, demonstrating the prominent role played by profit-driven entrepreneurs in shaping the physical landscape of what is generally perceived as unaltered wilderness.

Challenging popular perceptions that our national parks are protected from commercialism, Mark Barringer reveals how businessmen, with the support of the National Park Service, marketed Yellowstone as a museum of mythology: a landscape created to look like what Americans wanted to believe the Old West once was. Together, the NPS and the concessionaires--particularly Harry W. Child's Yellowstone Park Company--altered the park repeatedly to fit a desired image and then creatively promoted it for mass consumption. As a result, the concessionaires virtually owned Yellowstone, selling it piecemeal to receptive customers as if it were an inexhaustible commodity.

First marketed as a nature museum to be viewed from the comfort of stagecoach seats or hotel room windows, the park was transformed from a wilderness preserve to a series of roadside attractions. Roads were built to geysers and waterfalls; wolves were eliminated and bison were bred; visitors were given a choice between comfortable hotels and more rustic lodges and camps. The Yellowstone Park Company sought to meet all of the public's expectations, reaping the profits from satisfying American idealizations.

Contemporary environmental attitudes eventually forced significant policy changes in the parks, but shifting political winds continue to determine such matters as snowmobile access to Yellowstone. Barringer's book contributes to the ongoing debate over the character and limits of the social construction of nature as it raises important questions about what our national parks represent, why so many people continue to feel so strongly about them, and what must be done to protect them.

This book is based on the findings of a long-term (2000-2014) interdisciplinary research project of the University of Hohenheim in collaboration with several universities in Thailand and Vietnam. Titled Sustainable Land Use and Rural Development in Mountainous Areas in Southeast Asia, or the Uplands Program, the project aims to contribute through agricultural research to the conservation of natural resources and the improvement of living conditions of the rural population in the mountainous regions of Southeast Asia. Having three objectives the book first aims to give an interdisciplinary account of the drivers, consequences and challenges of ongoing changes in mountainous areas of Southeast Asia. Second, the book describes how innovation processes can contribute to addressing these challenges and third, how knowledge creation to support change in policies and institutions can assist in sustainably develop mountain areas and people's livelihoods.

Intended as a comprehensive guide to the study of land use and rural development, this book offers detailed descriptions of land use transitions and rural restructuring. To do so, it chiefly focuses on three main aspects, the first of which is the application of geographical perspectives in order to understand rural issues in connection with urbanization, industrialization, globalization and rural vitalization strategies in contemporary China. Secondly, it presents a rich blend of regional and national analyses; detailed explorations of local cases; and critical and theoretically informed discussions that address historical paths and future projections. Lastly, it adapts concepts derived from western literature to situations and experiences in rural China, and provides empirical evidence from an "insider" perspective. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable resource for researchers, and for graduate students / courses in geography and sociology.

Sustainable development and rural policies have pursued strategies where farming has been often regarded as a factor deteriorating the ecosystem. But the current economic, social and environmental problems of the Earth probably call for examples of a positive integration between human society and nature. This research work presents more than a hundred case studies where the historical relationships between man and nature have generated, not deterioration, but cultural, environmental, social and economic values. The results show that is not only the economic face of globalization that is negatively affecting the landscape, but also inappropriate environmental policies. The CBD-UNESCO program on biocultural diversity, the FAO Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems and several projects of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations, as well as European rural policies acknowledge the importance of cultural values associated to landscape. This research intends to support these efforts.

