Planning Theory & Practice Dec 2011

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Mark Scott , Darren P. Smith , Mark Shucksmith , Nick Gallent , Keith Halfacree , Sue Kilpatrick , Susan Johns , Peter Vitartas , Martin Homisan & Trevor Cherrett
a i j e f g h a b c d
School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy, University College Dublin , Eire
b c d e f g h i j
Geography Department, Loughborough University , UK School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University , UK Bartlett School of Planning, University College London , UK School of Environment and Society, Swansea University , UK Deakin University , Australia University of Tasmania , Australia Southern Cross University , Australia Charters Towers Regional Council , Queensland, Australia
University of Reading and Wiltshire Community Land Trust , UK Published online: 13 Dec 2011.
To cite this article: Mark Scott , Darren P. Smith , Mark Shucksmith , Nick Gallent , Keith Halfacree , Sue Kilpatrick , Susan Johns , Peter Vitartas , Martin Homisan & Trevor Cherrett (2011) Interface, Planning Theory & Practice, 12:4, 593-635, DOI: 10.1080/14649357.2011.626304 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2011.626304
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Planning Theory & Practice, Vol. 12, No. 4, 593635, December 2011 INTERFACE
Exclusive Countrysides? Rural Gentrication, Consumer Preferences and Planning

MARK SCOTT
School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy, University College Dublin, Eire
Over the last two decades, rural localities within advanced capitalist societies have witnessed unprecedented changes and ruptures to local economies, new demands for rural space, and shifting rural politics, leading to a dramatic reconstitution of rural populations and the formation of a new set of rural social geographies (Bell & Osti, 2010; Marsden, 2009). Many rural places, for example, have experienced profound changes to housing and land markets (Smith, 2007) with a growing desire for rural living and an extended spatial mobility that is leading to increased competition for rural resource use. With the demise of dominant productivist agricultural models and the emergence of diverse consumer and societal demands for rural space, spatial planning has the potential to move centre-stage in the regulation of the countryside and managing rural change processes. However, as Campbell asked in a 2003 Interface on rural planning, which and whose countryside are we planning for? This Interface aims to explore one dimension of this changing countryside, by examining the gentrication of rural space and its implications for planning practice in rural localities. Gentrication, referring to the transformation of an area into a middle-class space, has most commonly been studied in urban contexts in advanced capitalist societies; however, increasingly authors have broadened the geography of gentrication studies to include gentrication processes within suburban and rural localities. While early accounts of gentrication were largely associated with distinctive landscapes of urban renovation and renaissance (Davidson & Lees, 2005) as working class neighbourhoods in global cities were transformed by new social geographies, as gentrication matures, both as a concept and as a process, new spaces of gentrication have emerged, both globally and down the urban hierarchy (Lees et al., 2010). Butler (2007), for example, suggests that the growth of large city regions have created whole new areas that have become desirable places to live, not just in the city, but also in the suburbs and beyond where previous inhabitants have found themselves moving aside for the new expanded post-industrial classes. Similarly, Phillips (2004) has been critical of the narrow gentrication research focus on urban geographies, while Smith (2002) argues that gentrication is not only apparent in a range of spatial scales, but also manifests at a range of locationssuburban, rural, inner urban and retirement hotpots such as coastal resorts. This has led Smith to call for the need to widen the spatial lens of gentrication studies. In this context, Davidson and Lees (2005) suggest four key elements of gentrication not attached to a specic landscape or
Correspondence Address: Mark Scott, School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy, University College Dublin, Ireland. Email: mark.scott@ucd.ie
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context: (1) reinvestment of capital, (2) social upgrading of a locale by incoming high income groups, (3) landscape change, and, (4) direct of indirect displacement of low income groups. From a planning perspective, gentrication raises difcult challenges. Central to gentrication is the consumption of space as part of self or class identity. In a rural context, the acquisition of symbolic capital bound up with notions of place in the countryside has proved very alluring for the new middle classes in pursuit of identity, belonging and status (Smith & Phillips, 2001). These middle-class consumer preferences have, in turn, fuelled an increasing demand for a place in the country, leading to the colonisation of the countryside by an afuent exurban or suburban, middle class of homeowners who seek to create a lifestyle organised around the consumption of nature and rurality, and the subsequent displacement of longer term residents (Darling, 2005). For planning researchers there is a clear need to understand the consumption processes and preferences of the middle class that are central in shaping places: both from a behavioural perspective (e.g. inuencing consumer preferences through planning policies), and also in developing effective policies to mitigate the negative consequences of gentrication processes. Moreover, displacement concerns may also be heightened by local planning policies which (at least in a UK context) tend to focus on the issue of restricting housing supply in rural areas on environmental and landscape grounds (Gallent & Tewdwr-Jones, 2007) rather than a concern for local housing needs or maintaining balanced rural communities. In many parts of the UK and in particular England, the dual pressure of restrictive housing supply and the effects of in-migration, have resulted in acute affordability issues for local communities (Best & Shucksmith, 2006). In the UK case, supply has tended to be outstripped by increased demand from commuters, retirees, second home owners, and those buying properties as holiday homes (Gallent & Tewdwr-Jones, 2000; Shucksmith, 1981; 1990). Those purchasing properties for these purposes tend to be in-migrants to the area, with greater buying power, who can out-bid local residents, resulting in rises in house prices beyond the reach of locals (Gallent & Tewdwr-Jones, 2000; Stockdale et al., 2000). These trends are reinforced in local planning arenas, where newcomers and middle-class interests mobilise to resist any further development in rural areas. An understanding of how dominant planning ideologies may (re)produce social and spatial inequalities is critical in any efforts in developing inclusive and socially equitable placemaking strategies. This Interface draws on both negative and positive dimensions of rural in-migration processes, with examples from a range of spatial contexts. The rst paper, by Darren Smith, explores the question: what is rural gentrication? Smith argues that the use of rural gentrication in the literature continues to be pre-anchored to urban-based perspectives of gentrication, rather than attuned to rural contexts, and progress has been gradual in progressing our understanding of the diverse processes of gentrication. To advance debates, his paper outlines recent studies that have grappled with the temporalities, social differences, divergent expressions, and differential impacts of rural gentrication. As many rural places in advanced capitalist societies become the domain of afuent groups, and socio-spatial segregation along axes of afuence becomes more entrenched, Smith contends that rural gentrication provides a powerful conceptual lens to understand a key exclusionary process of change. The following two papers provide a planning perspective on rural gentrication debates. Firstly, Mark Shucksmith critically examines the role of planners as agents of rural gentrication. Shucksmith highlights the longstanding concern that the British countryside has been characterised by a remorseless displacement of lower and middle income groups by those with more resources, leading to acute housing affordability
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issues in rural localities as planning policy has prioritised landscape protection and urban containment over maintaining balanced rural communities. Shucksmiths paper examines the entrenched preservationist narrative which frames rural planning debates in England, underpinned by romanticised notions of the English countryside together with the new rural middle classes seeking to preserve an exclusive countryside and to enhance their own property values. A key issue raised by Shucksmith is the role of dominant planning ideologies (in this case rural preservation) in producing socially inequitable outcomes and the creation of social and spatial segregation. These themes are further explored by Nick Gallent, who examines how these debates are played out within local planning arenas across a range of rural contexts. Drawing on interview and focus group data, Gallent argues that an educated service-class population, often comprising commuting households and afuent retirees, regularly challenge the case for additional house-building in rural localities, seeking to raise the drawbridge and shield their investments from what they viewed as unnecessary and unwanted development. Gallents paper explores key narratives constructed by middle-class interests around affordability, localness and local priority which are deployed within local policy arenas to undermine the case for new development, and speculates how these discourses may inuence planning outcomes within the context of the UK Governments localism agenda. The following two papers provide an alternative viewpoint on rural in-migration processes. Firstly, Keith Halfacree examines a radical form of gentrication through an examination of alternative lifestyles and a back-to-the-land movement, whereby a gentrier may be seeking access to dimensions of a lifestyle that are not found in urban lifea geographical life-raft as termed by Halfacree. The paper outlines key features of this radical rural, including an emphasis on low impact development and the maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems. However, Halfacree also highlights the tension between back-to-the-land movements and resistance by planners and more conventional gentriers to accommodating low-impact developments in rural localities. Secondly, Sue Kilpatrick, Susan Johns, Peter Vitartas and Martin Homisan examine middle-class rural in-migration in more remote rural localities, drawing on research from Australia and Canada. In this paper, in-migration is cast as an opportunity for rural areas. Rather than lead to the displacement of lower and middle-income groups experienced in near-urban localities, an inux of newcomers represents an opportunity for remote rural localities as new residents can add new skills, entrepreneurial capacity and political capital. This suggests the need for a more nuanced understanding of the role and geographies of middle-class in-migration processes and its implications for sustainable rural communities: from a process that consolidates socio-spatial exclusion to one that adds much needed capital and skills to underpin rural regeneration initiatives. The Interface is concluded by Trevor Cherrett, a rural planner who served as an expert advisor to the UKs Commission for Rural Communities from 2005 2010. Cherrett returns to the UK context, suggesting an inevitability of the middle-class colonisation of rural space, given the orthodoxies of rural planning and the preservationist ethos of the postwar era. In his paper, Cherrett examines the implications of gentrication processes for planning practice and how practice is likely to respond to new drivers of change. In his commentary, Cherrett reminds us that progress towards the provision of affordable housing in rural areas has been painfully slow, suggesting a more proactive approach is required by planners to alleviate the impacts of gentrication processes.
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Acknowledgements I would like to thank Aileen Stockdale, Queens University Belfast, for her helpful advice in developing this Interface section and for her comments on an early content outline. References
Bell, M.M. & Osti, G. (2010) Mobilities and ruralities: An introduction, Sociologia Ruralis, 50(3), pp. 199 204. Best, R. & Shucksmith, M. (2006) for Rural Communities: Report of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Rural Housing Policy Forum (York, Joseph Rowntree Foundation). Butler, T. (2007) For gentrication?, Environment and Planning A, 39, pp. 162181. Campbell, H. (2003) Planning for the countryside in the 21st century (but which and whose countryside?), Planning Theory and Practice, 4(1), pp. 7576. Darling, E. (2005) The city in the country: Wilderness gentrication and the rent gap, Environment and Planning A, 37, pp. 1015 1032. Davidson, M. & Lees, L. (2005) New-build gentrication and Londons riverside renaissance, Environment and Planning A, 37, pp. 11651190. Gallent, N. & Tewdwr-Jones, M. (2007) Decent Homes for All (London, Routledge). Lees, L., Slater, T. & Wyly, E. (2010) The Gentrication Reader (London, Routledge). Marsden, T. (2009) Mobilities, vulnerabilities and sustainabilities, Sociologia Ruralis, 49, pp. 113 131. Phillips, M. (2004) Other geographies of gentrication, Progress in Human Geography, 28, pp. 530. Shucksmith, M. (1981) No Homes for Locals? (Farnborough, Gower). Shucksmith, M. (1990) House Building in Britains Countryside (London, Routledge). Smith, D. (2002) Extending the temporal and spatial limits of gentrication: A research agenda for population geographers, International Journal of Population Geography, 8(6), pp. 385394. Smith, D. (2007) The changing faces of rural populations: (Re)xing the gaze or eyes wide shut?, Journal of Rural Studies, 23, pp. 275282. Smith, D. & Phillips, D. (2001) Socio-cultural representations of greenied Pennine rurality, Journal of Rural Studies, 17, pp. 457 469. Stockdale, A., Findlay, A. & Short, D. (2000) The repopulation of rural Scotland: Population and threat, Journal of Rural Studies, 16(2), pp. 243 257.
What is Rural Gentrication? Exclusionary Migration, Population Change, and Revalorised Housing Markets
DARREN P. SMITH
Geography Department, Loughborough University, UK
Introduction: Gentried Rural Britain, and Beyond? Over the last four decades, the local population structures of many British rural places have been recongured in distinct ways, tied to broader changing socio-cultural and economic relations (Woods, 2007). Various factors have intersected to produce more homogenous
Correspondence Address: Darren Smith, Geography Department, Loughborough University, UK. Email: D.P. Smith@lboro.ac.uk
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rural population proles of afuent householdsdominated by in-migrant gentriers. As a result, some previously socially mixed rural communities have fragmented, as low-income households have been replaced by afuent households; the former unable to compete in revalorised, gentried rural housing markets (Shucksmith, 1990). These trends of rural gentrication are now commonplace across much of rural Britain (Phillips, 2007; Smith, 2007a). One of the key factors has been the inter-linked recommodication and escalating costs of rural housing (Phillips, 2005), fuelled, in part, by the growing demands of afuent households for rural residence and counter-urban lifestyles (Champion, 2001, 2005), and, to a lesser extent, the purchasing of second homes/rural tourism (Gallent, 2009). At the same time, as many rural places have become the preserve of afuent households, the supply of new-build rural housing has been largely restricted to high-cost and prestigious developments. Indeed, low-cost housing schemes are often successfully opposed by powerful, well-organised groups of afuent in-migrant households, via what Woods (2007) terms a new politics of the rural. As afuent in-migrant households use their social, cultural and economic capital to (re)produce idyllic rural places, these exclusionary social practices further compound the decreasing proportion(s) of low-income households in many rural communities (Milbourne, 2007). Crucially, what these processes of rural gentrication emphasise is the general reciprocity between in- and out-migration in some rural locations. This inter-relationship between migration, population change and exclusion is a key factor in the rise of unidimensional social compositions within gentried rural places (Cloke & Little, 1990). Moreover, these linkages are a key signier of rural gentrication; a process which leads to the exclusion and marginalisation of low income households, and, ultimately, the socio-spatial segregation of afuent and poor rural populations. Therefore, policy makers, planners and other practitioners seeking to translate central government aspirations for more sustainable, socially mixed, and balanced rural communities clearly need to fully engage with the issue of rural gentrication. Traditional Wisdoms of Rural Social Change: The Absence of Rural Gentrication? The prevalence of exclusive rural housing markets and exclusionary forms of migration is clearly not a contemporary phenomenon. Since the 1970s, such processes of restructuring have been mapped and analysed by many empirical studies of rural change, such as the of pioneering work of Ray Pahl (1964). Other prominent ndings include Newbys expose changing rural societies in his text, The Deferential Worker. As Newby (1977, p. 322) states, for example: The drift from the land has denuded many villages of a substantial proportion of their former working population and this exodus has in many areas of lowland Britain been compensated for only by the arrival of a car-owning, overwhelmingly middle-class group of immigrant urbanites whose impact upon the local community has been prodigious. In the subsequent text, Green and Pleasant Land (1979, p. 273 274), Newby comments: Indeed, the two most important changes [to rural communities] are quite obvious, despite not having always been granted the attention to which they deserve . . . there is a danger that, as rural England increasingly becomes middle-class England, their [established rural working class populations] plight will be ignored and their needs overlooked.
