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.

Fieldwork in Landscape Architecture: Approaches and Landings is the first guide to landscape design during its initial phase: the encounter between the designer and site. Through this book you will learn to master your own approaches to 'landing' in the field to help you determine the course of the design process, by converting abstract concepts into concrete methodology. Written by leading experts in the field and featuring critical essays and voices, 160 full-colour drawings, illustrations, photographs, maps and diagrams, it will equip students and instructors of landscape architecture, across all levels, with the conceptual and practical tools they need to refine their skills and gain the confidence to become creative and critical landscape professionals.

Not since the 19th century has the future of the countryside been such a focus of political and public attention, nor of profound uncertainty and anguished debate. A watershed has now been reached, and in this time of unprecedented change, new tools are needed for planning and managing the countryside. Increasingly the 'drivers' of countryside management and conservation are European and international. They aim to provide comprehensive new frameworks for the whole countryside, and encourage community-driven planning and protection. There have been numerous responses at the country and local levels within the UK. In this book, a broad range of scholars and practitioners review the international drivers affecting countryside policy and practice, and - through a variety of case studies - they assess the value of country and local responses. The result is a powerful and coherent volume that provides a fully up-to-date review and analysis of the pressures on the countryside, the policies for the future and the keys to successful implementation. Countryside Planning is essential reading for planners, local authorities and rural organizations, conservationists and environmental groups, as well as academics and students in planning, rural studies, environmental studies and geography.

Not since the 19th century has the future of the countryside been such a focus of political and public attention, nor of profound uncertainty and anguished debate. A watershed has now been reached, and in this time of unprecedented change, new tools are needed for planning and managing the countryside. Increasingly the 'drivers' of countryside management and conservation are European and international. They aim to provide comprehensive new frameworks for the whole countryside, and encourage community-driven planning and protection. There have been numerous responses at the country and local levels within the UK. In this book, a broad range of scholars and practitioners review the international drivers affecting countryside policy and practice, and - through a variety of case studies - they assess the value of country and local responses. The result is a powerful and coherent volume that provides a fully up-to-date review and analysis of the pressures on the countryside, the policies for the future and the keys to successful implementation. Countryside Planning is essential reading for planners, local authorities and rural organizations, conservationists and environmental groups, as well as academics and students in planning, rural studies, environmental studies and geography.

With trust in top-down government faltering, community-based groups around the world are displaying an ever-greater appetite to take control of their own lives and neighbourhoods. Government, for its part, is keen to embrace the projects and the planning undertaken at this level, attempting to regularise it and use it as a means of reconnecting to citizens and localising democracy. This unique book analyses the contexts, drivers and outcomes of community action and planning in a selection of case studies in the global north: from emergent neighbourhood planning in England to the community-based housing movement in New York, and from active citizenship in the Dutch new towns to associative action in Marseille. It will be a valuable resource for academic researchers and for postgraduate students on social policy, planning and community development courses.

Research on welfare has tended to focus on the national scale with relatively little attention given to the differential impacts of welfare restructuring in rural places and the difficulties faced by disadvantaged groups with limited provision of welfare services in many rural areas. This book seeks to significantly extend previous research work on the rural impacts of national welfare reform and position it in a broader context. "International Perspectives on Rural Welfare" provides a critical, comprehensive and comparative account of the rural dimensions of welfare in a number of developed countries. The book brings together recent research from Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand to provide the seminal international book on rural welfare. As well as being international in its outlook, it provides an inter-disciplinary focus on rural welfare by including contributors from sociology, human geography, social policy and social anthropology. The definition of welfare used within the book is broad, encompassing overarching welfare and workfare agendas, as well as more specific welfare policy areas such as anti-poverty, health, housing, social security, social work and education.

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.

The discourse around derelict, former industrial and military sites has grown in recent years. This interest is not only theoretical, and landscape professionals are taking new approaches to the design and development of these sites. This book examines the varied ways in which the histories and qualities of these derelict sites are reimagined in the transformed landscape and considers how such approaches can reveal the dramatic changes that have been wrought on these places over a relatively short time scale. It discusses these issues with reference to eleven sites from the UK, Germany, the USA, Australia and China, focusing specifically on how designers incorporate evidence of landscape change, both cultural and natural. There has been little research into how these developed landscapes are perceived by visitors and local residents. This book examines how the tangible material traces of pastness are interpreted by the visitor and the impact of the intangible elements - hidden traces, experiences and memories. The book draws together theory in the field and implications for practice in landscape architecture and concludes with an examination of how different approaches to revealing and reimagining change can affect the future management of the site.