The agriculture sector around the world has experienced profound changes in recent years. This unique and path-breaking Handbook draws together the best current research in the area of entrepreneurship in agriculture, food production and rural development.Agriculture policy reforms have impacted farm incomes, while demand side changes have required the development of sophisticated market driven strategies. Farmers have demonstrated uneven abilities to adapt and adjust to these ongoing changes. The ability and propensity of farmers to engage in entrepreneurial behaviors is a key explanation of the different patterns of responses within the sector. This book examines these issues through three main themes. The first theme focuses on the firm and the individual entrepreneurs, exploring entrepreneurship within the farm sector. The second takes a sector and industry perspective, exploring new developments in food production and distribution systems. The third theme explores the inter-relationship between agricultural entrepreneurship and its spatial context. Contributions are drawn from international research settings (Scandinavia, Europe, Asia, North America, Australasia) and offer an interdisciplinary approach to the subject.This astute Handbook, which will challenge and enrich the current literature, will appeal to academics in entrepreneurship, small business studies, agriculture, rural studies, rural sociology and agricultural economics, as well as food industry economists, policymakers and all those interested in supporting agricultural and rural businesses.

This book draws on preeminent planning theorist Patsy Healey's personal experiences as a resident of a small rural town in England, to explore what place and community mean in a particular context, and how different initiatives struggle to get a stake in the wider governance relations while maintaining their own focus and ways of working. Throughout the book, Healey assesses the public value generated by community initiatives and the impact of such activity on wider governance dynamics. Healey explores the power which small communities are able to mobilise through self-organisation and grassroots activism. Through the lens of Wooler and Glendale as a micro-society, the book centres on a community experiencing an economic and demographic transition. It focuses on three initiatives developed and led by local people - a small community development trust, an informal attentionmobilising network, and a Neighbourhood Plan project which uses an opportunity provided within the formal planning system. It examines how, in such civil society activism, people came together to promote local development in a place and community neglected by the dominant political economy. The book details the power and force of community initiative and its potential for transforming both the future possibilities for the place and community itself, as well as wider governance relations. Overall, it seeks to enrich academic and policy discussion about how the relations between formal government and civil society energy could evolve in more productive and progressive directions.

Recent research suggests that rural residents in the global North are happier than urban populations in the same countries. This goes against received wisdom in the field, where the opposite is usually assumed. Is quality of life better in the rural areas? How and under which circumstances is this the case? What can we learn from digging deeper into the rural-urban happiness paradox and which critical questions does this leave us with for the future? What might policymakers, planners, architects, and other decision-makers learn about how, when, and where to intervene? Rural quality of life delves deeper into these matters by asking what quality of life in rural areas is all about - in everyday life, through interventions in the built environment, in civil society and measures of subjective well-being. -- .

The importance of community-based and participatory approaches to rural development in developing countries has long been emphasized. Local Societies and Rural Development demonstrates how rural people, who are economically and politically weak as individuals, can only participate in development projects when they are collectively organized. With the input of expert collaborators in the field, this book identifies the local social mechanisms that motivate and control people's self-organizing activities.Through their use of typology and case studies the contributors identify the mechanisms through which rural people can best organize themselves to meet their development requirements. With the understanding that social context matters, the authors propose a method that both researchers and practitioners of rural society can apply to their work. Providing a unique and enlightening perspective on rural development, this book will be of value to academics interested in development, regional and rural studies, particularly those who are interested in researching collective action in community-based societies. It will also appeal to practitioners in the field including planners and front-line workers. Contributors: A. Hayama, M. Iwai, I. Okamoto, S. Shigetomi, M. Shimagami, A. Venkateswarlu, N. Yamada

This book, first published in 1985, provides an overview of resource management, together with a geographical treatment of physical, landscape and social resources. Drawing on British, European and North American material, the book has three main objectives: to offer an integrated review of the rural resource system, to isolate potential and actual conflicts between resources in the countryside with the aid of detailed case studies, and to explore various broad management techniques and their applicability to differing types of resource use and resource conflict. This title will provide important insight for students of geography, resource management, environmental planning and conservation.