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In a similar vein, Abrams (2003, p. 39) retrospective investigation of rural social change in Buckinghamshire, England, found: Among those who moved in during the 1960s was a group of professionals . . . including a number of planners and architects, as well as Business people. A core group created a Village society early on with the intention of preserving and encouraging the best of planning and architecture in the village. (p. 39, authors emphasis) It is notable that such accounts of rural change have not been explicitly conceptualised as a possible rural expression of gentrication, and indeed, there is a legacy to this ambivalence towards rural gentrication; despite narratives often depicting population (i.e. social class) transitions akin to geographies of urban gentrication. Exemplars include Cloke and Thrifts (1987) study of rural in-migrants and intra-class conict, and Halfacrees (1993, 1995) examination of rural in-migration processes and social change. This orthodoxy within rural studies, to seemingly disengage or dispense with the term gentrication within accounts of rural change, has been widely critiqued by Phillips. As Phillips (2005) asserts: rural gentrication appears as a small, restricted and rather unremarkable discursive space (p. 477). For Phillips, rural scholars need to: transform the discursive space of rural gentrication into something more akin to that of the urban (p. 477). Despite this call for rural gentrication to be adopted and taken more seriously within studies of rural change, the concept of gentrication continues to be used in a relatively piecemeal way, with the majority of rural scholars seemingly preferring to use other ideas such as counterurbanisation to describe rural social change (see also Phillips, 2010). What this means for rural studies per se is that the high level of intense scrutiny and critical debates of gentrication that have taken place within urban studies (e.g. Lees, 2000) have not been replicated within rural studies. For instance, recent dialogues between urban scholars about the proliferation of new-build housing (as part of urban regeneration schemes) tied to the rolling out of positive gentrication as urban policy (e.g. Lees, 2008), and the implications of the production of this new-build housing for conceptual understandings of gentrication have generally bypassed rural studies. Of course, a factor here may be that the magnitude and scale of (gentried) new-build rural housing is less intense when compared to urban locations. Rural gentrication therefore continues to be utilised in uncritical ways by rural scholars, despite Phillipss calls (e.g. 2004) for a more nuanced treatment of the term. As a result, conceptually, gentrication as an expression of rural change is generally employed in line with well-established tiered denitions of urban gentrication such as Warde (1991) and Davidson and Lees (2005) (see Table 1). Of course, this is not to argue, as noted above, that rural scholars have overlooked the need to critically question the conceptual meaning of the term. On the contrary, empirical studies have demonstrated how rural gentrication takes differential forms and follows different trajectories in different rural placesas epitomised by Phillipss discussion (2002) of other geographies of rural gentrication (p. 5). Rather, it is being argued here that if rural gentrication is to be more effectively employed as a term with conceptual power to make sense of contemporary (and emerging) rural social change(s), it would be valuable for more grounded, empirical evidence to inform the drawing of the conceptual boundaries of rural gentrication (and potentially gentrication more broadly). To some degree, this is the direction that is being followed by scholars of urban gentrication (e.g. Lees, 2011); an approach that would undoubtedly strengthen the
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Table 1. Tiered denitions of gentrication
Change Social Warde (1991) A process of resettlement and social concentration, a process of displacement of one group of residents with another of higher status, entailing new patterns of social segregation. An economic reordering of property values, a commercial opportunity for the construction industry, and generally, an extension of the system of private ownership of domestic property. A gathering of individuals with a putatively shared culture and lifestyle, or at least shared, class-related consumer preference. A transformation to the built environment, via building work, that exhibits some common distinctive, aesthetic features and the emergence of certain types of local service provision. Davidson and Lees (2005)
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The social upgrading of a locale by incoming higher income groups; direct or indirect displacement of low income groups The reinvestment of capital
Economic
Cultural Physical
Landscape change
conceptual prowess of rural gentrication to deepen knowledge of contemporary rural social change. The Diversity of Rural Gentrication: Some Recent Empirical Evidence? In a landmark paper that set the impetus for subsequent empirical studies of rural gentrication, Phillips argues that rural studies would appear to lag behind urban studies in recognising the diversity of ways one can interpret and understand gentrication (1993, p. 138). Nearly two decades on, it can be hypothesised that this statement has considerable, and arguably increasing, resonance to the current context. There has been a limited body of scholarship that has heeded Phillipss call for rural scholars to draw out the commonalities and differences between rural gentrication in various rural localities. This is notable as Phillips stresses the importance of delimiting precisely how one is conceptualising the term gentrication (1993, p. 138), and this sentiment clearly warrants the fuller attention of rural scholars. Positively, some recent studies have substantiated, in an empirical sense, the diversity of rural gentrication, emphasising the temporalities, social differences, divergent expressions, and differential impacts of rural gentrication. These four themes are discussed, in turn, below. The Place-Specic Temporalities of Rural Gentrication Nearly, a decade ago Smith (2002) contended that understandings of gentrication per se could be deepened by the incorporation of a more nuanced temporal perspective of gentrication. It was argued that this would allow scholars to more fully unpick the ways in which gentrication is an inherently dynamic process of change with distinct individual biographies tied to specic socio-spatial contexts; epitomised by sequential phases involving different expressions of economic and cultural capital, and different actors and institutions at particular stages of the process. Smith argued that this standpoint would enable researchers of gentrication to more fully understand the histories, diversities and different geographies of gentrication (within and between different places), and therefore to construct more robust theorisations and conceptualisations of gentrication. Within studies of rural gentrication, this approach has reaped many benets, exemplied by Phillipss (2002, 2005) studies of rural gentrication in Berkshire and Norfolk, England.
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A more recent contribution here is Stockdales investigation of six gentried Scottish study areas (2010). Using a novel analysis of a household survey to investigate annual (pre-tax) income of heads of migrant and non-migrant households, Stockdale is able to draw the conclusion that rural gentrication is not a neat process easily tted into a standard stereotypical view (p. 39). Rather, Stockdale argues that rural gentrication is a multifaceted process evolving through different stages and giving rise to different outcomes (p. 39). For Stockdale, the temporal and geographical phases of gentrication have direct relevance to how we dene gentrication (p. 31). Understanding the effects of the temporalities of gentrication processes is crucially important if scholars are to be more alert to identifying rural places that are witnessing the (pre-)embryonic stages of rural gentrication, and to track, perhaps via longitudinal approaches, how the trajectories of processes of rural change mutate over time. Equally, there is merit in investigating rural places where more mature processes of gentrication are entrenched, to understand what happens in overwhelmingly gentried rural places, perhaps considering the pertinence of the concept of super-gentrication in some rural contexts. To date, there have been limited studies of these latter forms of rural gentrication, and our knowledge of the social and economic processes associated with both the emergence and deep penetration of rural gentrication are lacking. Such points may be particularly pertinent to the current temporal context given the profound effects of the economic recession and changing political conditions (i.e. austerity politics and state debts) will have major bearings on how, when and where processes of rural gentrication unfold. Research is warranted to explore, for example, whether processes of rural gentrication have stagnated, or whether the processes have been transformed in existing gentried rural locations. Equally, it would be intriguing to examine whether the current socio-economic context provides new opportunities for rural gentrication to emerge, or be stimulated by institutional actors, perhaps in different sociospatial rural contexts. It is possible, for instance, that new geographies of rural gentrication will appear, underpinned by different social, cultural, economic and political relations. The Social Differences of Rural Gentrication Arguably, one of the current gaps in our understanding of rural gentrication is that rural gentriers have tended to be treated as socially (and to a lesser extent, culturally) homogenous lumps, often portrayed as afuent families with children, or afuent couples at pre-family forming stages of their lifecourse. There is limited understanding of the socio-cultural and economic diversity between different groups of rural gentriers, particularly in terms of social cleavages such as ethnicity and race, disability, age and lifecourse, social class, lifestyle and living arrangements, and sexuality, and so on. The value of more fully interrogating these social (and cultural and economic) differences within processes of rural gentrication is emphasised by Smith and Holts (2005) study of lesbian migrants in the gentried context of Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. As Smith and Holt argue, a focus on the links between rural gentrication and sexuality disrupts conventional representations of gentried rural locations as the preserve of heterosexual, new middle-class households, and emphasises the need to transcend heteronormative interpretations of gentrication (p. 320). Clearly, their suggestion for scholars of rural gentrication to examine how different lifestyles and identities intersect within rural gentrication (p. 320) can be equally transposed to studies of rural gentrication and ethnicity and race, disability, age and lifecourse, social class, lifestyle and living arrangements. As Smith and Holt argue:
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Different Forms of Rural Gentrication In tandem with urban studies, the normative view of rural gentrication is of a process that is xed to permanent bricks and mortar housing. Yet, residential properties encompass a range of different forms of housing within some rural contexts (e.g. caravans, mobile homes, barges), and longstanding ideas of what constitutes a house/home are likely to be increasingly rened as institutional, ideological and other societal forces for greener and more sustainable ways of living encroach within society. Particularly relevant here for exploring the links between rural gentrication and new forms of residence and living arrangements may be recent work on back-to-the-land movements (e.g. Halfacree, 2006; Halfacree, this issue). A recent study of rural gentrication that illustrates how understandings of the boundaries of conventional gentried housing could usefully be extended is Smiths (2007b) examination of marginal social groups residing in houseboats within Shoreham-by-Sea, East Sussex. It is shown how a counter-cultural social group with a predilection for a self-sufcient and sustainable lifestyle, anti-consumerism, a sense of community, and closeness to nature and natural elements (p. 53), acquired and self-renovated disused barges in the estuary of the River Adur. This allows the marginal group to nd an economic loop hole into the wider gentried housing market of Brighton and Hove (p. 53). Describing the more recent regulation and commodication of living on the water, Smith notes how some of the marginal gentriers have recently been displaced by processes of gentrication, whereby the supply of ready-made boat lifestyles and the concept of living-on-the-water points to the maturity of the gentrication processes within Shoreham-by-Sea (p. 64). Smith contends that these exclusive processes of rural gentrication may have resonance with other coastal, dock, river and canal waterfront locations, whereby the cultural capital of marginalised groups has been intentionally converted into economic capital by institutional actors (p. 64). Scholars of rural gentrication are thus urged to seek out these other geographies of rural gentrication, and this may be one of the key ways that scholarship on rural gentrication can more fully inform wider understandings of gentrication in other socio-spatial contexts. Thinking Outside the Box of Conventional Denitions of Gentrication Enduring denitions of gentrication, as outlined in Table 1, hinge on the ways in which the processes bear out simultaneous social, cultural, economic and physical transformations. One of the key ways in which studies of rural gentrication have disrupted these rigid understandings is via a focus on the links between nature, environmental change and gentrication. A key proponent here is Martin Phillips, with his more recent writings (2005, 2007) revealing the centrality of nature, ecological factors, and environmental change to processes of rural gentrication. Potentially most inuential is Phillips et al.s (2008) use of social science and natural science theories and methods to illustrate that nature is a signicant presence in village space, with green vegetated space forming both
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a quantitatively signicant amount of village settlement envelopes and also being of clear signicance to inhabitants in the case study location (p. 54). What these ndings typify is the need to critically consider the salience of urban-based denitions of gentrication for understanding the social restructuring of rural places, or if different conceptualisations are required for gentried rural contexts. This point formed the basis for Smith and Phillipss (2001) suggestion of the term greentrication to emphasise that the presence of green space(s) (and other appeals tied to the natural environment) marked out a major distinction between processes of rural and urban gentrication. Although this term has been critiqued for over-privileging consumption practices (e.g. Darling, 2005), the term was initially constructed within a structurationist framework, placing an emphasis on the inter-related ways in which green space and social constructions of the natural environment are often (re)dened, (re)produced, and consumed within many gentried rural contexts (Smith, 1998). Nevertheless, issues of ecology and the natural environment clearly mark out a major difference between rural and urban gentrication, although, of course, these issues will have important manifestations within various urban contexts (e.g. urban gardening, allotments). In this way, deepening knowledge of the link between rural gentrication and nature/environmental change may be a key way in which debates of rural gentrication can inuence broader debates of gentrication. Moving Forward: Signs of Engagement with Rural Gentrication The examples cited in the previous section clearly reveal that some advances have been realised within scholarship on rural gentrication, and there are rich opportunities for rural scholars to make a difference to broader debates of gentrication. Yet, overall, perhaps it can be argued that the general pace of the delivery of empirical studies of rural gentrication has not gained a suitable momentum, whereby the meaning of what constitutes rural gentrication can be critically informed and redened according to empirical evidence. As a result, it would appear that the utilisation of the term rural gentrication continues to be adopted in ways taken for granted, seemingly plucked from the urban studies scholarship. One very recent positive direction is that more and more scholars of rural change are embedding notions of rural gentrication into their analyses of social rural change, and are thus, albeit implicitly, engaging with debates of rural gentrication. A recent exemplar here is Gallent and Robinsons (2011) investigation of housing affordability and rural planning, which explicitly notes: Theories of gentrication are as relevant here as in urban contexts (p. 299). Other striking developments within the scholarship include the gamut of writings on rural housing developments and social exclusion in Ireland (e.g. Bullock et al., 2011; Gkartzios & Scott, 2010a, 2010b), which have gathered impressive momentum during the last few years. It is essential that this renewed activity continues to ourish if understandings of rural gentrication are to be advanced, particularly in light of changing social, economic and political contexts. Discussion and Conclusion To return to the main aim of this paperwhat is rural gentrication?It is fair to say that answering this specic question has become less straightforward than in the past. Indeed, perhaps this is a promising sign of academic progress within rural studies. Without doubt, the conceptual boundaries of rural gentrication are increasingly becoming more blurred and fuzzy as the considerable diversities of rural gentrication
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become more apparent. What is particularly striking is the identication of more and more incommensurabilities between urban and rural gentrication, although as Smith and Higleys (2011) discussion of education-led rural gentrication in the North Weald, Kent, shows, there are also important inter-connections between urban and rural processes of gentrication that need to be more fully understood and theorised. In this paper, it has been argued that more empirical accounts of rural gentrication, such as comparative analyses of the differences within and between gentried rural places, are required to pin down more accurately the delineators of rural gentrication. Recent developments within urban studies may offer a fruitful starting point for this potential agenda of a comparative ruralism lens, such as Leess (2011) recent discussion of geographies of (urban) gentrication and scholarship on comparative urbanism. One approach to trigger studies of rural gentrication may be the adoption of a more encompassing denition of rural gentrication, which is not explicitly wedded to the tiered urban-based denitions of gentrication. In the rural context, the prerequisites of such a denition will need to capture the fundamental signiers of the processes, which include: a sense of inter-connected in- (replacees) and out- (displacees) migration ows, population change(s) that gives rise to the formation of more socially homogenous proles dominated by relatively higher income groups, . the reduction/exclusion and/or marginalisation of low income groups due to economic constraints in the local housing market, and . the entrenchment of revalorised and exclusive rural housing markets.
. .
