For the past century, governments have been compelled, time and again, to return to the search for solutions to the housing and economic challenges posed by a restructuring countryside. The rural housing question is an analysis of the complexity of housing and development tensions in the rural areas of England, Wales and Scotland. It analyses a range of topics: from attitudes to rural development, economic change, land use, planning and counter-urbanisation; through retirement and ageing, leisure consumption, lifestyle shifts and homelessness; to public and private house building, private and public renting and community initiatives. Across this spectrum of concerns, it attempts to isolate the fundamental tensions that give the rural housing question an intractable quality. The book is aimed at policy makers, researchers, students and anyone with an interest in the future of the British countryside.

The Routledge Companion to Rural Planning provides a critical account and state of the art review of rural planning in the early years of the twenty-first century. Looking across different international experiences - from Europe, North America and Australasia to the transition and emerging economies, including BRIC and former communist states - it aims to develop new conceptual propositions and theoretical insights, supported by detailed case studies and reviews of available data. The Companion gives coverage to emerging topics in the field and seeks to position rural planning in the broader context of global challenges: climate change, the loss of biodiversity, food and energy security, and low carbon futures. It also looks at old, established questions in new ways: at social and spatial justice, place shaping, economic development, and environmental and landscape management. Planning in the twenty-first century must grapple not only with the challenges presented by cities and urban concentration, but also grasp the opportunities - and understand the risks - arising from rural change and restructuring. Rural areas are diverse and dynamic. This Companion attempts to capture and analyse at least some of this diversity, fostering a dialogue on likely and possible rural futures between a global community of rural planning researchers. Primarily intended for scholars and graduate students across a range of disciplines, such as planning, rural geography, rural sociology, agricultural studies, development studies, environmental studies and countryside management, this book will prove to be an invaluable and up-to-date resource.

Housing problems have become increasingly complex in the Global South. An increased pressure to upgrade older stock, to provide adequate infrastructure, and bring city amenities to urban peripheries compounds the continued need for new housing of a decent standard. This comprehensive volume spans nine countries, simultaneously analyzing innovative housing policies and questioning the idea of innovation in this arena. The authors describe three persistent, global challenges to contemporary policy: the inherent difficulty in mass-producing housing of decent quality with access to the city; the challenge of community-based upgrading programmes, which often fail to benefit those who are worst off; and the political root of housing policies, which don't always consider the diverse needs of populations at the expense of the least powerful. This volume raises questions about what many consider the two most successful areas of housing policy in the Global South: the community-based land sharing programmes for redevelopment in South-East Asia and the finance-driven social housing programmes in Latin America. The authors examine mass housing production programmes, incremental development processes, community-based urban upgrading, the legal structure of condominiums, and land-sharing policies, while also highlighting challenges to policy learning across contexts. This book will be of great interest to students, researchers and those involved with contemporary housing policies, particularly in the Global South. It was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Housing Policy.

Agricultural Landscapes: Seeing Rural Through Design follows on from the author's previous books, Rural Design and Architecture and Agriculture, to encourage using design thinking to provide greater meaning and understanding of places where humans live and work with the rural landscape. Rural areas around the world are often viewed as special places with cultural, historical and natural significance for people. Dewey Thorbeck emphasizes the importance of these rural sites and their connections to urban areas through full-color case studies of these places with particular emphasis on Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS), as identified by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, to document and explore personal experiences, lessons learned, and implications for the future. Rural landscapes are part of everyone's heritage, and the book shows these connections and the unique GIAHS land use systems and landscapes as models for a more sustainable and prosperous rural and urban future. It includes practical examples of working places where growing food, raising animals, or harvesting from the sea has been the primary economy for centuries to exhibit a clear and sustainable local relationship between humans, animals, buildings, climate and place. Aimed at students, teachers and professionals, this book investigates how design thinking can be used to integrate rural and urban sites to shape land use for more sustainable futures.

Planning Practice: Critical Perspectives from the UK provides the only comprehensive overview of contemporary planning practice in the UK. Drawing on contributions from leading researchers in the field, it examines the tools, contexts and outcomes of planning practice. Part I examines planning processes and tools, and the extent to which theory and practice diverge, covering plan-making, Development Management, planning gain, public engagement and place-making. Part II examines the changing contexts within which planning practice takes place, including privatisation and deregulation, devolution and multi-level governance, increased ethnic and social diversity, growing environmental concerns and the changing nature of commercial real estate. Part III focuses on how planning practice produces outcomes for the built environment in relation to housing, infrastructure, economic progress, public transport and regeneration. The book considers what it means to be a reflective practitioner in the modern planning system, the constraints and opportunities that planners face in their daily work, and the ethical and political challenges they must confront.

