Rural Planning Futures

Rural Planning Futures charts the critical societal challenges that are reshaping rural places across the UK and Ireland. The book evaluates current planning processes and explores the prospects for an enhanced, cross-sectoral and holistic future that manages rural change towards more resilient and sustainable outcomes. Rural places and planning have, for too long, been viewed as marginal to both the theory and practice of planning. However, rural places are central to addressing critical global challenges, such as climate action, nature recovery, energy transitions, food security, and water quality. The policy response to these complex challenges has too often been fragmented and fixated on the short-term. By illustrating how key 'rural capitals' are linked and integrated, this book argues for a reset of the rural planning narrative and for the urgent disruption of established ways of working. Using innovative case studies, the chapters detail effective approaches that can effectively meet the complex challenges currently facing rural planners globally and consider what an appraisal of the UK and Irish context might have for different planning systems across the world. This book is essential for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in planning, geography, rural studies, landscape studies, and regional studies.