New-build housing developments on agricultural, browneld, and other forms of vacant rural land may pose difcult questions for these conceptual markers, as per debates within urban gentrication scholarship about the possibility of gentrication without the presence of direct displacees from the processes of change (e.g. Davidson & Lees, 2005). It is likely that rural scholars may need to embrace these debates, particularly as some national governments seek to dispose of existing land and building assets to stimulate new income streams, which may give rise to more new-build rural housing developments. Scholarship that has recently investigated the glut of new-build rural housing developments in Ireland and social exclusion (e.g. Scott, 2008; Scott & Murray, 2009) will provide an invaluable entry point to develop these emerging debates of rural gentrication. To conclude, somewhat lamentably, Phillipss (1993) call that comparative work should be undertaken to draw out both the commonalities and differences between rural and urban gentrication and also within gentrication in various rural localities, has perhaps as much currency in the 2010s, as the 1990s. In a similar vein to the processes of change that are producing more exclusionary rural societies, the challenge to deliver a more critical scholarship on rural gentrication is here to stay. References
Abram, S. (2003) Gazing on rurality, in: P. Cloke (Ed.) Country Visions, pp. 32 48 (London, Pearson). Bullock, C., Scott, M. & Gkartzios, M. (2011) Rural residential preferences from house design and location: Insights from a discrete choice experiment applied to Ireland, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 54, pp. 685706. Champion, A.G. (2001) The continuing urbanrural population movement in Britain: Trends, patterns, te s, 1, pp. 37 51. signicance, Espace, Populations, Socie
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Champion, A.G. (2005) The counterurbanisation cascade in England and Wales since 1991: The evidence of a new migration dataset, Belgeo, 12, pp. 85101. Cloke, P. & Little, J. (1990) The Rural State? Limits to Planning in Rural Society (Oxford, Clarendon Press). Cloke, P. & Thrift, N. (1987) Intra-class conict in rural areas, Journal of Rural Studies, 3, pp. 321 333. Darling, E. (2005) The city in the country: Wilderness gentrication and the rent gap, Environment and Planning A, 37, pp. 1015 1032. Davidson, M. & Lees, L. (2005) New-build gentrication and Londons riverside renaissance, Environment and Planning A, 37, pp. 11651190. Gallent, N. (2009) Affordable housing in Village England: Towards a more systematic approach, Planning Practice and Research, 24, pp. 263283. Gallent, N. & Robinson, S. (2011) Local perspectives on rural housing: Affordability and implications for the localism agenda in England, Journal of Rural Studies, 27, pp. 297 307. Gkartzios, M. & Scott, M. (2010a) Planning for rural housing in the Republic of Ireland: From national spatial strategies to development plans, European Planning Studies, 17, pp. 17511780. Gkartzios, M. & Scott, M. (2010b) Residential mobilities and house building in rural Ireland: Evidence from three case studies, Sociologia Ruralis, 50, pp. 6484. Halfacree, K.H. (1993) Locality and social representation: Space, discourse and alternative denitions of the rural, Journal of Rural Studies, 9, pp. 2337. Halfacree, K.H. (1995) Talking about rurality: Social representations of the rural as expressed by residents of six English parishes, Journal of Rural Studies, 11, pp. 1 20. Halfacree, K.H. (2006) From dropping out to leading on? British counter-cultural back-to-the-land in a changing rurality, Progress in Human Geography, 30, pp. 309 336. Lees, L. (2000) The reappraisal of gentrication: Towards a geography of gentrication, Progress in Human Geography, 24, pp. 389 408. Lees, L. (2008) Gentrication and social mixing, Urban Studies, 45, pp. 24492470. Lees, L. (2011) The geography of gentrication: Thinking through comparative urbanism, Progress in Human Geography, doi: 10.1177/0309132511412998. Milbourne, P. (2007) Re-populating rural studies: Migrations, movements and mobilities, Journal of Rural Studies, 23, pp. 381386. Newby, H. (1977) The Deferential Worker: A Study of Farm Workers in East Anglia (London, Allen Lane). Newby, H. (1979) Green and Pleasant Land? Social Change in Rural England (Harmondsworth, Penguin). Pahl, R. (1964) Urbs in Rure: The Metropolitan Fringe in Hertfordshire, LSE Geographical Papers, 2. (London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson). Phillips, M. (1993) Rural gentrication and the processes of class colonisation, Journal of Rural Studies, 9, pp. 123140. Phillips, M. (2002) The production, symbolisation and socialisation of gentrication: impressions from two Berkshire villages, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 27, pp. 282308. Phillips, M. (2004) Other geographies of gentrication, Progress in Human Geography, 28, pp. 530. Phillips, M. (2005) Differential productions of rural gentrication: Illustrations from north and south Norfolk, Geoforum, 36, pp. 477494. Phillips, M. (2007) Changing class complexions on and in the British countryside, Journal of Rural Studies, 23, pp. 283304. Phillips, M. (2010) Counterurbanisation and rural gentrication: An exploration of the terms, Population, Space and Place, 16, pp. 539588. Phillips, M., Page, S., Tansey, K. & Moore, K. (2008) Diversity, scale and green landscapes in the gentrication process: Traversing ecological and social science perspectives, Applied Geography, 28, pp. 54 76. Scott, M. (2008) Managing rural change and competing rationalities: Insights from conicting rural storylines and local policy making in Ireland, Planning Theory and Practice, 9, pp. 9 32. Scott, M. & Murray, M. (2009) Housing rural communities: Connecting rural dwellings to rural development in Ireland, Housing Studies, 24, pp. 755 774. Shucksmith, M. (1990) A theoretical perspective on rural housing: Housing classes in rural Britain, Sociologia Ruralis, 30, pp. 210229. Smith, D.P. (1998) The revitalisation of the Hebden Bridge District: Greentried Pennine rurality. Doctoral dissertation, University of Leeds, 1998. Smith, D.P. (2002) Extending the temporal and spatial limits of gentrication: A research agenda for population geographers, International Journal of Population Geography, 8, pp. 385394.
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Smith, D.P. (2007a) The changing faces of rural populations: (Re)xing the gaze or eyes wide shut? Journal of Rural Studies, 23, pp. 275282. Smith, D.P. (2007b) The buoyancy of other geographies of gentrication: Going back-to-the-water and the commodication of marginality, Tijdschrift Voor Economische en Sociale Geograe, 98, pp. 5367. Smith, D.P. & Higley, R. (2011) Circuits of education, rural gentrication and family migration from the global city, Journal of Rural Studies, doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2011.08.001. Smith, D.P. & Holt, L. (2005) Lesbian migrants in the gentried valley and other geographies of rural gentrication, Journal of Rural Studies, 21, pp. 313 322. Smith, D.P. & Phillips, D. (2001) Socio-cultural representations of greentried Pennine rurality, Journal of Rural Studies, 17, pp. 457 469. Stockdale, E. (2010) The diverse geographies of rural gentrication in Scotland, Journal of Rural Studies, 26, pp. 3140. Warde, A. (1991) Gentrication as consumption: Issues of class and gender, Environment and Planning D, 9, pp. 223232. Woods, M. (2007) Rural Geography (London, Sage).
Exclusive Rurality: Planners as Agents of Gentrication

MARK SHUCKSMITH
School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University, UK
In 2007 the BBC broadcast scenes of Northumberland residents delight that their villages had been ofcially labelled unsustainable communities in the approved Tynedale Local Development Framework Core Strategy. To the ordinary viewer, this must have seemed somewhat paradoxical. Why would anyone wish their community to be labelled unsustainable? Surely this wasnt how residents of the Durham D villages had reacted in the 1960s to plans that their communities should have no future?1 These celebrations were because no further development would now be permitted, so ensuring that these villages become ever more socially exclusive, enhancing property values and extending their social distance from poorer groups in society. Limiting new development in rural areas is one way in which the privileged increase the value of their assets and store these such that inequality can be transmitted from one generation to the next. Perhaps this is the dark side of sustainability? Exclusive Rurality Numerous authors have drawn attention to changes in the social composition of rural England, with the remorseless displacement of lower and middle income groups by those with more resources (Barlow & Savage, 1986; Cloke & Thrift, 1990; Murdoch, 1995; Pahl, 1965; Phillips, 1993, 2007; Shucksmith, 1981, 1990a, 1990b, 2000; Sturzaker & Shucksmith, 2011). Often this has been described as a process of gentrication, with rural England presented as increasingly middle-class territory (Buller & Lowe, 1990, p. 27) or subject to service-class colonisation (Thrift, 1987). One indication of this process is Britains uniqueness amongst the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)countries in having rural house prices
Correspondence Address: Mark Shucksmith, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University, UK. Email: mark.shucksmith@newcastle.ac.uk
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well above urban house prices: indeed, house prices rise systematically as settlement size decreases (CRC, 2010; Sturzaker and Shucksmith, 2011). Both the Affordable Rural Housing Commission (ARHC) and the Commission for Rural Communities (CRC) have identied signicantly higher affordability ratios (the ratio of house prices to incomes) in rural areas than in urban areas (ARHC, 2006; CRC, 2007, 2010; but note Bramley & Watkins, 2009). Generally most researchers acknowledge the unaffordability of housing as an issue in rural England (Satsangi et al., 2010). The most recent CRC (2010) analysis of government statistics on average house prices and affordability, according to the Governments ofcial denition of rurality, is shown in Figures 1 and 2 respectively. Figure 1 shows that average house prices in rural areas have exceeded those in urban areas of England by around 25% every year since reliable gures rst became available in 2000. Furthermore, the smaller the settlement size, the higher the price. Figure 2 presents a measure of housing affordability for lower income households, which is the ratio of house price to income for a household in the lower quartile of income buying a house in the lower quartile of house prices. So, for example, the price of a (lower quartile) house in the smallest settlements in sparsely populated areas in 2008 was 10.7 times (lower quartile) household income on average. Since 2007 affordability has improved (i.e. the ratio has fallen) but remains worse in rural areas than urban, systematically worse still in smaller settlements and sparser areas, and well beyond lower income groups ability to pay. Moreover, the CRC analysis (CRC, 2010) also shows that household incomes are systematically higher the smaller the settlement, whether in sparse or less sparse areas. These social changes, and whether they can usefully be described as gentrication, are discussed in more detail by Smith in this Interface. The issue for this paper is to what extent planners and planning have been agents of, or complicit in, this process of spatial exclusion (Sturzaker & Shucksmith, 2011).
Seasonally adjusted average property sale price by rural and urban definition, April 2000 to April 2009 250.000
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Figure 1. Average house prices for rural and urban England, 2000 2009. Source: CRC (2010).
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Figure 2. Lower quartile housing affordability, 2006 2009. Source: CRC (2010).
Planning as Agent of Rural Gentrication Ever since the 1940s, planning for rural England has given the greatest priority to urban containment. In the immediate post-war period the justication for this was the protection of farmland to ensure food supplies and the prevention of urban sprawl. When in the 1980s the Government determined that too much land was being farmed, the justication for urban containment changed rst to protection of the countryside for its own sake, and then to sustainable communities and an urban renaissance. It is important to note whose interests are served by such policies. In their seminal study in 1973, Hall and his colleagues saw urban containment deriving from an unholy alliance of urban councils seeking to divert resources to the cities together with the rural middle classes seeking to preserve an exclusive countryside and to enhance their own property values. The major gainers were identied as wealthy, middle-class, ex-urbanite country dwellers and the owners of land designated for development. The principal losers his team identied were non-homeowners in rural England (including future generations) and people forced to live in dense urban areas despite the widespread aspiration to rural, or at least suburban, living. Summarising, they concluded that the effects had been regressive in that it is the most fortunate who have gained the benets from the operation of the system, whilst the less fortunate have gained very little (Hall et al., 1973, p. 409). Newby (1985) saw this as a consequence of the 1942 Scott Report and the 1947 Town & Country Planning Act. He observed that the rural poor had little to gain from the preservation of their poverty but were without a voice on the crucial committees which evolved the planning system from the late 1930s onwards. It was no surprise, then, that new housing was to be restrictedin both the public and private spheresso that a planned scarcity of housing duly emerged . . . By the 1970s not only was public housing in rural areas in short supply, but so too was cheap private housing. In the case
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of both development control policy and housing policy, attempts to preserve the rural status quo turned out to be redistributiveand in a highly regressive manner (Newby, 1985, p. 220). Moreover, Newby (1985, p. 187) is adamant that these outcomesa low-wage economy and unaffordable housinghave not been haphazard nor the result of some immutable natural law, but the result of policy decisions quite consciously pursued. Sturzaker and Shucksmith (2011) argue that these processes reveal the rst and second faces of power, in Lukess (2005) terms, whereby powerful groups prevail in planning decisions and less powerful groups are generally excluded. But they go on to argue that there is also evidence of the exercise of Lukess third face of power, through which peoples perceptions are shaped discursively in such a way that they accept certain things as natural or inevitable. In other words, people subscribe to the values which oppress them. This can be explored further in terms of Bourdieus concept of symbolic violence, the violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity (Bourdieu, 1992, p. 167). Urban containment, and the protection of the countryside for its own sake, have become so ingrained in our thinking that any alternative is literally unthinkable: it is seen, not only by planners but even by those who are in desperate need of rural housing, as natural and fair that housing must not be built in the countryside. It has become doxa. In the 1940s the overall stance of urban containment and prevention of rural development was informed by a hopelessly sentimental view of rural life among nature-loving ramblers and Hampstead dwelling Fabians (Newby, 1985, p. 225). This dominant discourse has been refreshed and strengthened over the years by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and other preservationist groups, most recently through becoming deliberately tre, has linked to new agendas of environmental sustainability. The CPRE, as its raison de always sought to prevent house building in rural areas, deploying a range of symbolic concepts to pursue this objective, including urban sprawl, concreting over the countryside and light pollution among others. Through analysis of documentary evidence and interviews with former and current CPRE staff, Murdoch and Lowe (2003) revealed the various ways in which CPRE has managed to set the agenda for rural planning since the 1940s, when they rst promoted the idea of a rural/urban divide and the desirability of separating nature from society, as exemplied in green belts and urban containment policies. During the 1980s, they altered their tactics to take advantage of growing environmental awareness. Thus they sought to ecologise their arguments by positioning an environmental case for containment, essentially through the exercise of discursive power over the concepts of sustainability and sustainable communities, ensuring these are now widely understood as (urban) places where people might not need a car. One CPRE staff member told Murdoch and Lowe that the 2000 Urban White Paper was the key arena they targeted to ensure anti-development policies were implemented in rural areas, and indeed this did recommend higher urban densities and stronger protection of greeneld sites. Another CPRE policy ofcer claimed: We invented all the key planks in PPG3. PPG3 is basically CPRE policy2 (Murdoch & Lowe 2003, p. 327). In this way, the overall stance of urban containment and prevention of rural development has been strengthened through becoming linked to new agendas of environmental sustainability. In this approach, found by ARHC (2006), Sturzaker (2010) and others to be widespread throughout rural England, local authorities have been categorising rural settlements into those which they regard as sustainable (and therefore suitable for new housing) or unsustainable (effectively red-lined), on the basis of crude checklists of service availability, despite central government advice to the contrary. Critics have viewed this dualistic construction of sustainable communities as an acceptance in planning policy
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and practice of a discourse of sustainability which privileges the environmental over the social, and of exclusivity over inclusion (Best & Shucksmith, 2006; Owen, 1996; Satsangi & Dunmore, 2003; Taylor, 2008). Planners as Agents of Rural Gentrication: The Role of Councillors and Planning Ofcers Planning has therefore acted as a crucial arena for class formation and social exclusion in rural England, operating generally in the interests of the privileged and against poorer, marginalised groups. We have seen how this derives partly from discursive, power-infused constructions of rurality and sustainability. However, this is also facilitated by the ways in which planning processes, notably public participation and consultation, are operationalised so as to advantage middle-class interests. What role have planners (both councillors and planning staff) played in this? How far have they been found to challenge these processes of exclusion, or have they tended to be complicit in enabling and reinforcing social injustice? Shucksmith et al. (1993), in a study of planning for housing in rural Scotland, found that councillors usually saw their role above all as representing their constituents, but that in practice this proved to be highly partial. They gave the greatest weight to representations from higher status home-owners, farmers and landowners, and they tended only to hear from anti-growth interests. Thus, non-owners interviewed in this study tended to support new housing developments in rural areas, but none had ever made their views known to councillors or planning ofcers. In contrast, home owners were active in their opposition to further housing, often lobbying councillors and ofcers in person and lodging formal objections. Councillors and planning ofcers therefore perceived only opposition to new housing. Another factor is the professional ideology of planning ofcers. Shucksmith et al. (1993), in the same study, found that planning ofcers worked with reference to a very strong professional planning ideology of urban containment which guided their advice to elected members; indeed, it became apparent that ofcers sought to control councillors by bringing their thinking more into line with the dominant professional ideology of urban containment (Shucksmith et al., 1993, p. 252), which remains after all the critical mission of rural planning (Satsangi et al., 2010, p. 20). Even where councillors had been elected on a manifesto of promoting new housing development and voted to adopt this as council policy, planning ofcers found ways to subvert this and to maintain pre-existing policies which accorded more closely with their professional ideology. In development control, likewise, when ofcers feared councillors might overrule their recommendation for refusal, they informally encouraged call-in of applications. Sturzaker (2010) found similar professional ideologies in his more recent study of several English rural planning authorities, in sharp contrast to the views of housing professionals within the same authorities. This nding is endorsed by Satsangi et al. (2010) who argue that these cultures of control and restraint amongst rural planners have survived beyond their time, creating a raft of difculties for rural communities (Satsangi et al., 2010, p. 19). This raises the question of what role planners should play when caught between the potentially conicting claims of localism, containment and social justice. For many years a core tenet of planning practice has been that it should be concerned only with the use of land and not the user, playing a technocratic and objective, value-free role. Yet it is inevitable that there will be tension between an embedded professional and historic mission to prevent rural development; a democratic requirement to serve the wishes of locally elected representatives; a national planning policy framework which embraces a
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presumption in favour of sustainable development; and often a personal commitment to social justice. After several decades of social change in the countryside, it is no surprise that most rural residents now oppose new housing to the exclusion of lower and middle income groups. As Newby anticipated, policies which systematically disadvantage the rural poor can now, therefore, be assured of local democratic support (1979, p. 497), such that any action to address rural poverty must principally come from national, not local, policy. Planners might therefore become caught increasingly between their personal values, a core professional ideology of urban containment whose social consequences are only too evident, and local electorates minded to celebrate as more and more of rural England is labelled unsustainable and exclusive. Notes
1. In 1954 Durham County Council planners allocated settlements into four categories, with Category D villages scheduled for no further investment, and ultimately for demise. Some were bulldozed. The policy was heavily criticised for ignoring residents views, and was abandoned in the 1960s. (See Barr, 1969). 2. PPG 3, Planning Policy Guidance on Housing.