The rural-urban dichotomy is one of the most influential figures of thought in history, laying the foundation for academic disciplines such as rural and urban sociology. The dichotomy rests on the assumption that rural and urban areas differ fundamentally. By the mid-twentieth century, scholars had observed that many rural areas displayed a blend of rural and urban features. Since then, counter urbanisation, urban sprawl and ever-increasing flows of people, goods and ideas between rural and urban areas have blurred the distinctions even further. Attempts to create new rural-urban classification systems, whether based on factors such as population size, density or distances, have largely failed. Clearly, new classification systems must use the meaning of observed changes in rural-urban systems as their point of departure rather than simple measurements of these changes. These meanings can, despite the interdependencies of our global world, be explored only in their political, cultural and economic settings.

This book analyses the key forces affecting the affordability of rural homes in Britain and the changing shape of housing markets. It takes as its starting point, demographic trends impacting upon rural communities and upon market dynamics. From this point, it explores consequent patterns of housing affordability, examining changing opportunities in the rental and sale markets, at different spatial scales. The book also focuses on how markets are analysed, and how data are selectively used to demonstrate low levels of affordability, or a lack of need for additional housing in small village locations. Building on the demographic theme, the book considers the housing implications of an aging population, before the focus finally shifts to community initiative in the face of housing undersupply and planning's future role in delivering and procuring a more constant and predictable supply of affordable homes. In a speculative conclusion, the book ends by examining the current political trajectory in England, and the prospects for housing in the countryside in the context of localism and neighbourhood planning at a village level. This book was published as a special issue of Planning Practice and Research.

First published in 1965, this reissue is a report on the Second Rehovoth Conference of August 1963, convened by the then Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, Mr Abba Eban, in order to enable the scientists and political leaders of developing countries to establish meaningful communication on the overall topic of comprehensive planning of agriculture in developing countries. Conference discussions centred on the three main topics of; agricultural planning and rural development; the human factor in agricultural development; and agricultural research, extension, and education.

The aim of this book is to explore the challenges facing rural communities and economies and to demonstrate the potential of spatial microsimulation for policy and analysis in a rural context. This is done by providing a comprehensive overview of a particular spatial microsimulation model called SMILE (Simulation Model of the Irish Local Economy). The model has been developed over a ten year period for applied policy analyis in Ireland which is seen as an ideal study area given its large percentage of population living in rural areas. The book reviews the policy context and the state of the art in spatial microsimulation against which SMILE was developed, describes in detail its model design and calibration, and presents example of outputs showing what new information the model provides using a spatial matching process. The second part of the book explores a series of rural issues or problems, including the impacts of new or changing government or EU policies, and examines the contribution that spatial microsimulation can provide in each area.

This book presents selected papers from the 8th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies in Agriculture, Food and Environment (HAICTA 2017) which examine sustainable rural development in the context of environmental, economic, and the socio-cultural dimension. This book raises awareness of the importance of sustainable management in agriculture using examples of actual industry cases, sustainable management practices, new forms of rural cooperation and entrepreneurship.

Alvar Aalto and The Art of Landscape captures the essence of the Finnish architect's landscape concept, emphasising culture and tradition, which characterised his approach to and understanding of architecture as part of the wider environment. From the forests of his youth to sights from his travels, Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) was influenced by outdoor landscapes. Throughout his career, he felt the need to shape the terrain and this became a signature of his architecture. Divided into five chapters, this book traces Aalto's relationship with landscape, starting with an analysis of his definitions and descriptions of landscape language, which ranged from natural references and biological terms, to synonyms and comparisons. It includes beautifully illustrated case study projects from the 1950s and 1960s, discussing Aalto's transformation of different landscapes through topography, terracing and tiers, ruins and natural elements, horizon outlines, landmarks, and the repetition of form. Featuring archival sketches, garden drawings, and plans, the book also contains Aalto's text 'Architecture in the Landscape of Central Finland' from 1925 in the appendix. This book provides fascinating, untold insights into Aalto's relationship with landscape and how this developed during his lifetime, for scholars, researchers, and students interested in architecture and landscape history, landscape art, and cultural studies.