Territorial Cohesion in Rural Europe

The Relational Turn in Rural Development

Andrew Copus, Philomena de Lima

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415859509
• eBook ISBN: 9781135131043
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This book reflects on how the economies, social characteristics, ways of life and global relationships of rural areas of Europe have changed in recent years. This reveals a need to refresh the concepts we use to understand, measure and describe rural communities and their development potential. This book argues that Europe has 'outgrown' many of the stereotypes usually associated with it, with substantial implications for European Rural Policy.

Rural structural change and its evolving geography are portrayed through regional typologies and the concept of the New Rural Economy. Demographic change, migration, business networks and agricultural restructuring are each explored in greater detail. Implications for equality and social exclusion, and recent developments in the field of governance are also considered. Despite being a subject of active debate, interventions in the fields of rural and regional development have failed to adapt to changing realities and have become increasingly polarized.

This book argues that rural/regional policy needs to evolve in order to address the current complex reality, partially reformulating territorial or place-based approaches, and the New Rural Paradigm, following a set of principles termed 'Rural Cohesion Policy'.

Part I

Contemporary rural change and the concept of territorial cohesion

1 Introduction

From rural development to rural territorial cohesion

Andrew K. Copus and Philomena de Lima

Introduction

The overarching aim of this book is to reflect on how rural areas of Europe – their economy, their social characteristics, their ways of life and their relationships with the rest of the world – have changed in recent years. This reveals a need to refresh the concepts we use to understand, measure and describe rural communities and their development potential. We argue that rural Europe has ‘outgrown’ many of the stereotypes usually associated with it. It is wrong to think of it simply as a provider of food and fibre, as the recreational resource for city residents, as the residential area for commuters, or as a source of water, alternative energy or carbon capture. It is also incorrect to assume that rural entrepreneurs and residents are ‘locked in’ to the surrounding ‘city region’, in terms of markets or access to goods and services. In all but a few parts of Europe, the rural economy is increasingly diversified, interdependent and outward looking, interacting, not just with adjacent urban areas, but also across a continental or global context. It is obviously not right to assume that rural areas are always lagging or disadvantaged. Indeed, some are flourishing and boast a higher level of material prosperity, demographic and social vitality, than nearby cities.

This does not mean, however, that rural Europe can no longer benefit from tailored economic and social policies. If rural Europe is as varied as we argue, in its complex and heterogeneous geographies, then there is an urgent need to reconsider the underlying rationale for rural development policy, and regional policy with respect to rural areas. We argue that the focus (and weight of public/EU funding) should shift away from supporting the competitiveness of agriculture, away from compensation for provision of countryside public goods, and away from city-region integration, towards supporting the various (regionally specific) development potentials, building upon the full range of assets: natural, material and less tangible (human, cultural and social) capital. This perspective not only combines elements of what, in European regional/spatial policy circles has been termed ‘territorial cohesion’ (CEC 2008), and ‘place-based policy’ (Barca 2009), but is also in synergy with aspects of a concurrent academic discourse stressing the importance of socio-economic relationships, linkages and networks, which are less constrained by geographical distance than in the past (Bathelt and Glückler 2011).

What do we mean by ‘rural’?

Before going any further, it will be helpful to be as clear as possible about what we mean by ‘rural areas’ in the context of this book. We will not attempt to provide an ‘academic’ answer to this question, partly because there would be as many views as there are relevant disciplines, and partly because we do not believe it is necessary, for this book, to have a tightly ‘buttoned down’ technical or statistical definition. However, in order to avoid misunderstanding, it will be helpful to have a shared understanding of what the authors of the various chapters have in mind when they use terms such as ‘rural areas’ or ‘rural Europe’.

The concept of rural areas employed in this book is inherently socioeconomic and has more to do with settlement patterns, ways of life and culture, than with land use, landscape, environment or particular economic activities. ‘Rural areas’ incorporate villages and small-to-medium-sized towns, but exclude metropolitan areas. The rural economy emphatically does not equal ‘agriculture’, or even what are sometimes referred to as ‘land-based industries’. Most rural areas today are host to a wide range of economic activities, although the profile, or balance, varies considerably.

There is no hard (geographical) boundary between urban and rural. Some have argued that there is gradual transition or ‘continuum’ between the two (Pahl 1966). Others have proposed a ‘local economy’ approach, incorporating small towns/cities and their rural ‘hinterlands’ as a more appropriate geo – graphical unit for analysis (Saraceno 1994). It may be helpful to think of urban and rural areas being separated by a contested ‘no-man’s-land’, within which both urban and rural characteristics and activities are present, and which is criss-crossed by a multitude of urban-rural relationships and linkages.

In a few of the chapters that follow (for example, Chapters 4 and 5), statistical analysis requires an explicit and ‘operational’ definition of the rural areas of Europe. Where this is necessary, the authors have followed the approach of the ESPON EDORA project (Copus et al. 2011), upon which much of this book depends for its inspiration, in defining rural areas as both predominantly rural and intermediate NUTS 3 regions, in terms of the well-known OECD typology (Dijkstra and Poelman 2008, 2011).

Rural change and the importance of relationships

We argue that there is no such thing as a typical rural area, economy or society, and the path of change followed by different parts of Europe is contingent upon local historical legacies, particularities of geography and the political and cultural environment. Indeed, it has been argued that diversity is increasing (Marsden 1999, Woods 2007), and that regional specificities can often be viewed as strengths, as elements of potential that should form the foundations for development and resilience (CEC 2008, Ahner 2009).