References
ARHC (2006) Final Report (London, Affordable Rural Housing Commission & Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). Barlow, J. & Savage, M. (1986) The politics of growth: Cleavage and conict in a Tory heartland, Capital and Class, 31, pp. 156181. Barr, J. (1969) Durhams murdered villages, New Society, 340, pp. 523525. Best, R. & Shucksmith, M. (2006) Homes for Rural Communities: Report of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Rural Housing Policy Forum (York, Joseph Rowntree Foundation). Bourdieu, P. (1992) Thinking about limits, Theory, Culture and Society, 9(1), pp. 37 49. Bramley, G. & Watkins, D. (2009) Affordability and supply: The Rural Dimension, Planning Practice & Research, 24(4), pp. 185210. Buller, H. & Lowe, P. (1990) The historical and cultural contexts, in: P. Lowe & M. Bodiguel (Eds) Rural Studies in Britain and France (Belhaven, John Wiley). Cloke, P. & Thrift, N. (1990) Class and change in rural Britain, in: T. Marsden, P. Lowe & S. Whatmore (Eds) Rural Restructuring: Global Processes and their Responses (Oxford, Wiley Blackwell). CRC (2007) Assessing the Rural Content of Regional Housing and Spatial Strategies (Cheltenham, Commission for Rural Communities). CRC (2010) State of the Countryside Update: Housing (Cheltenham, Commission for Rural Communities). Hall, P., Gracey, H., Drewitt, R. & Thomas, R. (1973) The Containment of Urban England (London, Allen and Unwin). Lukes, S. (2005) Power: A Radical View, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan). Murdoch, J. (1995) Middle-class territory? Some remarks on the use of class analysis in rural studies, Environment & Planning A, 27, pp. 12131230. Murdoch, J. & Lowe, P. (2003) The preservationist paradox: Modernism, environmentalism and the politics of spatial division, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 28(3), pp. 318 332. Newby, H. (1979) Urbanisation and the rural class structure: Reections on a case study, British Journal of Sociology, 30(4), pp. 475498. Newby, H. (1985) Green and pleasant land? Social change in rural England (London, Wildwood House). Owen, S. (1996) Sustainability and rural settlement planning, Planning Practice and Research, 11(1), pp. 37 47. Pahl, R. (1965) Class and community in English commuter villages, Sociologia Ruralis, 5, pp. 5 23. Phillips, M. (1993) Rural gentrication and the process of class colonisation, Journal of Rural Studies, 9(2), pp. 123140. Phillips, M. (2007) Changing class complexions on and in the British countryside, Journal of Rural Studies, 23, pp. 283304. Satsangi, M. & Dunmore, K. (2003) The planning system and the provision of affordable housing in rural Britain: A comparison of the Scottish and English experience, Housing Studies, 18(2), pp. 201217.
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Satsangi, M., Gallent, N. & Bevan, M. (2010) The Rural Housing Question (Bristol, Policy Press). Shucksmith, M. (1981) No Homes for Locals? (Aldershot, Gower). Shucksmith, M. (1990a) A theoretical perspective on rural housing: Housing classes in rural Britain, Sociologia Ruralis, 30(2), pp. 210 229. Shucksmith, M. (1990b) Housebuilding in Britains Countryside (London, Routledge). Shucksmith, M. (2000) Exclusive Countryside? Social Inclusion and Regeneration in Rural Britain (Bristol, Policy Press). Shucksmith, M., Watkins, L. & Henderson, M. (1993) Attitudes and policies towards residential development in the Scottish countryside, Journal of Rural Studies, 9(3), pp. 243 255. Sturzaker, J. (2010) The exercise of power to limit the development of new housing in the English countryside, Environment and Planning A, 42(4), pp. 10011016. Sturzaker, J. & Shucksmith, M. (2011) Planning for housing in rural England: Discursive power and spatial exclusion, Town Planning Review, 82(2), pp. 169193. Taylor, M. (2008) Living Working Countryside: The Taylor Review of Rural Economy and Affordable Housing (Wetherby, Department for Communities and Local Government). Thrift, N. (1987) Manufacturing rural geography, Journal of Rural Studies, 3(1), pp. 7781.
Gentrication and the Discourses of Housing Affordability, Localness and Priority in Rural England
NICK GALLENT
Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, UK
Despite the growth and dominance of cities in the western world and elsewhere, counterurbanisation and its many consequences are a feature of rural areas in numerous countries. Over many decades, the perceived qualities of rural living (Fielding, 1982) together with a broader idealisation of the countryside and anti-urban motivations (Champion, 2000)have magnied the demand for rural property (Mitchell, 2004). In England, the accumulation of personal wealth in escalator areas a product of rising disposable incomes and equity growth in propertyhas encouraged some households to export their wealth to importing regions and to join the steady ow of migrants to nearby rural areas, or venture further aeld in search of investment opportunities. Darling (2005) has drawn attention to the signicant economic returns on refurbishment and extension of rural dwellings and agricultural buildings, with similar returns being noted by researchers in the 1990s, encouraging many British households to export their wealth to rural France (Buller & Hoggart, 1994). Hence, commentators have been able to apply the ideas of Glass (1964) and the notion of a rent gap to the analysis of social change in rural areas, and to the exchange of people and of lifestyles that has been witnessed over an extended period. Gentricationthe inux of an educated service class and the consequent displacement of a residual working classis not a recent rural phenomenon. As long ago as 1937, the topic received an airing in UK parliamentary debate, with the Member for Barkston Ash asking the Minister for Health if he was aware of the growing tendency for town dwellers to rent or buy rural workers cottages for occasional
Correspondence Address: Nick Gallent, Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, UK. Email: n.gallent@ucl.ac.uk
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occupation, and that this is leading to an acute shortage of houses in many rural areas near industrial centres? (Hansard, 20 July 1937, 326, c1983w). The response was that there would be an inquiry. There have been a great number of such inquiries since that time, all focusing on the frailties of rural economies, on the affordability of housing for those on local incomes, and on the social reconguration of the countryside, especially countryside areas close to centres of disposable income and wealth (Satsangi et al., 2010). These inquiries, or commissions, have frequently pointed to the role that planning and urban containment plays in increasing the investment potential of small village locations, adding to their exclusivity and making them potentially more attractive to gentriers (Phillips, 2000). The strength of the investment motivenot only economic investment but also investment in a particular lifestyle (Buller et al., 2003, p. 24), combined with a tightly dened view of how the countryside should be, now and in the futureoften plays out in a rigorous defence, by gentriers, of what many researchers have referred to as the rural idyll (Woods, 2005). This idyll is experienced by those with money, who are able to exercise political power through local and parish councils, and who do so in a way that sees them characterised as NIMBYs, raising a metaphorical drawbridge against those who might introduce change, either through development or their mere presence. The empowerment of these elements is a result of their numerical dominance in many areas. As Newby observed in the 1970s, newcomers did not enter villages as lone individuals but in large numbersperhaps due to the building of a new housing estate by a local speculative builder. Newbys newcomer therefore found himself [sic] one of many others whose values, behaviour and life-styles were similarly based upon urban, middleclass patterns of sociability (Newby, 1979, p. 165). Such new developments were often the products of structure plan allocations, with key settlements absorbing intra-regional counterurbanisation (Cullingworth, 1962, p. 15), but these same key settlements were more frequently the destinations of households displaced from the more picturesque villages, which had become the focus of investment demand or home to the wealthier newcomers, who sought exclusivity and viewed traditional, archetypal, homes in the country as tting expressions of their social status and wealth. Gentrication in such locations became a key feature of the rural shift in the 1960s and 1970s (Parsons, 1980; Spencer, 1997), accentuated by key settlement polices which diverted all development away from these highly desirable villages (Cloke, 1979). Thus the mould was set and the foundations laid for a large part of the current rural housing debate. Counterurbanisation, or an inversion of the traditionally positive relationship between net migration and settlement size (Buller et al., 2003, p. 8), has remained a potent force, driving rural social change. It added about 250,000 residents to Britains rural population between 2001 and 2010. During the same period, an economic shift towards the service sector continued unabated, with a greater proportion of jobs dedicated to serving the needs of relative newcomers and tourists. Whilst Newby (1979) observed a general behaviour pattern associated with households moving into villages and market towns, it would be unwise to ascribe all newcomers to a single outlook. Since the 1970s, the motives of people moving to rural areas have been carefully dissected. Whilst some continue to invest in the countryside, and defend these investments, others may be downshifting or seeking qualities that may not necessarily be diminished by additional development on any reasonable scale. However, the metaphor of the drawbridge retains some currency. In a study of international amenity migration in New Zealand, Woods (2011) illustrates how pro-development interests may accuse incoming investors and elites of shutting out local people by buying up property and opposing new housing. In that instance, local politics were said to be confronting the forces of globalisation. At a more localised scale,
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the debates played out in extended travel-to-work areas in England may see established newcomers closing out last comers (Cadieux, 2006, p. 10), portraying themselves up as local households defending community amenity. Whilst debates play out in political fora, in parish councils and local authorities, opposition to development begins with the construction of a discourse to counter some of the normative claims of policy makers: claims concerning rural housing affordability, localness, local priority, and the legitimate purpose of priority assistance (including the provision of social housing to address local needs). In the remainder of this paper, it will be suggested that an educated service-class population, often comprising commuting households and those retiring from city/nance jobs, regularly challenge the case for additional house-building by deconstructing key claims, namely that: local policy interventions should be triggered by low levels of housing affordability; further, that such interventions can distinguish easily between local and non-local residents; and . that priority policy should be normatively determined, by local authorities.
. .