Teaching Landscape: The Studio Experience gathers a range of expert contributions from across the world to collect best-practice examples of teaching landscape architecture studios. This is the companion volume to The Routledge Handbook of Teaching Landscape in the two-part set initiated by the European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools (ECLAS). Design and planning studio as a form of teaching lies at the core of landscape architecture education. They can simulate a professional situation and promote the development of creative solutions based on gaining an understanding of a specific project site or planning area; address existing challenges in urban and rural landscapes; and often involve interaction with real stakeholders, such as municipality representatives, residents or activist groups. In this way, studio-based planning and design teaching brings students closer to everyday practice, helping to prepare them to create real-world, problem-solving designs. This book provides fully illustrated examples of studios from over twenty different schools of landscape architecture worldwide. With over 250 full colour images, it is an essential resource for instructors and academics across the landscape discipline, for the continuously evolving process of discussing and generating improved teaching modes in landscape architecture.

* Shows how parks can effectively promote both the conservation of biodiversity and rural development* Examines the competing demands on parks and provides lessons, derived from over fifty case studies, applicable to parks around the world * Researched and written by top scholar-practitioners from the Southern Africa Sustainable Use Specialist Group of IUCN Parks face intense pressure both to conserve biodiversity and provide economic opportunities for rural communities. Based on the insight from over fifty case studies, this book synthesizes lessons to guide park management in transitional economies where the challenges of poverty and governance can be severe.The central insight is that parks are common property regimes that supposedly serve society. If parks are set aside to serve poor people, should conservation demands over-rule demands for jobs and economic growth? Or will deliberately using parks as bridgeheads for better land use and engines for rural development produce more and better conservation? Accountability emerges as a major issue at all levels, including the problematic linkages between park authorities and the political system, and the ability to measure park performance. This book provides important lessons in park management regarding the relationship between conservation and commercialization, performance management, new systems of governance and management, and linkages between parks, landscape and the land-use economy.

One of the main problems and aims of nature conservation in Europe is to protect semi-open landscapes. The development during the past decades is characterized by an ongoing intensivation of land use on the one hand, and an increasing number of former meadows and pastures lying fallow caused by changing economic conditions on the other hand. In several countries the estabishment of larger "pasture landscapes" with a mixed character of open grassland combined with shrubs and forests has been recognized as one solution to this problem. The book gives an overview of the European projects concerning to this topic - nature conservation policy and strategies, scientific results and practical experiences creating large scale grazing systems.

Agricultural Landscapes: Seeing Rural Through Design follows on from the author's previous books, Rural Design and Architecture and Agriculture, to encourage using design thinking to provide greater meaning and understanding of places where humans live and work with the rural landscape. Rural areas around the world are often viewed as special places with cultural, historical and natural significance for people. Dewey Thorbeck emphasizes the importance of these rural sites and their connections to urban areas through full-color case studies of these places with particular emphasis on Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS), as identified by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, to document and explore personal experiences, lessons learned, and implications for the future. Rural landscapes are part of everyone's heritage, and the book shows these connections and the unique GIAHS land use systems and landscapes as models for a more sustainable and prosperous rural and urban future. It includes practical examples of working places where growing food, raising animals, or harvesting from the sea has been the primary economy for centuries to exhibit a clear and sustainable local relationship between humans, animals, buildings, climate and place. Aimed at students, teachers and professionals, this book investigates how design thinking can be used to integrate rural and urban sites to shape land use for more sustainable futures.

Access to quality services and community infrastructure are vital parts of supporting sustainable and resilient rural and small town places. Renewing outdated infrastructure and supporting the delivery of services in rural communities present significant challenges from the constrained fiscal and policy realities of the 21st century. Drawing upon contributors from five Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, this book describes innovative service delivery and community infrastructure models that are appropriate to the contemporary rural and resource-dependent regions of developed economies. The examples show that an entrepreneurial approach to service delivery and infrastructure provision by local organizations and governments is needed. Critical economic and community development supports are crucial to assist creative and innovative sets of solutions that work for small communities. Chapters in this book argue that community development foundations for resilient rural and small town communities and regions must be co-constructed and co-delivered in partnership by both local and senior government actors, in terms of both policy and committed resources. This volume will be extremely valuable for students, scholars, and community development practitioners exploring policy-making, government initiatives, and community service provision in rural and small town places.

What agency can landscape architects and garden designers have in conserving or restoring wildlife diversity? This book gathers essays by designers, scientists, and historians to explore how they might better collaborate to promote zoological biodiversity and how scientific ambitions might be expressed in culturally significant and historically informed design.

