What kind of countryside do the public want: community visions from Wales UK?

Abstract

This paper assesses how far community led rural visions accord with the current thrust of rural planning policy delivery in the UK. Adapting conventional visioning methods, qualitative techniques were used on eight different communities across urban, exurban and rural Wales to elicit views relating to the kind of local countryside(s) that were desired. The results show that the communities' visions reflect an emerging consensus around local countryside priorities: multifunctionality, integration, wider countryside protection, development based on need, and local distinctiveness according with the thrust of current planning policy at national and local levels. However, there is a clear dichotomy between this and the reality of what communities actually experienced in developments affecting their countryside. Here, universal criticism was encountered over the type, pace and scale of development, the lack of rural specificity and the failure to take account of local community needs and priorities. It is hypothesized that tensions between national and local politics and stakeholder power relations are playing a crucial role in distorting the delivery of town and country planning. It is recommended that rural policy delivery must become more ''joined up'' and rural proofed at national and local levels concomitant with a change in the operational culture of agencies at the forefront of rural delivery. Essentially, effective engagement of top down approaches synergising with bottom up community led ideas is long overdue.

Interpreting amenities, envisioning the future: common ground and conflict in North Carolina’s rural coastal communities

“…In other words, many high-amenity rural areas are transitioning from productive or 'worked' landscapes of farming, forestry, or fishing to landscapes primarily used for recreation or residential life. Scott et al (2010) highlight the distress that long-term residents of communities in Wales, UK feel regarding the loss of productive agricultural lands to new developments for amenity migrants from outside Wales (developments that often employ an out-of-character architecture for the region). Related to concerns about the loss of agriculture are long-term residents' worries about the increasing numbers of young people leaving their hometowns.…”

Amenity migration: diverse conceptualizations of drivers, socioeconomic dimensions, and emerging challenges

“…Examining the motivations of amenity migrants through, for example, explorations of the rural idyll, analysis of ''pull factors,'' or by way of ethnographic research, provides insight into the movement of ideas and expectations that accompanies amenity migration (Bjelland et al 2006;Kearney 2006;Knox 1992), but it often fails to shed light on the movement of capital within particular rural contexts. Importantly, Scott et al (2010), Young (2010), and Hurley and Halfacre (2010) (all this issue) offer new insight into the ways that the desires of amenity migrants about the rural landscape and its development intersect with local needs and expectations. This section summarizes literature that examines amenity migration in terms of global and regional drivers contributing to processes of rural gentrification, as well as the role of individual preferences, decisions, and behavior.…”

Competing discourses of nature in exurbia

“…In this paper, I consider different and competing ways that nature is used to construct and evaluate exurban sprawl: as worthy of protection from residential use while also naturally desirable for environmentally sensitive siting of residences in the landscape. Noting that planning practices that address problems associated with exurbanization often fail to be put into practice-or are practiced only symbolically (Scott 2009), with measures that seek to protect nature in fact increasing urbanization-I argue that exurban planning discourses would benefit from more explicit consideration of how the concept of nature is used, and I suggest some of the central issues associated with nature that could help place exurban nature-talk in context.…”

“…Residents are often active participants in public discourses of exurban nature, and their voices and perspectives are represented through activist groups' actions and lobbying (Peart 2005;STORM 2009), neighborhood and other voluntary associations, and environmental non-governmental organization reports, as well as by academics who interpret residents' positions and who survey land use and policy trends and resident practices and motivations (Berube et al 2006;Jobes 2000;Scott 2009)-and by government bureaucrats who are often required to solicit residents' participation in the planning processes, and who also translate residents' discourses into public policy and policy analysis (MAH 2005;PIR 2006;Williams 2001). In addition to participation in official planning processes, residents also engage in nature discourse in their everyday land-use management decisions and represent themselves and their land-use ideals through their landscape practices and through a large array of selfpublished media, such as websites and pamphlets (Cadieux 2008).…”