Insights into this deconstruction were picked up in a series of community focus groups conducted as part of a wider study into rural housing challenges in England linked to rising property prices and market exclusion (Gallent et al., 2010). A total of eight focus groups were arranged in villages located in a selection of area types drawn from Lowe and Wards (2007) socio-economic classication of local authorities in rural England. The types were: deep rural and lacking net migration gains; rural retreat comprising popular retirement destinations; dynamic commuter, dominated by a professional class outcommuting to urban jobs; and transient rural close to urban areas, also dominated by commuters, but with commuting not implying high incomes. The studies in each of these areas were expected to contribute insights from residents exhibiting many of the characteristics of incomers, deriving or having derived incomes from urban jobs, being articulate andin the case of those from the dynamic commuter areabeing wellconnected into networks of power and inuence (Lowe & Ward, 2007), and highly mobile. The studies all pointed to a reective understanding of rural housing debate amongst incoming households who, if viewed more pejoratively, displayed all the features of newcomers raising the drawbridge and shielding their investments from what they viewed as unnecessary and unwanted development. In the sections that follow, their counterviews to normative perspectives on gauging affordability, on localness, and on priority housing policy are briey examined, illustrating the deconstruction of policy discourse noted above. Affordability The traditional policy view of housing affordability links an areas lower quartile house prices to annual lower quartile incomes. It is generally expressed as a ratio and used to identify critical reductions in affordability at different spatial scales. National governments have tended to argue for interventions to address affordability that create social balance and deliver choice, allowing lower income households to reside in proximity to those with greater wealth (DCLG, 2006). But the analysis of housing needs across broader housing market areas (Coombes, 2009), as a basis of intervention, suggests a more pragmatic approach to dealing with affordability: one that connects higher to lower demand areas and says that housing needs in one location can be addressed through accelerated housing delivery in a nearby, less popular, area. This
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suggests that households should not assume the right to live a particular place, but rather accept the need to move within a market to nd a home that suits their purse. Bramley and Watkins (2009) argue that policy favours this outward view of affordability, focusing not on where people clearly cannot afford to live, but instead identifying opportunities within a bigger market area. But this view has clear implications. It may cause a stretching of social and economic networks as lower-income households need to commute back to service-sector jobs, or visit relatives by private car when they were previously able to simply walk down the street. This may mean that an outward affordability goal has an associated cost, increasing the nancial burden on households. It will also do little to address gentrication. Rather, by joining desirable villages to service centres and key settlements, such policywhen expressed through planningmay reinforce the social segregation which has long been associated with the orthodoxies of rural settlement policy. The answer is often to seek an element of new housing in smaller village locations, not to challenge the general un-affordability of such locations, but simply to create a modest number of access opportunities for those in need. These local needs schemes respond to evidence of an affordability problem that is often contested by residents. Acceptance of the policy view of affordability was regarded in the case studies as potentially dangerous: as a green light to possible development. In the dynamic commuter and transient area studies, there was a clear preference for talking not about affordability but about ensuring that households get the homes they need. The notion that need exists in a given location simply because of an observed spatial intersection between high property prices and low lower quartile incomes was dismissed as ignoring the very personal nature of such need, which cannot be understood through statistics alone. It has to be shown that named individuals need to live in a particular location and would suffer hardship if obliged to live elsewhere. Careful consideration should be given to personal circumstances, with commuting participants often calling on those claiming a need to live in a village to embrace mobility: to live elsewhere if need be and commute back to village jobs (though few of these were thought to exist). Once mobility is embraced in this way (i.e. once people acknowledge the realities accepted by commuting households) and once all but the most clear and acute needs are discounted, high property prices in certain villages have no clear downside, largely because it is jobs, not homes, that people generally need in the countryside and these are concentrated in larger centres where access to homes is far easier. Top-down interventions, as wellintended as they might be, can trap households in a state of poverty: either this, or genuine need migrates (to where jobs are located) and the local needs housing provided is misdirected to less legitimate beneciaries (who are not localsee below). Where such interventions are expressed in additional planning permissionssupported by spurious planning and housing policiesthese simply result in unnecessary development and big prots for outside interests, and is never accompanied by essential investment in infrastructure. Quite rightly, infrastructure investments should go to big towns, and so too should the associated housing. Here, the discourse begins to align with planning policy, though its starting point is not sustainability, but the defence of personal interest. The coincidence, however, between the two, puts those subscribing to these views in a strong position, with right and discursive power on their side (Sturzaker & Shucksmith, 2011). However, the rejection of development was not universal across the studies. In the retirement retreat some growth was anticipated as services need to be expanded to meet the requirements of an ageing population. In that study, one of the villages already comprised a larger service centre and was isolated from larger towns. It was generally true, across the four area types, that proximity of a village to a larger centre resulted in
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greater resistance in that village to development: it was contended that affordability could be addressed in the wider market, there being obvious development opportunities nearby. This aligned with the outward view of affordability (Bramley & Watkins, 2009), which, depending on context and whether there is somewhere to direct the bulk of development, can provide a rationale for sidestepping the challenge of providing homes in smaller village locations. Yet, where there are accepted needs, this challenge remains. On this issue, commuting participants were most critical of existing policy orthodoxies (in 2009) and saw community or parish control as a means of delivering against genuinely local need, and not simply in response to a statistical trigger. It is this area of community discourse, concerning local need and localness, that some of the fundamentals of planning policy are challenged. Localness
Planning policy and practice in rural areas has long sought to identify local need, formulating policies designed to help those who might otherwise be displaced by market forces. Although signicant success has not been achieved in this area (Hoggart & Henderson, 2005), the intention of setting local priority, and restricting the occupancy of new housing, has been heavily criticised (see Hutton, 1991) though justied in turn by reference to public policys underlying aim of combating social exclusion, and plannings goal of helping create balanced communities, in support of local schools, amenities and so on. Whilst being formed by association, communities can be conceived as organisms, constructed from distinctly different partswith the young supporting the old and vice versaand needing these parts in order to function. Localness entered the discourse on community need in the 1970s and 1980s, being viewed as a quality that should be prized, linking to continuity and counter to those social congurations that might disrupt social balance and function. A characteristic needs to be dened before it can be defended, and it has been local authorities who have dened what it means to be local, for policy purposes. Some of the discourse on localness has of course played to local electoral interest, blurring the boundary between rights and needs in an attempt to win support for development, prioritising the rights of existing residents above those of future residents. Such rights appear to link logically to ancestry, identifying those rooted in a place by birth or family association. But today such views seem archaic and may not help the functioning of the organism, and neither may they deliver social justice if they ignore aspiration or peoples legitimate need to move into an area for employment or personal reasons. Therefore, the policy view tends to be a more purposive one, with localness linked to economic and service needs, embracing key workers in schools, post ofces, shops and so on. But still, those supported need the right geographical credentials. Burnett (2008), however, argues that these are often fuzzy, connecting to a sense of things indigenous and to functional areas rather than xed boundaries. But it is the xed boundaries that appeal to policy, with lines drawn on maps, even when communities themselves dene localness by association or shared history. For planning authorities, a characteristic needs to be objective and externally veriable: length of residence in a bounded area, or whether someone was born, has family, or now works in an area, in a prescribed profession or trade. Such traditional measures enjoy variable levels of local support. They tend to favour the settled, long-standing population so are welcomed in certain area types, for example the deep rural in this study. But elsewhere, especially where there are concentrations of commuting or retiring householdswhose direct employment connection to an area is
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weaker, and length of residence shorterthere is a tendency to construct an alternative, more qualitative, narrative of localness. Whilst these different perspectives commonly co-exist and compete, one often appears to dominate. In the deep rural area, the normative tests of the local authority enjoyed wide support and these included length of residence, having attended a local school, being employed locally, having been born and raised in the area, or with parents in the area that now needed caring for. Because the area appeared relatively settled, and subject to a low level of population churn, these tests made sense to people, the majority of whom felt themselves to be local in this normative and quantitative account of localness. But in the transient and commuting areas, such xed criteria came under re. An older group of residents, many of whom had spent their working lives commuting to London, argued for an active citizen view of localness, arguing that it is those who get involved in village life and contribute to a community good and to a sense of place who should be considered local. The emotional ties associated with family history or childhood experience were viewed as adjuncts to contribution in a world that is today characterised by extended social networks and heightened mobility. Enlightened self-help creates and sustains a community, built on active citizenship which should be supported and rewarded by planning and housing policy, on those rare occasions where support is needed. Perspectives on this issue vary depending on whos calling it, as one participant observed. Longstanding residents support a policy view as it serves their claim to localness and priority. Relative incomers may feel a need to legitimise their presence or create an alternative narrative as the initial step to raising the drawbridge, often as members of parish councils, the rst ports of call for many active citizens in rural areas. From Local Priority to Localism What does all this mean for the setting of local priority, for planning and housing policy, and for housing provision, social exclusion, and gentrication? Local needs policies have been viewed as a means of resolving the conict in rural areas between landscape protection and development (Shucksmith, 1990) by convincing communities that growth will be limited and that it will serve their interests. But these interests are contested, with the foundations on which existing local needs policies are built being challenged in many areas. Rogers (1985) suggested that such policies begin life as a political expediency, and a few years later Shucksmith (1990) saw them as a sweetener, and a means of achieving a politically acceptable rate of housing development (p. 64). Continuing gentrication in many rural areas has resulted in a discourse that rejects the top-down imposition of rules and regulations that appear asynchronous with a changed social reality. There is a desire to replace the normative with something more exible, grown out of local discourse, frequently because past development outcomes are disliked. In the dynamic commuter area, the dominant view was that communities (or at least elites within those communities) rarely benet from imposed development, and gains to individuals (i.e. those housed in local needs schemes) should be questioned if broader employment and social needs are not being serviced. Problems begin with the mode of delivery, from the top, by distant authorities or their agents, including housing associations. Their strategic priorities are not adequately informed by local understanding, cause conict and disrupt an otherwise harmonious community dynamic. Local priorities have not in fact been local, but external, dressed up to confuse, confound and push through development. In both the transient and dynamic commuter areas it was argued that successful community development can only follow on from a
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devolution of responsibility and priority setting, tailored to local circumstance. In England, a Localism Bill aimed at shifting control from the centre to the local currently making its way through parliamentpromises rural and urban neighbourhoods a bigger say in setting housing priorities and shaping local planning policy. This may be welcomed in some areas, but for very different reasons. When the Bill becomes an Act, neighbourhoods will be able to seek additional housing for local need, subject to national planning policy, above allocations for general need. In the retirement retreat examined in this study, communities may push for additional housing in support of enhanced services. In the deep rural area it is quite possible that parish councils will be taken more seriously as they try to assist external bodies deliver more of the right kind of affordable housing. But in those areas keen to raise the drawbridge, the opportunity to do so may be helped by greater community control. Where there is to be new housing, this will go ahead as local development plans will retain their primacy. But the active citizens, who have constructed a particular discourse of affordability, localness and of course sustainability, may not seize the opportunity to break plannings restrictive grip on development in small village locations. Rather, the discourse highlighted in this paperone constituted to serve a narrow view of community interestwill support the continued gentrication of those villages that have already seen signicant social change, and will certainly not help reverse such trends. Acknowledgements The author gratefully acknowledges the support of DEFRA and the contribution of other colleagues to this work: Steve Robinson at Allerdale District Council, and John Siraut, Ryan Emmett and Chelsea Dosad, all at Colin Buchanan and Partners. References
Bramley, G. & Watkins, D. (2009) Affordability and supply: The rural dimension, Planning Practice and Research, 24(2), pp. 185 210. Buller, H. & Hoggart, K. (1994) International Counterurbanisation (Aldershot, Ashgate). Buller, H., Morris, C. & Wright, E. (2003) The Demography of Rural Areas: A Literature Review (London, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). Burnett, K.A. (2008) Local heroics: Reecting on incomers and local rural development discourses in Scotland, Sociologia Ruralis, 38(2), pp. 204 224. Cadieux, K.V. (2006) Productive and amenity relationships with nature in exurbia: engagement and disengagement in agriculture and the residential forest., Doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto, 2006. Champion, A.G. (2000) Flight from the cities? in: R. Bate, R. Best & A. Holmans (Eds) On the Move: The Housing Consequences of Migration (York, York Publishing Services). Cloke, P. (1979) Key Settlements in Rural Areas (London, Methuen). Coombes, M. (2009) English rural housing market policy: Some inconvenient truths?, Planning Practice and Research, 24(2), pp. 211231. Cullingworth, J.B. (1962) New Towns for Old: The Problem of Urban Renewal (London, Fabian Society). Darling, E. (2005) The city in the country: Wilderness gentrication and the rent gap, Environment and Planning A, 37, pp. 1015 1032. DCLG (2006) Delivering Affordable Housing (London, Department for Communities and Local Government). Fielding, A. (1982) Counterurbanisation in western Europe, Progress in Planning, 17, pp. 1 52. Colin Buchanan & Partners Gallent, N. & Robinson, S. (2010) Research into Rural Housing Affordability (London, Colin Buchanan & Partners). Glass, R. (1964) London: Aspects of Change (London, MacGibbon & Kee). Hoggart, K. & Henderson, S. (2005) Excluding exceptions: Housing non-affordability and the oppression of environmental sustainability?, Journal of Rural Studies, 21, pp. 181196.
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Hutton, R.H. (1991) Local needs policy initiatives in rural areas: Missing the target, Journal of Planning and Environment Law, pp. 303311, 1991, April. Lowe, P. & Ward, N. (2007) Rural Futures: A Socio-Geographical Approach to Scenarios Analysis, Position Paper for Regions and Regionalism in Europe and Beyond (Lancaster, Institute for Advanced Studies, Lancaster University). Mitchell, C. (2004) Making sense of counterurbanisation, Journal of Rural Studies, 20, pp. 1534. Newby, H. (1979) Green and Pleasant Land? Social Change in Rural England (London, Hutchinson). Parsons, D. (1980) Rural Gentrication: The Inuence of Rural Settlement Planning Policies, Department of Geography Research Papers No. 3 (Brighton, University of Sussex). Phillips, M. (2000) Making space for rural gentrication, in: F. Hernando (Ed.) Proceedings of the Second Anglo-Spanish Symposium on Rural Geography (Valladolid, University of Valladolid). Rogers, A.W. (1985) Local claims on rural housing, Town Planning Review, 56, pp. 367 380. Satsangi, M., Gallent, N. & Bevan, M. (2010) The Rural Housing Question: Communities and Planning in Britains Countrysides (Bristol, Policy Press). Shucksmith, M. (1990) House Building in Britains Countryside (London, Routledge). Spencer, D. (1997) Counterurbanisation and rural depopulation revisited: Landowners, planners and the rural development process, Journal of Rural Studies, 13(1), pp. 7592. Sturzaker, J. & Shucksmith, M. (2011) Planning for housing in rural England: Discursive power and spatial exclusion, Town Planning Review, 82(2), pp. 169193. Woods, M. (2005) Rural Geography: Processes, Responses and Experiences in Rural Restructuring (London, Sage). Woods, M. (2011) The local politics of the global countryside: Boosterism, aspirational ruralism and the contested reconstitution of Queenstown, New Zealand, GeoJournal, 76(4), pp. 365 381.
Radical Spaces of Rural Gentrication

KEITH HALFACREE
School of Environment and Society, Swansea University, UK
Introduction: Radical Rural Gentrication As this Interface conrms, rural gentricationas with gentrication in generalis not usually seen as either expressing any form of radical critique of contemporary capitalist society nor of producing the kinds of alternative spaces that practically express such a critique (for example, Phillips, 2010; Smith, 2002; Stockdale, 2010). Of course, rural gentrication is radical in the sense of the economic, social and cultural changes that it is associated with within a changing rural society but this re-organisation is itself more congruent with the evolutionary creative destruction of capitalism in general than with any challenges to this condition. Nonetheless, this short intervention argues that there are such challenges expressed within the whole rural gentrication universe. Furthermore, the practices of planning and planners can have important inuences on the extent to which these challenges come to be expressed. The idea of radical spaces of gentrication is presented in the next two sections from divergent directions. First, it is argued that greater attention needs to be paid to critical expressions contained within the underlying motivationsand from the resulting experiencesthat encourage people to move into the countryside. Second, there are also examples of rural lifestyles that may sometimes be seen as expressing a radical form of rural gentrication, at least given the predominant class background of many of those involved, in the guise of back-to-the-land migration. In the third section attention is paid to the role of planners and planning in facilitating or inhibiting both of these expressions.
Correspondence Address: Keith Halfacree, School of Environment and Society, Swansea University, UK. Email: K.H.Halfacree@swansea.ac.uk
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A conclusion reects briey on the presence of common ground between both expressions of radical rural gentrication and planning. Motivations for Rural Gentrication In line with the gentrication literature in general (Lees et al., 2008), whilst more structural reasons for rural gentrication must be acknowledged, the intentions, desires and hopes of those involvedtypically urban-to-rural migrating counterurbanisers (Phillips, 2010)also merit attention. In particular, much of this migration is underpinned by social representations of rurality (Halfacree, 2011a) or the culturally, socially and experientially inscribed imaginations of the rural and rural life. Furthermore, although these representationsnot least that product of the bourgeois imaginary (Bell, 2006, p. 158) the rural idyll may have a very problematic connection to actually existing twenty-rst century rurality, this does not mean they should not be considered as efcacious, from their entanglements with the material restructuring of rural places (Bell, 2006; Halfacree, 2011a) to what Jacob (1997, p. 85) terms the mindfulness experiences that rural gentriers subsequently receive. Idyllic representations of rurality, especially as expressed in the UK, can be summarised as inscribing a quasi-utopian rural space through a set of desired physical and social dimensions. The appeal of such an everyday experience can be interpreted in a number of ways (Halfacree, 2010). First, it may be seen as a part of a discourse of denial, a reactionary response to the everyday realities of, for example, hypermodern urban life. A house in the countrymimicking the residential practices of Victorian industrialistsprovides an escape, a metaphorical bolt-hole, from key realities of an everyday world that this same consumer is, of course, intimately and inextricably entangled (Heley, 2010). Furthermore, this bolt-hole may then go on to become a castle, with the rural gentriers pulling up their drawbridge, not least through engagement with anti-development pressure groups, to protect their idyllic rurality. Such a reading ties in, of course, with the dominant perspective taken on rural gentrication, namely how it is a form of elite, exclusive and exclusionary consumption. Nonetheless, a second way of reading, developed elsewhere in the context of second home consumption (Halfacree, 2011; 2011b), suggests a need to look again at what is both sought after and gained through rural gentrication. Notably, although rural gentrication may be expressed through the dominant textures of capitalist society class, commodity, alienated consumptionthis is not the full picture. There is more to consumption than its dominant commodity marketplace framing can lead us to note. Following Miller (1987, p. 190, my emphasis), in the period of time following the purchase or allocation of the item . . . the situation is radically transformed. That which is being consumed may even turn on and seek to negate the alienated relationships within which it is originally set: far from being a mere commodity, a continuation of all those processes which led up to the object . . . the object in consumption confronts, criticizes and nally may often subjugate these abstractions in a process of human becoming. (Miller, 1987, pp. 191 192) From such a perspective we can read those desired, perhaps even utopian, aspects of rural gentrication differently (Gibson-Graham, 1996). Taking this perspective does not necessarily lead us down the road of over-romanticising elite consumption practices although this is an ever-present dangerbut allows the impulse towards rural
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gentrication to be shaded in more countercultural and radical colours. In short, what rural gentriers seek may at least be a geographical life-raft (Halfacree, 2010) to enable them to try to cope with some of the existential challenges of everyday life through a promotion of a greater connection with land, nature and community (Bunce, 2003, p. 15). Substituting second home consumption with rural gentrication, moving to a rural location may enable the gentrier to access aspects or dimensions of lifestyle that are not offered in . . . ordinary [urban] life (Bjerke et al., 2006, p. 88). Going beyond this existentially consolidatory role, however, one may go further and associate rural gentrication with attempts to nd a temporary line of ight or an escape from places where lines of power squeeze out the sense of being alive (Winslade, 2009, p. 338). Rural gentrication practices, with their (attempted) connection to an alternative ruralised universe of meanings and practices, thereby disclose some of the existential inadequacies within everyday life, whilst remaining rooted in and connected to that same everyday life. These practices seek connection with a more natural, grounded outside or [set of everyday] experience[s] . . . that mainstream everyday life undermines and evicts yet paradoxically also seeks to re-engage through promoting existentially compensatory consumption practices, including those associated with [rural gentrication] (Halfacree, 2011b, p. 150). In summary, rural gentrication, albeit very unevenly in terms of applicability in individual cases, contains within it a heterotopic expression that is at least partly inscribed through the rural spaces lived through. The term heterotopia is taken from Michel Foucault (1986), reecting his desire to emphasise the continued heterogeneity of space in the present. He dened it as real places . . . something like countersites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia (Foucault, 1986, p. 24). Hetherington (1997) expressed them as spaces of alternate ordering (p. 53). Whilst rural gentrication, being so entangled within the capitalist socio-economic mainstream, cannot inscribe some kind of pure heterotopic space, it may still suggest an alternative expression of the everyday to that encapsulated by urban capitalist life. Countercultural back-to-the-land In contrast to the call to re-read and get under the skin of relatively conventional rural gentrication in order to tease out radical expressions contained therein, back-to-the-land practices are typically counterculturally emplaced from the outset. Back-to-the-land here refers to the adoption of a lifestyleagain often following migration from (sub-)urban originsthat seeks to combine farming or horticulture at the (sub-)smallholding scale, typically attempting a degree of food self-sufciency, with strong environmental/green ethics. Back-to-the-land as a whole cannot be seen as rural gentricationand its practitioners would be horried at such an appellation. Not all exponents take the pioneer gentrifying path to middle-class respectability outlined by Smith and Phillips (2001) for the hippie settlers of Hebden Bridge in the 1970s, for example (also Smith, 2007). Nevertheless, many if not the majority of back-to-the-landers do come from middle-class backgrounds (Halfacree, 2006), thereby linking them in crude class terms not only to the aforementioned conventional counter-urbanisers but also to the rural class reconstitution this in-migration in general is bringing about. However, in capital terms their power is usually more in terms of cultural than economic resources.
