Unequal futures of rural mobility: Challenges for a “Smart Countryside”

Abstract

Current transport strategy in the UK is strongly urban-focused, with assumptions that technological advances in mobility will simply trickle down into rural areas. This article challenges such a view and instead draws on rural development thinking aligned to a “Smart Countryside” which emphasises the need for place-based approaches. Survey and interview methods are employed to develop a framework of rural needs associated with older people, younger people and businesses. This framework is employed to assess a range of mobility innovations that could most effectively address these needs in different rural contexts. In presenting visions of future rural mobility, the article also identifies key infrastructure as well as institutional and financial changes that are required to facilitate the roll-out of new technologies across rural areas.

Planning Perspectives on Rural Connected, Autonomous and Electric Vehicle Implementation

“…This is particularly vital in currently severely lacking rural areas and so fully connecting rural UK areas is arguably more important than improving the connectivity speeds of those who already have it [21]. Strong digital connectivity is key to strengthening rural economies, and is critical to future transport systems [11,19]. Although the digital divide between rural and urban communities is itself a barrier to rural CAEV implementation, the need to implement sustainable transport solutions may accelerate the improvements to connectivity in rural communities and on rural roads, as it has done in the context smart cities [43].…”

“…However, the economic structures of rural working communities are becoming more diverse, along with social and environmental structures [2,3], with continuing trends of counterurbanisation confirming the ongoing appeal of rural community life [4][5][6][7]. Despite this, rural communities continue to have higher levels of poverty, social exclusion and inequality compared with urban communities, which can be directly linked to physical isolation and a lack of accessibility due to scattered and peripheral rural characteristics [2,[8][9][10][11][12][13]. Improving accessibility through the development of transport solutions is therefore fundamental to improving the rural socio-economic systems they serve [8,14]; however, complex rural mobility dynamics can make the estimation of movement and delivery of effective transport solutions challenging [15,16].…”

“…Advancing transport technologies can address many of these rural social, economic and environmental challenges, and help close the development gap between rural and urban communities [11]. Connected, Autonomous and Electric Vehicles (CAEV) are one such technology, or more accurately a combination of technologies.…”

Territorial and Human Geography Challenges: How Can Smart Villages Support Rural Development and Population Inclusion?

“…A hand search was performed and led to the collection of 444 journal articles (Table 3). (Doerr et al 2018;Poggi et al 2017;Naldi et al 2015) Smart countryside (Bosworth et al 2020;Lindblom et al 2021;Zapletalová and Vaishar 2020) Smart territory (Giovannella and Roma Ricerche 2014;Navío-Marco et al 2020;Zvirbule et al 2017) Smart alpine (Stettler et al 2016) The three-fields plot (Sankey diagram, Figure 1, as analyzed in Riehmann et al 2005;Fatehi et al 2020), shows which countries are publishing most on which topic, based on smart villages' related keywords and which journals are publishing on which topics. The left field contains the countries of origin of the sources, the middle field contains the corresponding keywords, and the right field contains the sources of papers used as imported data.…”

Globalisation and local economic development: Place-based and bottom-up public policies in Switzerland and Mexico

“…There is also a need of greater academic insights on local economic development strategies or approaches that combine place-specific features and global circumstances to make the most of international economic integration. More specifically, there is a need for economic geographers to gain a broader understanding of what is happening in diverse local settings in relation to globalisation, place-sensitive responses and local development processes with a particular focus on places being left behind (Bosworth et al, 2020;Lowe and Vinodrai, 2020).…”