Although this might suggest that it would be impossible to generalize about the current state of rural areas, or their prospects for the future, most readers will be familiar with a range of stereotypes, some of them derived from popular culture or literature, others deliberately fostered by various interest groups. These might emphasize, for instance: rural areas as providers of food; as guardians of traditional culture; as leisure and recreation environments for stressed urbanites; as reservoirs for species diversity; or as key elements of the carbon cycle and sources of alternative energy and, therefore, part of the solution to climate change. Less positively, rural areas are often characterized as having ageing populations and selective out-migration, both of which further distort the demographic profile and affect the gender balance and, thus, the very sustainability of rural communities. Rural communities are seen as having lower living standards, unskilled, low-paid jobs, less competitive environments for entrepreneurship and innovation, and a lack of agglomeration advantages. They are often perceived as suffering from inaccessibility or isolation and as experiencing poor service provision. All of these, of course, are (or have been until recently) true to some extent and to varying degrees in different places.

However, it is also widely recognized that such binary characterizations are becoming inadequate in the light of changes that are currently taking place across rural Europe. Many rural areas have attracted people and businesses through ‘counter-urbanization’ migration (Halfacree 2008). Some, especially in the US (McGranahan et al. 2011), have argued that enrichment of human capital by ‘creative class’ in-migrants is a key driver of growth in certain rural areas. Migration into rural areas, by both intra-EU and non-EU migrants, has also been identified as both contributing to population gains in some cases and as an important aspect of facilitating relationships and practices that stretch across national and international spaces and boundaries (de Lima 2012, Scottish Government 2012). Many areas have experienced substantial restructuring of their economy, so that they increasingly have sectoral profiles rather similar to adjacent urban areas, and traditional primary industries account for a small proportion of employment and value added (see Chapter 2). Rural households and businesses have benefitted from improvements in transport, travel and communications. Although there are serious concerns that rural broadband provision may exacerbate inequality (Grimes 2003, Malecki 2003, Warren 2007), it is nevertheless evident that many rural households and businesses have shared in the transformations to daily life and business practices delivered by the Internet, mobile phones and modern logistics. Increasing numbers of ‘incomers’, even in some remote rural regions, together with exposure to mass media, have both created development opportunities and eroded the social and cultural distinctiveness of many rural areas (Stockdale et al. 2000). All these changes challenge the stereotypes of rural as inert, unchanging and responding to urban stimuli; rather, they suggest an intrinsic and dynamic connectedness between rural and the urban, and within and across national spaces (Bell et al. 2010).

Some aspects of the changes that have been experienced by rural Europe might be described as outcomes of processes of ‘globalization’. Globalization as a concept, and the nature of its influence on societies, is highly contested (Held et al. 1999, el-Ojeili and Hayden 2006). Although, in the recent dominant discourse, the concept has tended to be associated with large cities, there is, at the same time, considerable historical evidence of long-established international connections between rural areas (Peet 1969, 1972, Wallerstein 1991). It may, therefore, be more helpful to describe what has happened to rural Europe as a ‘step change’ in the degree of interconnectedness and in the importance of linkages and flows (both rural-urban and rural-global). Such linkages take a variety of forms, including tangible flows of goods, services and people associated with economic transactions, migration and daily commuting, mobility associated with leisure and tourism, social interactions and communication involving flows of information and knowledge, and interactions between different levels of governance or institutions.

In 1997, the economist Frances Cairncross published a book entitled, The Death of Distance -How the Communications Revolution Will Change Our Lives. In the same year, a French academic, Jean-Pierre Veltz, observed that the economic landscape was ‘no longer well ordered by distance’ and that, ‘the territory that counts is more and more the territory of social interaction, not merely of physical proximity’. Since then, a number of different schools of thought have developed, each with a different vocabulary, but each arguing basically the same thing: that economic and social life is becoming liberated from the costs associated with Euclidean distance, and that what is now important are various kinds of ‘relational proximity’. This, the argument goes, will revolutionize the way in which people, firms and institutions interact and, therefore, the way in which human activities are distributed across territories. In the words of Tallman et al. (2004, p269):

As the construct of closeness changes in the postindustrial economy, and as firms begin to relate to other firms that are close relationally – through networks of alliances – or virtually – through intensive information exchange – the relevant concept of space may move away from physical geography.

The development of economic activities, social structures or governance arrangements in any locality, whether rural or urban, is generally assumed to be driven by innovation (in the broadest sense). The likelihood of innovation is considered to be influenced by various kinds of ‘organised proximity’ – social, institutional, cognitive and cultural – (Torre and Rallet 2005), which provides access to new ideas and examples of good practice. Each of these may (or may not) be privileged by geographical contiguity.

The order of magnitude of this change is illustrated by the fact that, whereas economic geographers and regional scientists have conventionally emphasized geographical space/distance as the key driver of regional differentiation and urban-rural distinctiveness, some researchers now view various other (non-spatial) forms of ‘proximity’ and relationship as the most important factor, and regard Euclidean d...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Boxes
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Part I Contemporary rural change and the concept of territorial cohesion
• Part II The changes taking place in rural Europe
• Part III Impacts and opportunities for intervention
• Index