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.

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. -- .

Neighbourhood planning offers a critical analysis of community-based planning activity in England, framed within a broader view of collaborative rationality and its limits. From the recent experience of drawing up parish plans, and attempts to connect these to formal policy frameworks, it identifies lessons for future planning at the neighbourhood scale. It is not a manual on community planning practice, nor does it provide a formula for producing parish or neighbourhood plans. But in the context of the latest 'localism' agenda in England it, first, examines the potential contribution of neighbourhood planning to building a 'collaborative democracy' and, second, asks how much movement towards genuine local partnership, and consensus around development decisions, can be achieved through the rescaling of 'statutory' planning as opposed to expending greater effort locally on building stronger relationships, and generating trust, between 'people and planning'

Small farms represent important components of food systems and rural areas, as sources of occupation and livelihood, factors of socio-economic diversity, cradles of grass-roots innovation and experimentation. Their capacity to adapt and to contribute positively to societal challenges depends on the strategies they can develop and their ability to innovate. The book provides an in-depth exploration of the determinants, dynamics and outcomes of rural and agricultural change processes, with a special focus on the role of small and family farming. Covering both the system and the farm level of analysis, the authors offer a comprehensive view of approaches and models capable to grasp different complementary aspects of the development trajectories followed by farms, food systems and territories facing multi-dimensional drivers of change and exposed to a range of vulnerability factors. The emerging characters and roles of innovation networks and social learning, as well as the decision-making processes at the farm level are explored in particular depth, with attention to the multi-dimensional societal expectations vis-a-vis agriculture, small farms and rural areas, with specific attention to food and nutrition security concerns.

This book offers an eyewitness account of China's twenty years of rural reform. It records the successive changes in different types of China's rural economic systems, from rural cooperatives to the people's communes to the household responsibility system. It demonstrates that, as the starting point of rural reform, the household contract management played an unexpected role in promoting the acceleration of China's modernization process. Further, the book presents a systematic explanation for the cause and results of the reforms without which it would be impossible to fully comprehend the rise of China over the last three decades.

This book investigates changing geographies of fast growing Asian metropolitan regions, in particular their peripheral areas. Through examining the intersection of global suburbanisation and Asian urbanism, the book depicts a complex (sub)urban world in Asia. It explains how the forces of globalisation, the logic of capital accumulation, and the history of rural-urban divide and interaction, path-dependent local institutions, and government policies work together to reshape the geographies of Asian urbanism. Touching on social, environmental, governance and planning aspects of contemporary urban Asia, the chapters in this volume provide grounded studies of residential relocation and changing rural settlements, property development by a congregation of developers, political ecologies of water provision, middle-class consumers, and local state agencies, transit-oriented development and infrastructure finance in peri-urban areas. It demonstrates an assemblage of actors and coexistence of multiple urban governance regimes with everyday negotiations. Changing Asian Urban Geographies will be interesting not only to those who wish to know more about Asian urban geographies but also to scholars and students wishing to see Asian metropolises in a comparative perspective of (sub)urban dynamics. The chapters in this book were originally published in Urban Geography.

Originally published in 1991, the focus of the contributions in this book is the relationships between rurality and small-scale production, particularly in Europe. This remains relevant, as then, as when the book was first published, the issues covered had a particular resonance in the shifting terrain of Europe and the political debates surrounding its common future. The contributors explore the diversity and significance of rural small-scale production in different countries and the regional disciplinary theoretical discourses which inform research.

