Regional Development in Rural Areas

Three main reasons require to look closely at rural areas and to analyse rural development and policies: they represent the major part of world’s surface area; they are the object of strong competition between and within regions and countries; they contain almost all the resources necessary for human existence. They are therefore central to the public policies and strategies of interest groups and nations and their future is an inescapable issue on the agendas of policymakers, decision-makers and researchers. Nowadays rural areas are facing two fundamental types of change, suggesting that there is no longer a dominant model: they are subject to increasingly strong influence from cities and urban populations; competition for natural resources located in rural areas plays a key role in current development policies. The rural world appears as a mosaic of highly diverse socio-economic configurations and spatial distribution patterns, marked by a diversity of development paths, whereas public policies dedicated to rural development are undergoing important changes. The goal of the book is to provide tools for addressing the question of rural and peri-urban development, whether through analytical thinking or public policy development, on the basis of two distinct but overlapping approaches:—regional development approaches—especially regional science—on the one hand; and studies on rural dimensions and policies, on the other.

Based on the literature Chap. 1 addresses the question of the disputed notions or rural, regional, territorial and development terms. The first issue is about the definition—or the very existence, even—of “the rural”. We isolate two main definitions highlighted the fact that in certain cases “rural” is used to refer to the landscape, while in others it is the population that is of primary interest. We also identify that rural areas have lost their past uniformity and have now become home to a mix of different service activities and agricultural or industrial production; and consist of both remote territories and areas close to cities, of historic and new populations. Then we consider the notion of development, and show that Regional science places considerations of economic and social change in territories at the heart of the debate, together with issues associated with the development process and the distribution of gains and losses resulting from new configurations, as well as the recent integration of well-being in social and economic indexes. Finally we move to the terms “region” and “territories”, and agreed to the idea that regional development refers to the processes that occur within the institutional borders of the region, whereas that of territorial development pertains to a construction of territorialities by local populations.

This chapter deals with the questions of regional or territorial development, introduced in researches undertaken from the end of World War II onwards, and in policies of regional and territorial development and management. The literature can be split between two main competing visions. The first one seeks, above all, to balance the interests and gains from the development process enjoyed by different local actors and to draw up principles that will enable the various stakeholders to obtain maximum satisfaction. The second group consists of approaches whereby the compromises reached among local actors are purely temporary and development processes generate interregional inequalities that are difficult to reduce. These approaches consider that development can increase disparities between regions or territories. They also highlight the existence of local systems with significant specificities at the institutional, economic and technical levels, and whose successes or failures lead to fundamentally uneven development processes, like clusters, districts or milieus. A third category of approaches is based on the idea that regional or territorial development is profoundly linked to the occurrence of dynamic shifts stemming from processes of innovation or creation, which result in varying paces and levels of development from one region or territory to the next.

This chapter considers the implications of main theoretical frameworks on regional science in terms of regional policy design. First are presented works supporting the hypothesis that economic dynamics will, in the long term, lead to a situation of balanced growth between territories, and thus that public-policy interventions have to stay limited as far as possible. Second we take a look at policies settled in order to respond to the challenges associated with polarization phenomena and the unbalanced nature of growth across territories. Thirdly, we focus on regional policies—today broadly dominant—that seek to stimulate innovation, considered as the primary driver of growth. Then follow an exploration of how the implementation of these policies is organized, initially via observations that show that increasing use is being made of approaches linked to decentralized public intervention, and subsequently with a view to examining the rise of territorial governance processes as means of expressing demands and desires and involving stakeholders and local populations in the definition of local regulations.

This chapter questions the concept of rural development. Pointing the difficulty of reaching a definition generally accepted, it also presents the historical evolution of ideas that underlie this concept. From the technical approach centered on agricultural modernization that prevailed in the 1950s to the current interest in agro-ecological issues, different dominant models of rural development are successively presented and discussed: technicist, local networks, empowerment, capabilities, civil society, and environmentalist approaches are considered. From these successive adjustments of rural development models resulted in the early 1990s, the idea that rural areas are engaged in a new development paradigm, responding to expanded logical, particularly in the sectoral dimension, on the place and role of agriculture, the modalities of public intervention, and types of involved stakeholders. Our purpose here highlights the turning point constituted by the recognition of agriculture’s multifunctional nature.

This chapter is devoted to the analysis of rural development policies in Europe. The focus is on the diversity of policy instruments and public authorities, but also the plurality of objectives, supporting and promoting economic activities (including agriculture), land planning, residential attractiveness and maintaining the quality of life of populations, conservation and preservation of local resources. But the main purpose is about the evolution of the rural development policy of the European Union, its gradual structuring as part of the CAP and of regional cohesion policy, and the latest inflections with the smart development strategy. Examination of successive reforms highlights the progressive affirmation of the territorial dimension in the guidelines and the growing environmental concerns over the past decade, although the support for agricultural competitiveness remains largely dominant. A presentation is finally devoted to the present period, marked by the will to take better account of regional differences in the rural development policy and the focus on innovation processes in the context of smart specialization. The place of rural areas in the new European strategy is then discussed at length.

The purpose of this chapter is to outline the main trends for a prospective study of rural areas, based on a brief presentation of future scenarios that respond to the need to identify the main potential avenues of development for these regions. The purpose of these differentiated but well-reasoned scenarios is to foster reflection on the various possibilities, by envisaging extreme trajectories of change. This work helps reflect upon differentiated development processes, adapted to the idiosyncrasies of rural and peri-urban areas. We examine successively five major, but often overlapping, possibilities of future development, respectively: (1) the possible preservation of agricultural activities and their prevalence; (2) the unrelenting rise of urbanization and peri-urbanization; (3) the role of industry and business in rural areas; (4) the development of services to individuals and of the residential economy; (5) the coexistence of different land uses, and competition between them, in certain areas. As a result, the five scenarios proposed for the development of rural and peri-urban areas correspond to the following items: (1) Towards a preservation of agricultural activities?; (2) The unavoidable progress of peri-urbanization; (3) Intensification of industry and business; (4) The countryside: a new El Dorado for the service sector?; (5) Mixed or competing land uses: an arena of conflict and segregation?

The conclusion operates a return on the objective of this work, which was to provide elements of understanding on the dynamics of rural and peri-urban territories, combining regional science and works more explicitly dedicated to rural development and the policy relating thereto. The need to take fully into account the territorial dimension—i.e. a fine knowledge of identity, governance, organizational aspects and local resources, etc.—is emphasized as a central element for understanding the diversity of trajectories and patterns of rural and peri-urban areas, and implement appropriate public policies. But think future patterns of development rural areas also means paying attention to adaptation and resilience processes, energy transition and climate change issues, and new initiatives—often marked by technology and collaborative dimensions—that bloom everywhere on the planet. The development and implementation of experimental, interdisciplinary and participatory research devices is in this context a crucial need.