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Although once again idyllic rural representations are important underpinnings of backto-the-land (Halfacree, 2006), todays expression can be seen as closely entangled with radical rural (Halfacree, 2007) representations. Channelling the spirit of writers such as Peter Kropotkin and William Morris, via the inuence of John Seymour (for example, Seymour, 1975), these representations articulate several key principles. First, there is economic localisation or a disposition expressed through policy, everyday practices and social reexivity that actively discriminates in favour of more local production and investment whenever it is . . . reasonable and conveniently possible (Woodin & Lucas, 2004, p. 69). Second, the rural is seen as rooted in land-based activities with Rural culture . . . rooted in the earth (Fairlie, 2001, p. 10). In addition, radical rural representations are imbued with a strong community discourse, present land and what lives upon or within it beyond simply that of a means of production, and celebrate the rewards and values of physical labour; all steeped in eco-centric and deep ecological beliefs (Halfacree, 2007). In terms of the key spatial practices associated with radical rural representations, besides back-to-the-land migration itself, there is rst of all permaculture, or the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability and resilience of natural ecosystems (Bill Mollison, quoted in Laughton, 2008, p. 81). Second, there is low impact development (LID) (Pickerill & Maxey, 2009). Simon Fairlie (2009, p. xiv), a gure closely associated with this concept, denes LID as development which, by virtue of its low or benign environmental impact, may be allowed in locations where conventional development is not permitted. Key characteristics a LID should possess include being temporary (easily dismantled), small-scale, unobtrusive, constructed mostly of local and renewable materials, generating little road trafc, and producing positive environmental benets. In the UK and more generally in the global north, the last two decades have seen a resurgence in back-to-the-land experimentation. Not only are those starting the lifestyle less dilettante than in the 1970s but they come across as much better informed and networked. In short, back-to-the-land today is both very deliberative and strongly outward-looking. This is expressed in its engagement with the enduring challenges of attaining ecological, economic and social sustainability (Halfacree, 2006; Jacob, 1997; Sargisson, 2001). Thus, in her practical account of living off the land which also drew on visits to back-to-the-land initiatives in France and the UK, Laughton (2008) found people usually driven by a desire to address some of the pressing environmental problems of the twenty-rst century, such as climate change, biodiversity loss and soil erosion (p. 13). Back-to-the-land, one might conclude, has increasingly come of political agefrom dropping out to perhaps even leading on (Halfacree, 2006). To reinforce such a conclusion, back-to-the-land today seems much more strongly embedded in a network sense than in the 1970s. An expression of this is the often considerable outreach efforts made to spread the message of what they are about practically. This takes many forms. There are links, to university courses, such as Machynlleths Centre for Alternative Technology offering Masters courses validated through the University of East London (Halfacree, 2011c). However, demonstrative and educational outreach is more commonly expressed through hosting courses, typically those promoting permaculture and low impact building techniques; providing physical spaces to environmental organisations for training in direct action; engaging with local ecology projects in the wider community; and hosting visitors and holding open days (Dawson, 2006; Sargisson, 2001). Outreach, of course, can also provide a vital income stream. Finally, therefore, something must be said about income generation. This remains a critical challenge (Dawson, 2006; Laughton, 2008) for the success of the back-to-the-land
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lifestyle, notwithstanding an emphasis on reducing consumption and attaining greater self-sufciency through land work. As Jacob (1997) expressed it from a US perspective: The stress points of a life off the land center to a large extent on the elusive quest for enough money, rather than on the physical encounter with the natural environment of farmsteads (p. 77). Back-to-the-landers are rarely able to rely solely on land work and, in part reecting the changing uses of the countryside in favour of consumption issues (Halfacree, 2006), frequently engage with various types of ecotourism. They also utilise often considerable resources of cultural and educational capital in other imaginative ways (see Halfacree, 2011c on alternative rural Wales). Radical rural Gentrication and Planning So, what then of the intersection of and encounters between radical rural gentrication and land-use planning? Does planning tend to facilitate, to remain neutral, or to obstruct radical rural gentrication experiences and practices? This issue will be considered by addressing the two broad families introduced above in turn. It might seem at rst that planning and planners have nothing very specic to say about the suggested radical critical current expressed within more mainstream rural gentrication. This is because planning is overwhelmingly concerned with land-use issues and not with the meanings or effects that the consumption of rural through residence might bring about. Nonetheless, if the rural does expressno matter how partially or inadequatelysome kind of heterotopic space for (some) gentriers (further research is required in this area) then attention can be paid to the landscape features of that space that express this alternative ordering. Here, crucially, plannings longstanding attempt to maintain distinctiveness between urban and ruralits strategy . . . of separation (Fairlie, 2009, p. 9)seems critical (Murdoch & Pratt, 1993). Even rural preservationist attitudes, often seen as inherently conservative and even reactionary, may through their attempt to maintain elements of rural distinctiveness (such as nature) also somewhat paradoxically help to maintain some of ruralitys heterotopic resources. Reinforcing rural distinctiveness through planning, at least in land-use and appearance, may broadly if unintentionally help support the radical aspect of mainstream counterurbanisation but in so doing it does not of course help broaden the socio-economic base of those able to residentially migrate to the countryside. Indeed, the association between counterurbanisation and rural gentrication (Phillips, 2010; Smith, 2002) is reinforced further, as access to rural housing becomes increasingly exclusive. And whilst an intention to protect land for land-based lives and practices may be congruent with radical ruralitys spatiality, this can prove highly problematic for radical back-to-the-land projects more generally; the devil, as the saying goes, is in the detail. First, given the centrality of LID to radical ruralities, those attempting to get back-to-theland are highly likely to have to engage with the planning system, either from the outset or when a planning violation is detected. This necessity is reected directly both by Fairlies 1996 book, reprinted in 2009, Low Impact Development, and in the related organisation Chapter 7, that campaigns for access to land for all . . . through environmentally sound planning (Chapter 7, 2011). It is unlikely that LID exponents will have access to existing residential buildings mostly due to their scarcity and high cost but also because they may be poorly suited to conversion to LID conguration.1 Instead, a common practice is to purchase land and then seek to live and build on it, necessitating obtaining planning permission. As already
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suggested, there is longstanding resistance from both planning and other rural residents, not least the more conventional rural gentriers already discussed, to allow such development. Second, however, the latter observation can be qualied by noting that housing related to agricultural or other explicit land-based economic uses, such as forestry, is regarded more favourably by the planning system. The challenge, though, is to make the case that the LID project proposed conforms to what is understood to be legitimate or bona de agriculture. Typically, this involves estimating the income to be generated from the proposed land-based activities. Such income, especially if coming via permaculture projects that seek internally contained cyclical ows of energy and matter more than the high outputs (and high inputs) of linear conventional agriculture (Laughton, 2008), may be relatively small, thereby working against the likelihood of having planning permission granted. Furthermore, the necessity of living on site, as opposed to commuting to the smallholding, possibly from a nearby town, is also a case that must be made convincingly. Third, a further issue of planning concern is the general aesthetics of LID projects and radical ruralities generally. Practices such as LID and permaculture are rooted less in the abstract, neat, tidy, manicured landscape aesthetic of the rural idyll, incorporating the conventional farmstead with its standardised farm-buildings, surrounded by medium-large elds. Instead, they are rooted more in an everyday practical ethics of environmentalism and sustainability, where aesthetics, although important, appears less centre-stage. Fourth, it is not just the planning system that poses a variety of bureaucratic hurdles to LID and back-to-the-land projects. There are a host of other regulations and ofcial bodies that have to be negotiated, not least those concerned with detailed building regulations (related to health and safety, building control, etc.), sanitation and animal and plant health issues. Conclusion: Potential for Unity? This paper has for clarity largely kept separate the two suggested expressions of radical rural gentrication but this concluding section attempts some integration or at least entanglement. A central issue is the extent to which the radical gentrication expressed through some aspects of both counterurbanisation and back-to-the-land can converge, and the extent to which any such convergence can also connect with planners and planning. A robust alliance seems unlikely but the three groups do have common ground. In particular, retaining rural distinctiveness in terms of land use, appearance and so on at one level may be said to unite rural gentriers, back-to-the-land migrants and planners. All seek to produce, consume and/or regulate a space that is dominated in land-use terms by broadly dened agricultural and related activities. This remains, in short, overwhelmingly the dominant underpinning of rural space (Halfacree, 2011a). Fairlie has recently re-classied LID into three sub-categories (Chapter 7, 2009, p. 59):
. . .
Landworkers: derive a substantial part of their livelihoods from land-work; Lifestylers: part-time engagement with land-work; Homeseekers: no interest in land-work but want affordable, sustainable housing.
Whilst landworkers comprise the classic back-to-the-land category, one can perhaps see some potential rapprochement between the other two categories and counterurbanisers/rural gentriers seeking a greener lifestyle (as compared to other counterurbanisers; such as Heleys (2010) new squirearchy that speak to different priorities through their rural consumption, albeit still often valuing rural space and rural nature (p. 328)). Finally, two decades ago, Chris Hamnett (1991) identied one of the reasons why urban gentrication was of such interest and signicance to researchers as being because it
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presented a key ideological and theoretical battleground. As this series of Interface papers demonstrates, this observation seems equally true today with respect to rural gentrication and its entanglements with planning. Within the fray, this paper has sought to make the case, rst, that rural gentrication can express politically radical or countercultural values and practices and that, second, planning cannot but be implicated in the extent to which such values and practices are sustained or suppressed. Which way this goes is clearly a political choice to be made. Note
1. Relative avoidance of already existing houses further qualies any association that can be made between back-to-the-land and gentrication in terms of the direct displacement of more working class households, although such displacement at a larger scale might also constitute gentrication.
References
Bell, D. (2006) Variations on the rural idyll, in: P. Cloke, T. Marsden & P. Mooney (Eds) Handbook of Rural Studies (London, Sage). Bjerke, T., Kaltenborn, B. & Vitters, J. (2006) Cabin life: Restorative and affective aspects, in: N. McIntyre, D. Williams & K. McHugh (Eds) Multiple Dwelling and Tourism. Negotiating Place, Home and Identity (Wallingford, CABI). Bunce, M. (2003) Reproducing rural idylls, in: P. Cloke (Ed.) Country Visions (Harlow, Pearson). Chapter 7, (2009) LID: Getting the policy right, Chapter 7 News, 6, pp. 59 63. Chapter 7 (2011) Homepage. Available at: http:/ /www.tlio.org.uk/chapter7/ (accessed August 2011) Dawson, J. (2006) Ecovillages, Schumacher Brieng 12 (Totnes, Green Books). Fairlie, S. (2001) The Dowry. A Left Wing Defence of Rural England, (South Petherton, Somerset, Chapter 7 Publications). Fairlie, S. (2009) Low Impact Development, 2nd ed. (Charlbury, Oxfordshire, Jon Carpenter). Foucault, M. (1986) Of other spaces, Diacritics, 16, pp. 22 27. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (1996) The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) (Oxford, Blackwell). Halfacree, K. (2006) From dropping out to leading on? British counter-cultural back-to-the-land in a changing rurality, Progress in Human Geography, 30, pp. 309 336. Halfacree, K. (2007) Trial by space for a radical rural: Introducing alternative localities, representations and lives, Journal of Rural Studies, 23, pp. 125141. Halfacree, K. (2010) Reading rural consumption practices for difference: Bolt-holes, castles and life-rafts, Culture Unbound, 2, pp. 241263. Halfacree, K. (2011) Heterolocal identities? Counter-urbanisation, second homes and rural consumption in the era of mobilities, Population, Space and Place, doi: 10.1002/psp.665 Halfacree, K. (2011a) Interpreting rurality in the twenty-rst century: From effacement to (re)invention, in: L. r & K. Curtis (Eds) International Handbook of Rural Demography (New York, Springer). Kulcsa Halfacree, K. (2011b) A solid partner in a uid world and/or line of ight? Interpreting second homes in the era of mobilities, Norsk Geogrask Tidsskrift [Norwegian Journal of Geography]. Halfacree, K. (2011c) Alternative communities in rural Wales, in: P. Milbourne (Ed.) Rural Wales in the Twenty First Century: Society, Economy and Environment (Cardiff, University of Wales Press). Hamnett, C. (1991) The blind men and the elephant: The explanation of gentrication, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 16, pp. 173 189. Heley, J. (2010) The new squirearchy and emergent cultures of the new middle classes in rural areas, Journal of Rural Studies, 26, pp. 321331. Hetherington, K. (1997) The Badlands of Modernity (London, Routledge). Jacob, J. (1997) New Pioneers (University Park, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania University Press). Laughton, R. (2008) Surviving and Thriving on the Land (Dartington, Devon, Green Books). Lees, L., Slater, T. & Wyly, E. (2008) Gentrication (London, Routledge). Miller, D. (1987) Material Culture and Mass Consumption (Oxford, Blackwell). Murdoch, J. & Pratt, A. (1993) Rural studies: modernism, postmodernism and the post-rural, Journal of Rural Studies, 9, pp. 411427. Phillips, M. (2010) Counterurbanisation and rural gentrication: An exploration of the terms, Population, Space and Place, 16, pp. 539558.
