Interface: Exclusive countrysides?

About Planning Theory & Practice and Interface

Interface: Exclusive countrysides? Rural gentrification, consumer preference and planning

Editor: Mark Scott

Authors: Mark Scott, Trevor Cherrett, Nick Gallent, Keith Halfacree, Martin Homisan, Susan Johns, Sue Kilpatrick, Mark Shucksmith, Darren Smith and Peter Vitartas

Summary

Many rural places have experienced profound changes to housing and land markets over recent decades, fuelled by a growing desire for rural living and an extended spatial mobility. This Interface collection aimed to explore rural housing demands through examining the gentrification of rural places and its implications for planning practice in rural localities.

Edited by Mark Scott, this series of six essays brought together academic and practitioner voices to explore the implications of in-migration to rural places, particularly related to housing affordability challenges, the gentrification of rural places through urban-to-rural migration and the potential displacement of local people from rural housing markets. While published in 2011, these issues have remained enduring challenges – and indeed, an interest in rural in-migration surged once again following the Covid-19 pandemic and the sudden rise of new remote working possibilities.

The Interface questioned the role of planning and planners as potential ‘agents’ of gentrification. This is particularly evident in rural England where a persistent focus on rural preservation has often been at the expense of social sustainability and equity. Restricting new housing development in rural localities has often reinforced an affordability crisis. 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. Those purchasing properties for these purposes tend to have greater buying power, who can out-bid local residents, resulting in rises in house prices beyond the reach of locals.

This raises questions as to how planning policies can more effectively balance rural preservation goals with delivering affordable homes for rural communities. Rural in-migration can also provide a more positive pathway for sustainable rural places. Drawing on research from Australia and Canada, the Interface also illustrated how middle-class in-migration can, in some cases, revitalise remote communities by bringing new skills, enterprise, and political capital – essential assets for local regeneration. The Interface urges planners to adopt more proactive, spatially tailored and innovative planning approaches – particularly in delivering affordable housing – to ensure rural futures that are socially inclusive as well as environmentally sustainable.

This Interface includes the following contributions:

• ‘What is rural gentrification? Exclusionary migration, population change, and revalorised housing markets’, Darren P. Smith
• ‘Exclusive Rurality: Planners as Agents of Gentrification’, Mark Shucksmith
• ‘Gentrification and the discourses of housing affordability, localness and priority in rural England’, Nick Gallent
• ‘Radical Spaces of Rural Gentrification’, Keith Halfacree
• ‘In-migration as opportunity for rural development’, Sue Kilpatrick, Susan Johns, Peter Vitartas and Martin Homisan
• ‘Rural Gentrification: Perspectives from Practice’, Trevor Cherrett

Full reference

Scott, M., Smith, D.P., Shucksmith, M., Gallent, N., Halfacree, K., Kilpatrick, S., Johns, S., Vitartas, P., Homisan, M. and Cherrett, T. (2011). Exclusive countrysides? Rural gentrification, consumer preferences and planning. Planning Theory & Practice, 12(4), 593–635.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/14649357.2011.626304?needAccess=true