This book by Westlund and Kobayashi emphasises the fact that the gap between urban and rural areas is no longer relevant today: all places and regions are under a strong influence from cities. The authors show in a straightforward way that the continuum between more and less urbanized places requires new types of regulations, based on innovation and local skills, and that rural policies cannot be based on agriculture only but primarily require the mobilization of local social capital links.' - Andre Torre, INRA - Agroparistech, Paris, France''Rural' communities are not all resource dependent and very low-density places. Not all have people leaving in droves and no newcomers. This book's theoretical arguments and case studies (from five countries) help one understand better the diversity of 'rural'. We find population gainers, population losers; newcomers and long-term 'stayers' together in sizable towns; Aboriginal communities where out-migration is limited. The diversity is a key dimension in the analyses of public and private action to build and maintain social capital.' - Roger E. Bolton, Williams College, US 'This amazingly surprising book takes the popular topic of social capital and provocatively examines the contemporary rural development issue. New social capital driven thinking and insights are applied globally from a conceptual frame and locally with examples. The way forward for both urban and rural development is achieved when the variables that define social capital are simultaneously balanced around focused development objectives. Examples show how a multidimensional view of social capital enables meaningful rural development.' - Roger R. Stough, George Mason University, US Social capital is often considered a key factor for local development. This book analyzes the role of social capital for rural areas' survival and development in the current age of metropolitan growth - an era in which urban is the norm and where rural areas must adapt to this new situation and build innovative urban-rural relations. The traditional division between 'rural' and 'urban' is no longer valid in the knowledge society. Instead of being a homogeneous unit based on primary sector production, the countryside in the developed world increasingly consists of areas with very different development paths. With examples from Europe, Asia and America, the book discusses building and renewal of rural social capital from both bottom-up and top-down perspectives, and from the standpoint of business, and both the public and private sectors. Being the first book to treat social capital and rural development in the age of megacities and the knowledge economy, it will be of great benefit to academics interested in social capital research and rural development. Contributors: L. Dahlgren, K. Eliasson, M. Emmelin, M. Eriksson, S. Foelster, A. Forsberg, A. Gasior-Niemiec, T. Hatori, K. Ito, H. Jeong, K. Kobayashi, Y. Li, D. Natcher, M.R. Olfert, G. Ray, C. Waldenstroem, L. Westin, H. Westlund, J. Zola

While many rural areas continue to experience depopulation and economic decline, others are facing rapid in-migration, as well as employment and income growth. Much of this growth is due to the presence and use of amenity resources, broadly defined as qualities of a region that make it an attractive place to live and work. Rather than extracting natural resources for external markets, these communities have begun to build economies based on promoting environmental quality. Amenities and Rural Development explores the paradigmatic shift in how we view land resources and the potential for development in amenity-rich rural regions. Amenity-based growth can lead to several paths, based largely on proximity to urban areas and the type of development that occurs, whether it be seasonal residents, retirees, or tourism. The distributional implications of amenity-led development are an important consideration for policy, both within and between communities and regions. The contributors conclude that public policy needs to focus on maximizing complementary and supplementary uses while minimizing antagonistic uses of amenities. Scholars and policymakers concerned with economic development and natural resource management will find this comprehensive volume of great interest.

This book meets the needs of teachers and students of agriculture and rural development project and programme planning, planners employed by governments in developing countries and by external financing agencies. Project planners must understand the aspirations of rural families and their local leaders, the national development and sector planning goals and policies of their governments and the development goals and policy priorities perceived by external financing agencies in relation to their countries. These areas are not always consistent and trade-offs may be required. However it is recognised that poor project planning is a major constraint to the sustainable realization of project and programme objectives and sector goals. Illustrated with case studies and logical framework matrices, this book presents well-established and relatively new practices followed in the context of agriculture and rural development project and programme planning. Although based on experiences gained in Africa, the issues described are relevant to planning problems encountered in other developing regions of the world. It addresses the main factors which affect the success of planning such as a government's ability to guarantee macro-economic stability and sound sector development policies; the shift from 'top-down', bureaucratic to 'bottom-up', participatory planning approaches and the roles played by external financing agencies. It explains key technical, financial, economic, environmental, socio-cultural, equity, gender and institutional-strengthening issues concerning planning in rural areas and reviews the planning tools and approaches available. The procurement of goods and services, the disbursement of funds and monitoring and evaluation requirements are examined in detail.