This book investigates the concept of human landscape in rural settlements in Southern China, where communities and their cultural landscapes are facing contemporary challenges following a period of rapid urbanization in the last 50 years. While metropolitan cities, such as Hong Kong, are experiencing accelerated urban development, underpopulated rural villages are struggling to maintain the cultural heritage of their regions. Rediscovery of Cultural Landscapes in Southern China provides a detailed account into indigenous living cultures in traditional, rural settlements upon natural landscapes. Beginning with an overview of the theoretical framework, the book presents six unique cases, including: Tai O, Yim Tin Tsai, Lai Chi Wo, Nga Tsin Wai, Cangdong, and Meinong, while illustrating a relevant comparison between Hakka and Satoyama landscape systems. The spectrum of theoretical and case analyses allows for a rethinking of the evolving cultural landscape’s positioning with valuable heritages in the context of a post-industrial society. The book is written towards reinterpreting the cultural landscape by conceptualizing the human landscape for scholars, practitioners, and students interested in rural-cultural conservation and revitalization, heritage management, traditional architecture and landscape planning, and urban-rural development.

Rangeland, forests and riverine landscapes of pastoral communities in Eastern Africa are increasingly under threat. Abetted by states who think that outsiders can better use the lands than the people who have lived there for centuries, outside commercial interests have displaced indigenous dwellers from pastoral territories. This volume presents case studies from Eastern Africa, based on long-term field research, that vividly illustrate the struggles and strategies of those who face dispossession and also discredit ideological false modernist tropes like 'backwardness' and 'primitiveness'.

Originally published in 1981, this book explores the plight of the locally born or locally employed faced with spiralling house prices and strong and unequal competition from the wealthier commuter, second-home owner or retirement migrant. It was the first book to examine the policy and planning issues in relation to these problems from the starting point of basic research and analysis.

a. The COVID-19 has changed the parameters of local economic development, especially in remote areas. Businesses and employees are comfortable working remotely so rural areas that are attractive places to live now have new opportunities. This scenario presents many opportunities for local development strategies in rural areas. Discussions in the book address these issues. This book will be especially timely in helping policymakers understand and implement potential policies. b. State and local policy makers have struggled for many years to find ways to revitalize declining rural areas that have lost businesses and faced population outmigration. Technology is now a game-changer and this book address what these changes can bring to nonmetro areas. c. There has been a definite movement to engage residents more directly in local issues and cause them to invest their time and financial resources in local businesses. Residents are responding in ways such as community owned business and other formats. This book provides insights into ways that rural places have succeeded in these local engagement efforts and how they can continue in the future.

Balancing the Commons in Switzerland outlines continuity and change in the management of common-pool resources such as pastures and forests in Switzerland. The book focuses on the differences and similarities between local institutions (rules and regulations) and forms of commoners' organisations (corporations of citizens and corporations) which have managed common property for several centuries and have shaped the cultural landscapes of Switzerland. At the core of the book are five case studies from the German, French and Italian speaking regions of Switzerland. Beginning in the Late Middle Ages and focusing on the transformative periods in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it traces the internal and external political, economic and societal changes and examines what impact these changes had on commoners. It goes beyond the work of Robert Netting and Elinor Ostrom, who discussed Swiss commons as a unique case of robustness, by analysing how local commoners reacted to, but also shaped, changes by adapting and transforming common property institutions. Thus, the volume highlights how institutional changes in the management of the commons at the local level are embedded in the public policies of the respective cantons, and the state, which generates a high heterogeneity and an actual laboratory situation. It shows the power relations and very different routes that local collective organisations and their members have followed in order to cope with the loss of value of the commons and the increased workload for maintaining common property management. Providing insightful case studies of commons management, this volume delivers theoretical contributions and lessons to be learned for the commons worldwide. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the commons, natural resource management and agricultural development.

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.

This book focuses on the transformation of rural places, peoples, and land endemic to the contemporary manifestations of globalization. Migration, global economic restructuring, and climate change are rapidly transforming rural places across the globe. Yet, global attention characteristically focuses on urban social and economic issues, neglecting the continued roles of rural people and places. Organized around the three core themes of demographic change, rural-urban partnerships and innovations, and landscape change, the case studies included in this volume represent both the Global North and Global South and underscore the complexity and multi-scalar nature of these contemporary challenges in rural development, planning, and sustainability. This book would be valuable supplementary reading for both students and professionals in the fields of rural land management and rural planning.

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.

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.