By analyzing the relations of communities and places in sparsely located rural areas, this article argues that rural community is not a stable unity tied to a place, but a phenomenon closely tied to its members’ connections to the interdependent concept of urban/rural, especially in terms of their mobility practices. In this study, the new mobilities paradigm was applied to reveal how everyday relational and routine aspects connected to material, structural, socio-cultural and economic conditioning dynamically intertwine to form a rural community. The analysis is based on three regional case studies in Estonian sparsely populated areas, which are diverse in terms of geographical location, demographic composition, type of settlement, history, and welfare conditions. By using qualitative in-depth interviews with people (N=60) who were involved with the locations, the article analyses everyday mobilities in these communities, especially in terms of interrelatedness to structural, social and material factors. The study has brought out interrelated themes that are connected to the use of rural representations in terms of individual and social self-reflection, the importance of social and material infrastructures, and the dynamics of these borders in communities and shaping community relations.

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Population decline in rural areas has been a concern for many European countries for decades. To deal with shrinking, several measures have been taken in different countries. The study focuses on one of such measures – the administrative reform passed in Estonia in 2017, which merged smaller municipalities into regional municipality centres. This article examines the impact of this reform on rural transformation, concentrating on shifts in everyday mobilities, governance, and territorial identity at the village level. The research data is contextualised with the new mobilities paradigm, examining the relational everyday materialities that include interviews reflecting on changes at the regional, structural, and ideological levels. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews (N=60) with local activists and inhabitants in three study areas in sparsely populated parts of Estonia. The creation of municipality districts with representative bodies within larger municipalities have influenced these rural villages in various ways. In some cases, it has caused shifts in the mechanisms of civil governance that shape community activism. In others, strengthened awareness of representations of the rural appeared, offering a meaningful territorial identity and self-realisation to local people. However, the study also indicates that the distribution of rural municipalities into municipality districts can jeopardise local coherence and socio-cultural sustainability.

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By bringing together the spatially oriented ‘milieu’ and ‘atmosphere’ approach with the method of self-generated photo elicitation, this visual essay examines the possibility of the mediation of new meanings in urban neighbourhood representation and spatial organization. The milieu/atmosphere relationship offers a methodological background for visual communication in landscape, where, besides common and conscious interpretations, expression is given to non-graspable, sometimes inexplicable internal atmospheric experiences that have great potential to shift acknowledged understandings and interpretations of landscape aesthetics. A reflexive self-generated photo elicitation is introduced to bringing into communication unfamiliar atmospheric visual landscape experiences. This method is used in the underprivileged parts of the Kopli neighbourhood of North-Tallinn, Estonia. Some of the participants’ representations were handled as atmospheric pictures, which, although different from the acknowledged milieu approach, brought into communication the milieu character of a strong neighbourhood.