Planning Practice: Critical Perspectives from the UK provides the only comprehensive overview of contemporary planning practice in the UK. Drawing on contributions from leading researchers in the field, it examines the tools, contexts and outcomes of planning practice. Part I examines planning processes and tools, and the extent to which theory and practice diverge, covering plan-making, Development Management, planning gain, public engagement and place-making. Part II examines the changing contexts within which planning practice takes place, including privatisation and deregulation, devolution and multi-level governance, increased ethnic and social diversity, growing environmental concerns and the changing nature of commercial real estate. Part III focuses on how planning practice produces outcomes for the built environment in relation to housing, infrastructure, economic progress, public transport and regeneration. The book considers what it means to be a reflective practitioner in the modern planning system, the constraints and opportunities that planners face in their daily work, and the ethical and political challenges they must confront.

Land represents an important resource for the economic life of a majority of people in the world. The way people handle and use land resources impacts their social and economic well-being as well as the sustained quality of land resources. Land use planning is also integral to water resources development and management for agriculture, industry, drinking water, and power generation. This valuable work brings to the forefront the state of practice of land use planning in India, highlighting governmental programs and research with wide-ranging chapters on important topics. Covering various agro-ecosystem, including irrigated, rainfed, coastal, semi-arid, arid (drylands), and hill and mountain (temperate) regions, this volume discusses a variety of issues related to sustainable agriculture and rural development. Chapters address the following questions: *What are the sources, scales, and quality of land resources and land use data for efficient planning * Which are the agroecological systems hot spots that are have been degraded? How can these areas be rejuvenated in terms of quality? * What should be the unit of planning for a holistic approach for the conservation and efficient use of natural resources at different administrative levels and domains? * What are the roles of state land use boards and district planning committees? * How can various programs be integrated and implemented by central and state agencies? * What are the technologies, new policies, and support systems required to address sustainable land use? * What are the legal issues? * What should be the role of communities in planning for poverty alleviation and integrated planning for sustainable agriculture based livelihoods? * What is the role GIS in sustainable agriculture and rural development? With high population growth, endemic poverty, and weak existing institutional capacity for land management, India (and other regions of the world) require strong scientific and strategically important land use policies and methods for sustainable development. This book helps to show the way. This volume is being published in association with the Centre for Agrarian Studies and Disaster Mitigation of the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRD and PR).

In celebration of cooperatives' contributions to community development processes and outcomes worldwide, the United Nations designated 2012 as the Year of the Cooperative. Today, as in the past, cooperatives have proved effective in bringing people and organizations together to accomplish a broad array of goals related to fostering social and economic innovation, protecting communities against poor living and working conditions, and promoting a better quality of life. Analytically, as both a movement and as a business model, cooperatives hold much potential for generating the types of synergies, collaboration, and productive and social processes that enable community development to thrive in a variety of local, regional and global contexts. This collection of articles chronicles new developments in the ways in which cooperatives are used in a diverse array of community contexts. They offer insight as to what these changes mean, both empirically and theoretically, for community development in the decades to come. This book is a compilation of articles published in the journal Community Development.

For at least half a century since the emergence of Country Parks and Forest Parks, countryside services have provided leisure, tourism, conservation, restoration and regeneration across Britain. Yet these services are currently being decimated as public services are sacrificed to the new era of austerity. The role and importance of countryside management have been barely documented, and the consequences and ramifications of cuts to these services are overlooked and misunderstood. This volume rigorously examines the issues surrounding countryside management in Britain. The author brings together the results of stakeholder workshops and interviews, and in-depth individual case studies, as well as a major study for the Countryside Agency which assessed and evaluated every countryside service provision in England. A full and extensive literature review traces the ideas of countryside management back to their origins, and the author considers the wider relationships and ramifications with countryside and ranger provisions around the world, including North America and Europe. The book provides a critical overview of the history and importance of countryside management, detailing the achievements of a largely forgotten sector and highlighting its pivotal yet often underappreciated role in the wellbeing of people and communities. It serves as a challenge to students, planners, politicians, conservationists, environmentalists, and land managers, in a diversity of disciplines that work with or have interests in countryside, leisure and tourism, community issues, education, and nature conservation.

The ambition of the book is to investigate a possible transition in the markets for food in the Nordic countries. Six chapters from various disciplinary traditions study change and innovation within the food sectors in Denmark, Sweden and Norway; while an introductory chapter discusses the findings of these analyses. Specialty food has established a strong position within product categories such as craft beer in Denmark and organic food in Sweden, but has failed to do so in others. The emergence of markets for specialty foods have been promoted by top-down policy initiatives and bottom-up entrepreneurial efforts. Far from providing the only relevant platform for food transition and innovation, the "New Nordic Food" manifesto has helped creating a territorialized action space for networks of food producers and distributors promoting diversity in local food and rural development. Some of the specialty food networks have succeeded in re-scaling their operations from a local to a national market. Today even large retailers and food processing companies have to pay notice to the ongoing changes among consumers. There is however a paradoxical constraint in a transition towards specialty food. A large-scale transition would imply that producers and consumers abandon precisely what constitute them - their exclusiveness. The chapters were originally published in a special issue of European Planning Studies.