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Pickerill, J. & Maxey, L. (2009) Low Impact Development. The Future in our Hands Wordpress, Available at: http:/ / lowimpactdevelopment.wordpress.com/ (accessed August 2011) Sargisson, L. (2001) Politicising the quotidian, Environmental Politics, 10, pp. 6889. Seymour, J. (1975) The Complete Book of Self-sufciency (London, Faber). Smith, D. (2002) Extending the temporal and spatial limits of gentrication: A research agenda for population geographers, International Journal of Population Geography, 8, pp. 385394. Smith, D. (2007) The buoyancy of other geographies of gentrication: Going back-to-the water and the commodication of marginality, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geograe, 98, pp. 53 67. Smith, D. & Phillips, D. (2001) Socio-cultural representations of greentried Pennine rurality, Journal of Rural Studies, 17, pp. 457 469. Stockdale, A. (2010) The diverse geographies of rural gentrication in Scotland, Journal of Rural Studies, 26, pp. 3140. Winslade, J. (2009) Tracing lines of ight: Implications of the work of Gilles Deleuze for narrative practice, Family Process, 48, pp. 332346. Woodin, M. & Lucas, C. (2004) Green Alternatives to Globalisation (London, Pluto).
In-migration as Opportunity for Rural Development

SUE KILPATRICK1, SUSAN JOHNS2, PETER VITARTAS3 & MARTIN HOMISAN4
1 4
Deakin University, Australia; 2University of Tasmania, Australia; 3Southern Cross University, Australia; Charters Towers Regional Council, Queensland, Australia
In some developed countries such as the UK, in-migration to rural areas is seen as a challenge for community cohesion as afuent newcomers move to accessible rural areas where they displace locals from affordable housing. However, in more remote locations, an inux of residents with new skills, entrepreneurial capacity and political capital can represent an opportunity for rural communities. In this paper, we discuss an alternative perspective from the UK experience, by exploring the positive dimensions of in-migration in more remote rural localities. Global forces are driving industry and demographic restructuring outside metropolitan Australia. Skills shortages present an onging critical challenge for rural community and rural industry sustainability (Hall et al., 2007; Han & Humphreys, 2005). Many small rural communities with ageing populations and limited opportunities for young people are not attracting skilled workers but have a ow of skilled people through the community such as locums, seasonal workers or contractors. GPs no longer spend their working lives in one country town; short-term locums who work in one place for two or three years are becoming the norm. Teachers are highly mobile. Sea/tree change1 and downskilling phenomena are seeing people move to or retire to rural areas, often to move on again after a few years. Active retirees or grey nomads, some with high level skills, roam the Australian countryside. One of the ways rural communities can address capacity issues is to tap into the growing body of highly skilled workers who transit through rural communities. Innovative communities have higher proportions of residents who have lived elsewhere, and professionals who come to live and work in rural communities have the ability to boost
Correspondence Address: Sue Kilpatrick, Alfred Deakin Reasearch Institute, Deakin University, Australia. Email: sue.kilpatrick@deakin.edu.au
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economic activity (Florida, 2003; McGranahan & Wojan, 2007). Skilled newcomers can contribute to economic, social and environmental development (Curry et al., 2001; Cvetkovic, 2009; Kalantaridis & Bika, 2006). They make signicant contributions to community vitality and energy (Burnside, 2007; Plowman, 2006) and help to initiate interest and sustain community momentum in relation to community change. Kalantaridis (2010) notes that the impact of newcomers to rural areas is cumulative rather than transformational, and is inuenced by the number of in-migrants to a particular community, their education levels and the extent of their networks. Because of their status as newcomers, they are not seen as being aligned with particular groups or community agendas, and can help to bring the community together to nd common ground. Skilled newcomers can participate and take a leadership role in community groups and activities (Johns et al., 2004b; Kilpatrick et al., 2002, 2009), using their networks to assist the community to access information and resources. Boundary crossers have been identied as playing an important role in leading and encouraging community interaction. These people move freely between two or more domains and have the trust of both (Kilpatrick et al., 2008). Curry et al. (2001) reported on the boundary-crossing role of more established alternative lifestylers in one rural community; they helped newcomers to become involved in environmental groups and community projects. Research has shown that the nature and extent of community networks inuence community development, highlighting the importance of horizontal and vertical linkages, or bonding and bridging social capital (Falk & Kilpatrick, 2000; Taylor et al., 2008; Woolcock & Narayan, 2000). Skilled newcomers to rural communities have the capacity to develop and strengthen community social capital. Small rural communities are not always welcoming of newcomers, and so communities may not be making the most of the opportunities that skilled in-migrants bring. Community identity can be diluted as identication is strongly linked to socialisation in traditional activities such as sporting clubs in which newcomers do not necessarily participate (Smailes, 2002). Communities may be divided, with a culture that makes it difcult to take advantage of skills that mobile workers may bring (Gray & Sinclair, 2005). Rural community norms may stie the creativity of newcomers (McGranahan & Wojan, 2007). We investigated how rural communities can optimise economic, social and environmental outcomes from mobile skilled workers; how they can capture the advantages from these highly skilled mobile workers, and how these workers can be encouraged to stay for extended periods (Kilpatrick et al., 2011). The qualitative study used a multiple site case study design. There were six Australian sites and one Canadian site. The seven sites represented variation in terms of size, location, degree of remoteness, and rural industry base. No site exceeded 12,000 people. Mobile skilled workers were attracted to the sites predominantly by either lifestyle factors or employment opportunities. Data were gathered through individual, semistructured interviews with key informants and mobile skilled workers. A total of 28 key informants and 89 mobile skilled workers participated from across the seven sites. We found the benets rural communities derive from mobile skilled workers are many and varied, and can be broadly grouped as environmental, economic and social. They include participation in the community, use of professional skills, provision of local employment and training opportunities, introduction of new perspectives, increased quality and choice of services, recreation and other activities, and access to external networks. In terms of a legacy of enduring benets, mobile skilled workers build the capacity of rural communities, and increase community condence and sense of identity. This is a lasting legacy that extends beyond their specic involvement in community groups and activities, and beyond visible reminders of their stay. Acting as bridges or boundary crossers, mobile skilled workers build
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community social capital by creating and strengthening linkages amongst individuals and groups within the community as well as externally. A common theme running through many of the mobile skilled worker stories was their desire to make a difference and an expectation that they would contribute to their new community. Community settings and, to a lesser extent, policy, make a difference to mobile skilled worker integration and community participation. Community settings such as culture, leadership and interactional infrastructure, dened as networks, events, meetings and communication sites, along with procedures, rules and precedents (Kilpatrick & Bound, 2005; Kilpatrick & Loechel, 2004), inuence the integration process for mobile skilled workers. The effectiveness of the integration process determines the nature and extent of mobile skilled worker contribution to the community. Many mobile skilled workers commented on the importance of feeling a sense of belonging which is fostered by positive community settings that assist them to develop social networks, such as a formalised welcome or induction process, or an invitation to join a community group. Local community members who act as boundary crossers play an important role in linking mobile skilled workers to the community. Community culture could also exclude, intentionally or otherwise. Leadership is critical in developing interactional infrastructure and is closely aligned to community culture. A community leadership process where the contributions of all community members are valued is a powerful signal to mobile skilled workers that their involvement is both expected and appreciated. While it is important to capture the talents and skills of people who come to work and live in a community, communities also actively build their capacity by mentoring others. There is a clear leadership role for specic groups and organisations within rural communities, such as local government, schools and workplaces, to build interactional infrastructure. The ndings demonstrate the importance of the workplace and the employer to mobile skilled worker integration into the community. Employers play a number of roles that assist mobile skilled workers to integrate into the community, including promoting and supporting community involvement by their staff. Community settings that inuence mobile skilled worker involvement and contributions also inuence their decision to stay or leave. Communities that wanted to attract, involve and retain skilled newcomers were proactive in developing and marshalling their resources to attract and integrate in-migrants. Mobile skilled workers were drawn to, wanted to be part of, and wanted to stay in communities that were innovative, embraced diversity, accepted newcomers, and reected a general air of community condence and sustainability. The reasons for choosing to stay in or leave small rural communities fall into four groups: work and career factors; personal and family factors; community factors; and policy settings. Work and career factors, and personal and family factors, may be prioritised differently, depending on the stage of the workers life cycle. People in rural communities and those who employ highly skilled mobile skilled workers can inuence these factors to varying extents. Retention was more likely where mobile skilled workers had been helped to create a sense of place, which in turn promoted a sense of belonging. Mobile skilled workers were likely to stay longer in rural communities if their families were also supported to integrate and become meaningfully involved. This included assistance in nding voluntary and/or paid employment for spouses and partners, along with proactive approaches by community groups to assist the family in integrating into the community.
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There was a stronger focus in the communities we studied on recruitment and retention than on integration, illustrated by various incentives offered to mobile skilled workers to encourage them to enter rural communities and to stay longer. Community and policy settings that focused largely on retention may have been too late for some mobile skilled workers, who had already decided to leave the community because of their early unsatisfactory rural experience. Financial incentives needed to be coupled with social support programmes in an effort to provide an overall positive experience and satisfaction with a rural lifestyle. Actions needed by rural communities and policy makers to assist in capturing the maximum benet from professional and other highly skilled workers fell into two broad areas: development of a primary social contract (Moghaddam, 2008) between mobile skilled worker and community; and the need for a coordinated and strategic approach. Early support to assist mobile skilled workers form a primary social contract was vital, particularly during the rst three months following arrival, so that their initial impressions and experiences in the community were positive. This is a community-wide responsibility; however, there was only limited evidence of collaborative policy and practice. There needs to be a combination of right person, right community setting, and right integration process. Mobile skilled workers need to have the right characteristics and attributes to integrate into rural communities. Mobile skilled workers who integrated successfully had an afnity with rural life, a sense of community commitment, and were adaptable and exible in their approach to t with and build on the culture and values of their new community. While skill levels and capacity to full employment obligations are important recruitment criteria, employers and HR managers need to look beyond these criteria when recruiting staff to rural positions. They need to assess the capacity and willingness of mobile skilled workers and their families to become involved in community life outside the workplace. Communities need to be proactive in facilitating a match with mobile skilled workers, suggesting a leadership role for individuals, groups and organisations. Communities which were proactive in identifying the particular skills of mobile skilled workers and then engaging them in community activities where those skills were needed and valued, contributed to a positive integration process. A positive integration process is likely to make mobile skilled workers feel valued and encourage them to stay longer. The integration process can be viewed in terms of a mobile skilled worker lifecycle, with identiable stages and points of transition, starting with research before the worker enters the community. All mobile skilled workers appeared to move through this lifecycle, although the rate of progression differed, depending on individual and community characteristics. Communities that understood the position of the mobile skilled worker in the cycle were better able to match actions and supports accordingly. A crucial stage is breaking in; if this is unsuccessful mobile workers start to look for an opportunity to leave. A clear implication of the research is that rural communities should facilitate the formation of a primary social contract with each mobile skilled worker. Rural communities that make the most of the available pool of skills can increase community capacity, resilience, identication and uptake of opportunities such as new enterprises, good practice in natural resource management, enhanced social and leisure opportunities, and quality and range of local services. Communities that welcomed newcomers, acknowledged their skills and gave them the opportunity to contribute and feel valued were places where mobile skilled workers integrated easily and were more likely to contemplate staying.
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The research presented in this paper found little evidence of gentrication of rural communities as reported particularly in European literature. Rural communities, particularly those with skill shortages, should perceive in-migration as a valuable resource, and develop relocation programmes that target skilled migrants who have the right characteristics and attributes to integrate into their community. Note
1. Sea change and tree change are terms coined in Australia to describe amenity-based migration movements towards coastal and rural localities.
References
Burnside, D. (2007) The Relationship between Community Vitality, Viability and Health, and Natural Resources and their Management. Final Report (Canberra, National Land & Water Resources Audit). Curry, G., Koczberski, G. & Selwood, J. (2001) Cashing out, cashing in: Rural change on the south coast of Western Australia, Australian Geographer, 32(1), pp. 109 124. Cvetkovic, A. (2009) The integration of immigrants in northern Sweden: A case study of the municipality of msund, International Migration, 47(1), pp. 101 131. Stro Falk, I. & Kilpatrick, S. (2000) What is social capital? A study of interaction in a rural community, Sociologia Ruralis, 40(1), pp. 87 110. Florida, R. (2003) The rise of the creative class: And how its transforming work, leisure, community and everyday life (Melbourne, Pluto Press). Gray, I. & Sinclair, P. (2005) Local leaders in a global setting: Dependency and resistance in regional New South Wales and Newfoundland, Sociologia Ruralis, 45(12), pp. 3752. Hall, D.J., Garnett, S.T., Barnes, T. & Stevens, M. (2007) Drivers of professional mobility in the Northern Territory: Dental professionals, Rural and Remote Health, 7, pp. 655 (Online). Available from: http:/ /www.rrh.org.au Han, G.S. & Humphreys, J.S. (2005) Overseas-trained doctors in Australia: Community integration and their intention to stay in a rural community, Australian Journal of Rural Health, 13(4), pp. 236 241. Johns, S., Kilpatrick, S., Loechel, B. & Prescott, L. (2004b) Pathways from Rural Schools: Does School VET Make a Difference? (Adelaide, National Centre for Vocational Education Research). Kalantaridis, C. (2010) In-migration, entrepreneurship and rural-urban interdependencies: The case of East Cleveland, North East England, Journal of Rural Studies, 26(4), pp. 418 427. Kalantaridis, C. & Bika, Z. (2006) In-migrant entrepreneurship in rural England: Beyond local embeddedness, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 18(2), pp. 109131. Kilpatrick, S., Auckland, S., Johns, S. & Whelan, J. (2008) Building capacity for rural health: The role of boundary crossers in coalition maturity for partnerships with external agents, in: L. Doyle, D. Adams, J. Tibbitt & P. Welsh (Eds) Building Stronger Communities: Connecting Research, Policy and Practice (Leicester, National Institute of Adult Continuing Education). Kilpatrick, S. & Bound, H. (2005) Skilling a Seasonal Workforce: A Way Forward for Rural Regions (Adelaide, National Centre for Vocational Education Research). Kilpatrick, S., Cheers, B., Gillies, M. & Taylor, J. (2009) Boundary crossers, communities and health: Exploring the role of rural health professionals, Health and Place, 15, pp. 284290. Kilpatrick, S., Johns, S., Mulford, B., Falk, I. & Prescott, L. (2002) More than an Education: Leadership for Rural SchoolCommunity Partnerships (Barton, ACT, Rural Industries Research and Development). Kilpatrick, S., Johns, S., Vitartas, P. & Homisan, M. (2011) Mobile skilled workers: Making the most of an untapped rural community resource, Journal of Rural Studies, 27(2), pp. 181190. Kilpatrick, S. & Loechel, B. (2004) Interactional infrastructure in rural communities: Matching training needs and provision, Rural Society, 14(1), pp. 421. McGranahan, D. & Wojan, T. (2007) Recasting the creative class to examine growth processes in rural and urban counties, Regional Studies, 41(2), pp. 197216. Moghaddam, F. (2008) The psychological citizen and the two concepts of social contract: A preliminary analysis, Political Psychology, 29, pp. 881 901. Plowman, I. (2006) Innovation in rural Queensland: Why some towns thrive while others languish. Available at http:/ /www.plowman.com.au/Innovation_in_rural_Queensland.pdf (accessed 29 December 2009) Smailes, P.J. (2002) From rural dilution to multifunctional countryside: Some pointers to the future from South Australia, Australian Geographer, 33(1), pp. 7995.
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Taylor, J., Wilkinson, D. & Cheers, B. (2008) Working with Communities in Health and Human Services (Melbourne, Australia, Oxford University Press). Woolcock, M. & Narayan, D. (2000) Social capital: Implications for development theory, research, and policy, World Bank Research Observer, 15(2), pp. 225249.