Rural Development is a textbook that critically examines economic, social and cultural aspects of rural development efforts both in the global north and in the global south. By consistently using examples from the north and the south the book highlights similarities of processes as well as differences in contexts. The authors' knowledge of Afghanistan and Sweden respectively creates a core for the discussions which are complemented with a wide range of other empirical examples. Rural Development is divided into nine chapters, each with a thematic focus, ranging from concepts and theories through rural livelihoods and natural resources to discussions on policy and processes of change. The book sees rural development as a multi-level, multi-actor and multi-faceted subject area that needs multidisciplinary perspectives both to support it and to analyse it. Throughout the book examples of rural development interventions are discussed using analytical concepts such as power, discourse, consequences and context to grasp rural development as practices that are more than what is presented in policy documents. The book is written in a way that makes it accessible for undergraduates while at the same time caters for the kind of deeper reading used by master students and Ph.D.'s. Every chapter is linked to discussion questions as well as suggested further readings and useful websites.

Rural Development in Practice focuses on the evolving nature of rural development in the Global South. It outlines how we got to where we are today, checks what we can learn from history, and explores the development drivers, facilitators, and obstacles most likely to shape the years ahead. The book covers the management of fishing grounds, forests, grazing lands, water sources and soil, and looks at the effects of infrastructure, trade mechanisms, and new crop varieties on farming. The author discusses the opportunities and challenges of microfinance, social safety nets and migration, and assesses the way ICT and climate change are changing everything, rapidly. Real-life examples, exercises, role-plays, textboxes, anecdotes, and illustrative artwork are used to bring concepts and theories to life, and every chapter concludes with a section that explores how best to tackle the tough and complex dilemmas of our time. Rural Development in Practice is essential reading for students at all levels and may be of benefit for programme and policy staff in rural-focused government departments, multilateral agencies, and non-government organisations.

The countryside has often been marginalised in discussions of economic and societal development, in favour of the urban. This book aims to stimulate a debate and a re-evaluation of how the concepts of the rural, peripheral and marginal are treated in academia and policy. Approaching this theme from geographic, demographic and economic perspectives, Peter de Souza makes a compelling case for giving the periphery a prominent role as an integral part of a holistic and balanced society. The book carefully deconstructs the concept of the urban, and critiques the idea of urban-rural or centre-periphery comparisons, and presents an alternative approach to spark future discussions. The Rural and Peripheral in Regional Development will be of interest to those studying and researching in the areas of rural economics, sustainability and development, as well as those involved in rural policymaking.

This book discusses the impact of climate change, land use and land cover, and socio-economic dynamics on landslides in Asian countries. Scholars recently have brought about a shift in their focus regarding triggering factors for landslides, from rainfall or earthquake to claiming rapid urbanization, extreme population pressure, improper land use planning, illegal hill cutting for settlements and indiscriminate deforestation. This suggests that the occurrence or probabilities of landslides are shaped by both climate-related and non-climate-related anthropogenic factors. Among these issues, land use and land cover change or improper land use planning is one of the key factors. Further climate change shapes the rainfall pattern and intensity in different parts of the world, and consequently rainfall-triggered landslides have increased. These changes cause socio-economic changes. Conversely, socio-economic and lifestyle changes enhance inappropriate land use and climate change. All these changes in land use, climate and socio-economic aspects are dynamics in nature and shape landslide risks in Asian countries, where they are given serious attention by governments, disaster management professionals, researchers and academicians. This book comprises 21 chapters divided into three major sections highlighting the effect of climate change on landslide incidence with the influence on vegetation and socio-economic aspects. The sections address how climate change and extreme events have triggered landslides. The advances in geospatial techniques with the focus on land use and land cover change along with the effect on socio-economic aspects are also explored.

This volume examines just how successful community-based conservation approaches have been in their twin objectives of conserving African environments and improving rural livelihoods. Recent conservation policies in Africa have followed three main principles: 1) that conservation should be community-based; 2) that things conserved should be managed to achieve both development and conservation goals; 3) that markets should play a role in shaping the incentives for conservation. The editors and contributors of this volume examine the success or otherwise of these practices in a number of different contexts across the continent. Uganda: Fountain Publishers; Kenya: EAEP; Zimbabwe: Weaver Press