Rural Gentrication: Perspectives from Practice

TREVOR CHERRETT
University of Reading and Wiltshire Community Land Trust, UK
If the term gentrication was originally coined for the process by which middle-class people take up residence in a traditionally working-class area of a city, thereby changing the character of the area, then there can be little doubt that this description applies equally well to much of rural England since World War II. The causes and effects of this process have been well documented, not least by Mark Shucksmith and Nick Gallent in this Interface. In this paper I want to reect briey on the meaning and implications of rural gentrication from a policy and practice perspective; how it is likely to respond to new drivers of change and governance; and nally, to explore the implications of this analysis for rural policy and practice in the future. With hindsight, the post-war gentrication of rural England seems to have been inevitable, given the steady loss of local land-based jobs and income, the dominant cultural attachment to the countryside (what we fought for), and a raft of planning policies which served to protect that countryside from further development. Housing formerly occupied by local workers rapidly changed hands. In came people from the towns, including new commuters leap-frogging the Green Belt to rural towns and villages beyond, people retiring to a place in the country, and later, second home owners, all aided and abetted by much higher incomes, cheap motoring and the search for a more pleasant environment. Out went local people who no longer had jobs in the fast mechanising farms, or the incomes to afford the rapidly rising prices of the limited housing stock. In this way gentrication became widespread across most of rural Englandalbeit at different rates and with different characteristics and motives (as Halfacree notes in this Interface) and in different patterns of socio-economic characteristics (Lowe & Ward, 2009). It has also changed over time, in that local land-based workers have been replaced gradually by successive waves of incomers with varying levels of income and lifestyles. To some extent existing locals may have become gentried themselves, securing better paid jobs and changing their aspirations, in line with socio-economic changes which have taken place in the country as a whole. Arguably the initially straightforward process of population exchange characteristic of gentrication has been replaced by more complex but entrenched patterns of social segregation more or less dened by house prices. Gentrication, as Darren Smith discusses in this Interface, has morphed into a general occupation of rural areas by the middle classes, especially in the near country of the English lowlands characterised by strong employment and recreation linkages to urban areas. But overall, English rural society has been more or less turned on its head over the
Correspondence Address: Trevor Cherrett, University of Reading, and Wiltshire Community Land Trust, UK.
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last 60 years or so: a majority of land-based (and sea) workers populating rural towns and villages, presided over by a small coterie of gentry, has generally been replaced by a small minority of locals living cheek by jowl with a majority of wealthier incomers. Whatever successes were enjoyed by post-war planning policiesand it could be fairly claimed that the objectives of increasing agricultural production and preventing urban sprawl were substantially achievedthere were clearly social impacts that were less desirable, as Mark Shucksmiths paper amply illustrates. Rural people were forced to move out. Affordable housing emerged as a major rural problem within decades. Local services, previously supported by local populations without majority access to private vehicles, declined steadily. Some of these consequences were foreseen, notably in the minority report to the 1942 Scott Committee by Professor Dennison (Curry, 2008), but the extent to which they were intended is a matter for debate (Curry & Owen, 2009). It could be argued that post-war rural policies can be traced from both the strategic imperative to produce food after the war, and a dominant planning bias towards urban development, initially through slum clearance from the bombed cities and towns, and the development of new towns. From this policy perspective the social and economic consequences for rural communities were essentially the bastard offspring of two separate national policies from two different sectors which together created a powerful bastion of protection from development. However, the roots of these policies are both deep and complex. Producing more food more efciently was manifestly a priority for a country still suffering the effects of war. Planning policies, on the other hand, were reecting a widespread love of the rural landscape (and access to that landscape through the designation of new national parks), a compelling if mythical belief in the idyll of the English countryside, and a revulsion against ribbon development and the advance of metro-land. Some would argue that these anti-urban and pastoral traditions transcend social class structures,1 and resonate with the motives and feelings of many different aspirants to rural life, including those who seek genuinely sustainable lifestyles, as Halfacree notes in his paper. It is also fair to say that many of the social and economic consequences of prevailing rural planning policies were well recognised by the state as far back as a previous Conservative Governments Rural White Paper in 1993, which for the rst time brought together the two big departments involved. Yet despite this and successive attempts to introduce more positive rural policies, culminating in the Taylor Report of 2008 and the formation of the Rural Coalition,2 serious rural problems remain, especially the shortage of affordable homes. So why are these rural problems, especially the rural housing question (Satsangi et al., 2010), so persistent? Despite the research, the reports, and the policy rhetoric; despite more exible planning policies which encourage economic diversication and limited housing development;3 and despite a succession of disasters such as BSE, footand mouth disease and a vituperative but essentially irrelevant debate (to our concerns here) on fox-hunting, all of which must have taken some of the gloss off the rural idyll: despite all these anni horribili, English rural planning policies remained essentially protective,4 to an extent which has arguably thwarted much-needed development (OECD, 2011). And this protective policy is generally supported by politicians and the public at large, exemplied by the ongoing clamorous defence of the green belt.5 Here the case for powerful interests usurping rational policy through political inuence and control becomes more compelling. Meanwhile the provision of affordable housing remains painstakingly slow, especially in smaller villages which rely largely on the exceptions policy invented in the 1980s
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(Satsangi et al., 2010). It is perhaps signicant to note that the rural housing crisis has lasted much longer than the initial phase of gentrication, as it has grown from a purely locational issue to a generational issueit now affects the sons and daughters of the earlier incomers. But at the same time there is no reason to suppose that the Nimbys and Bananas (build absolutely nothing anywhere now or again) will go awaymany rural towns and villages will have become more or less exclusive havens for the better off, and will wish to remain so. Yet looking to the future, the drivers of change also continue to persist, and indeed grow. Demographic pressures on rural England have increased in terms of growing numbers of households (Holmans & Whitehead, 2011, CRC, 2010) generated by a continued desire to live in the countryside (reected in net migration from urban to rural areas) and an ageing population. Meanwhile the economies of rural England have shown potential for modest growth (CRC, 2008), and some exibility in planning policies and practice to accommodate new enterprises are emerginga policy response which has been sharpened by the aftermath of the economic recession. At the same time, despite being overshadowed by economic crises, climate change remains a critical issue which rural areas must address, both in terms of helping to meet the carbon challenge but also in meeting the resource needs of the futurefor example food, water, ood control and recyclable energy. So how will rural England respond to these drivers of change and apparent problems? The technical and professional answers to this question will depend very much on the policy responses to the requirements for sustainable development. The Taylor report and others (Rural Coalition, 2010; TCPA, 2011) have criticised the simplistic tick-box approach to the allocation of development in rural settlements, focusing on the location of existing jobs and services in larger towns and villages on the assumption that this will reduce the need to travel. They argue that the potential for smaller villages to provide these jobs and services, and the very mobile nature of rural populations, has not been properly factored in. Rightly or wrongly, local plans tend to concentrate development in selected towns and villages in a way which is likely to continue and even intensify the gentrication of smaller settlements. The processes by which these policy responses will be made have of course been radically changed. The advent of localism under the new UK Coalition Government, with its rejection of national and regional spatial policy and a new focus on planning at the local government and community level, places planning policies and decisions into a new context of governance, with the Localism Bill currently making its way through parliament. It will be the role of local core strategies to set the spatial policy framework for development, with the active engagement of local communities in the formulation of that frameworkand its implementation through a raft of new planning measures at neighbourhood level.6 At the national level, the Governments recently published National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) has emphasised a presumption in favour of sustainable development, but without dening that term in any detail (DCLG, 2011). In terms of rural policies it has supported more positive policies for rural enterprise, and some affordable housing. But as it stands, much will depend on local interpretations of what is acceptable as sustainable development. The statements in Local Planning Authorities (LPA) core strategies, and the views of local neighbourhoods and communities, will be critical. So too will be the judgements of planning inspectors at the inevitable planning appeals, especially where planning applications are made in the absence of an up to date local plan.7 Quite how this will all work out in practice is a matter of conjecture. Given the difculties facing the national economy and a new planning regime generally favouring development, the attractions of rural towns and villages for new enterprises (especially
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those related to providing crucial resources, eco-management and new energy) may overcome many of the blanket restrictions to rural development, along with signicant increases in a range of mixed price housing schemes. On the other hand, the deep-rooted antipathy to building in the countryside, nourished by a historical cultural celebration of the pastoral idyll, and the protective instincts of those who live there now, may continue to support planning policies which limit new development to all but the most modest additions. Meanwhile the technical arguments surrounding the principles and practice of sustainable development will continue in the background with greater or lesser impact. How will gentried rural England, in all its types and styles, respond to these challenges? In economic terms it is likely that the important contribution which rural areas can make to creating new jobs, especially green jobs, is weakened by a protective, gentried rural England (likewise the homes for people to serve the gentried towns and villages). The loss of land-based jobs was critical for the role of rural towns and villages, and the creation of new enterprises, whether land-based or not, will be equally critical to generating a new sense of purpose for rural areas. Fundamentally, there has to be a tre to challenge the protection of the countryside for its compelling economic raison de own sake as the dominant longstanding cultural and political position. Whether a space will open up for new entrepreneurs to realise the many benets which rural locations can offer, and take advantage of a new planning regime with a presumption in favour of sustainable development, in genuinely sustainable ways, is a key question for the decades ahead. Socially, there has long been an argument for more balanced communities in which a mix of ages, incomes and ethnic backgrounds can provide a richer and more varied contribution to life and work. More recently, the urban riots in England may heighten the fears of rural dwellers and strengthen their motivation to limit new growth, creating even worse divisions.8 Alternatively, the strong social capital characteristic of many rural communities could show how a more tolerant and generous society might be created. Clearly this is a policy debate which goes well beyond the boundaries of this paper, but in which rural gentrication has a crucial part to play. Environmentally, much will depend on whether the policy arguments mounted by the Rural Coalition and others to support rural development as part of a positive strategy for fostering sustainable communities are counteracted by the dominant cultural paradigm of protecting the varied and distinctive landscapes of the English countryside. From a planning policy perspective, what should and could be done? It is disappointing that national planning policy is declining to take a rm leadthere is no vision in the draft NPPF of what sustainable rural development might look like. It appears that local planning authorities will be rmly in the box seat through the preparation of core strategies, and it is crucial that they fully engage local communities in formulating local rural strategies which dene the principles and practice of sustainable development, using the best evidence available to them (e.g. Tym et al., 2008). This should be a profound technical and political discussion, involving local elected members, parish councils and elected members. Much will also depend on the case law judgements of planning inspectors, to which many of these decisions will inevitable fall. There is a real opportunity here for genuine bottom up planning, which engages local people in the future of the place they live, work and play in. Local planning authorities have an important responsibility to help make this work, as do local communities themselves, if they are to provide an effective plan within which new development can take place in a way which meets local needs, and which respects local distinctiveness. Standard policies and decisions do not t each and every rural town, village and hamlet
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within the very diverse landscapes and peoples of rural England, and the new localism offers a genuine opportunity to formulate individual solutions to individual places. But it will not be easy. Neighbourhood planning is likely to be complicated and expensive, and local communities may be put off. Local planning authorities may fail to genuinely engage local people beyond the conventional treadmill of consultation. Gentried rural England may remain suspicious. Yet if it does not work, rural England will be vulnerable to ad hoc market-led speculative development, especially given the absence of national or regional policies, and a default presumption in favour of vaguely dened sustainable development. If the discarding of normative, hierarchical polices can be likened to planning nally going postmodern, it might leave the kind of decision space which, as Edward Docx argues within a cultural discourse (Docx, 2011), will be lled by the operation of the market. In principle, the locus of power will move from central and regional government to local and community governance, tempered by decisions on appeal by independent inspectors. Much will depend on specic interpretations of what constitutes sustainable development and to what extent such denitions can steer or override the way in which the market will interpret it. Either way the advent of localism means that gentried rural England, in all its shapes and sizes, is being put to the test. It can either shut up shop and cling to an exclusive model of the rural idyll, relying on towns and cities for employment and services; or it can embrace a new economic role based on the land and its capacities for delivering a more sustainable future, on the potential for rural communities to create new jobs based on new growth enterprises, and new services designed to meet their varied needs, supported by more and better sustainable transport (e.g. demandresponsive public and/or community transport). Given the major demographic, economic, social and environmental challenges facing the country today, the nature and quality of that response will be critical. Notes
1. For a review of different interpretations of historic English national identity and the importance of the pastoral myth, see Sandbrook (2011). 2. The Rural Coalition was established in 2009 by six leading national bodies, chaired by Lord Matthew Taylor, to promote and develop the recommendations of the Taylor Report. It published The Rural Challenge in 2010. It was facilitated by the Commission for Rural Communities and now comprises over 15 national organisations. 3. These are included in previous central government Planning Policy Statements, and the Coalition Governments draft National Planning Policy Statement in 2011. 4. For a summary of rural polices in the core strategies of local plans in England, see Cherrett (2010). 5. Although the Green Belt was invented to prevent urban sprawl and the coalescence of existing urban areas, it has of course achieved popular status with the public and politicians as a catch-all policy of prevention of new development in green elds. It often comes as a surprise to many people in rural areas that there are no local Green Belt designations. 6. These include a Neighbourhood Plan, a Neighbourhood Development Order, and a Right to Build, but all tempered by the right to undertake a local referendum, and by the strategic framework of the LPA Core Strategy. 7. The NPPFs presumption in favour of sustainable development, especially where local plans are absent, silent, indeterminate, or out-of-date will raise serious questions about what constitutes sustainable development in any given location without a valid local policy framework. 8. For a discussion of the growth of inequality in the UK and its geographical segregation, see Miles (2011).
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Cherrett, T. (2010) The future is rural too, Town and Country Planning, 79, pp. 233 237. CRC (2008) Englands Rural Areas: Steps to Release their Economic Potential (Cheltenham, Commission for Rural Communities). CRC (2010) State of the Countryside 2010 (Cheltenham, Commission for Rural Communities). Curry, N. (2008) Whither rural: New canons for old?, Inaugural Lecture for the Countryside and Community Research Institute, Cheltenham, April 2008. Curry, N. & Owen, S. (2009) Rural planning in England: A critique of current policy, Town Planning Review, 80(6), pp. 575595. DCLG (2011) National Planning Policy Framework: Consultation Document (London, DCLG). Docx, E. (2011) Postmodernism is dead, Prospect, 16 August Holmans, A. & Whitehead, C. (2011) New and Novel Household Projections for England with a 2008 BaseSummary and Review, Town and Country Planning Tomorrow Series Paper 11 (London, TCPA). Lowe, P. & Ward, N. (2009) Rural futures: A socio-geographical approach to scenario analysis, Regional Studies, 43(10), pp. 13191332. Miles, A. (2011) It Matters if Youre Black or White, New Statesman, 22 August. Available at: http:/ /www. newstatesman.com/north-america/2011/08/middle-class-black-white. OECD (2011) Rural Policy Reviews: England, United Kingdom (Paris, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). Rural Coalition (2010) The Rural Challenge: Achieving Sustainable Rural Communities for the Twenty-First Century (London, TCPA). Sandbrook, D. (2011) Enduring England, Prospect, 186. Satsangi, M., Gallent, N. & Bevan, M. (2010) The Rural Housing Question (Bristol, Policy Press). TCPA (2011) Rural Policy Statement (London, Town and Country Planning Association). Tym, R. & Partners (2008) A Toolkit for Sustainable Rural Communities (Preston, Rural Innovation).

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Planning Theory & Practice

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Exclusive Countrysides? Rural Gentrication, Consumer Preferences and Planning

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Exclusive Rurality: Planners as Agents of Gentrication

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Radical Spaces of Rural Gentrication

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In-migration as Opportunity for Rural Development

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Rural Gentrication: Perspectives from Practice

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