21st Century political wisdom has been invested in a city-based future for most of the world. City-life is seen as the future of the world. Paul Collier in 2010 espoused that ‘as populations grow and the Southern climate deteriorates due to global warming, the South will necessarily urbanize. The future of populations will live not on quaint little farms but in the slums of coastal megacities.’[i] In 2018 55% of the world’s population was living in an urban area, by 2030 it is expected to reach 60%, and 70% by 2050.[ii] Urbanisation has been a continuing trend for the world, with the urbanised global north still expected to see increases. According to a 2014 report commissioned by the UK government, urbanisation in the next several decades will be slower in the ‘developed world’ with them gaining only seven of the 41 predicted global megacities (those with a population 10million+) in 2030.[iii] This, though, will be in the face of the rapidly growing urban populations of Africa and Asia, with 73% of the world’s urban population being in these two continents by 2050.[iv] Chris Smaje has nevertheless highlighted that this urbanisation ‘isn’t some force of nature. It has occurred as a result of active policies that often haven’t greatly benefitted many of the people they’ve affected.’[v]
Political ideals and ‘active policies’ have often projected rural areas as simply providers of necessary resources, and leisure for those who can afford it. Collier wrote that ‘many areas of the world could be used far more productively were it properly managed by large companies’.[vi] Meanwhile the writer Stewart Brand idolised urban-life and the need for ‘development’ across the world towards urbanisation. He argued ‘Life in your village is dull, back-breaking, impoverished, restricted, exposed, dangerous, and static…In the city, life is exciting, work is less gruelling’.[vii] Even left-wing writers have argued that the ‘death of the peasantry’ was a ‘dramatic and far-reaching social change’.[viii]
In spite of this, the pandemic has pressed pause on this trajectory, particularly in the West and its politics rooted in urbanism, with global implications. SARS-CoV-2 has raised questions about the logic of cramming millions of humans together and concentrating resource-demands in vast metropolis structures driving the destruction of natural ecosystems elsewhere and bringing nature and humans into increased artificial contact. It has prompted ‘new beginnings’ for many seeking refuge in rural communities and the renewed importance of the countryside and political consideration for ruralisation.
The extent of challenges brought by increased urbanisation has previously led to predictions of future ruralisation by some. In 1994, the academic, Professor David W. Orr considered ‘not whether the urban tide will ebb, but when, how, how rapidly, and whether by foresight or happenstance.’[ix] It seems by ‘happenstance’ that the ‘urban tide’, especially in the global north has begun over the last 18 months to ‘ebb’. And this has had and certainly now requires a political response across nations.
In Britain, the pandemic prompted increased interest in rural areas. While internal migration in the UK from predominantly urban areas to rural areas has been growing over the last couple of decades, the effects of COVID were illustrated by the difference in house price increases between urban and rural areas. Despite two lockdowns in 2020, rural house prices grew by an average of 6.2% compared to 4.8% in urban areas (including London).[x] In comparison, between 2018 and 2019, rural house prices grew by an average of just 0.8% while urban areas increased by 0.9%.[xi] House prices in rural villages and hamlets went from being 20% higher than the urban average in 2019,[xii] to 23% in 2020.[xiii]
House price increases also showed the ‘happenstance’ of ruralisation due to the pandemic and its accompanying inequalities. Ruralisation has not seen communities relocate with ‘appropriate knowledge, attitudes, and skills’.[xiv] It has been a story of privilege, exclusion and weak political foresight.
Cornwall has been a notable sight for renewed attention to rural and coastal communities. In the summer of 2021, there were more than 18,000 second homes in Cornwall while 16,000 people were on waiting-lists for council housing in the county, and fewer than 50 homes were available to rent at one point.[xv] Meanwhile, the South West, the English region in which Cornwall is part of and the most rural in England with 30% of the population living rurally,[xvi] has attracted over 52,000 second-homes.[xvii] It has seen house-prices continue to rise, even while London remains dominant.[xviii]
Second home ruralisation has been a growing trend in the UK for the last decade or so, but the last 18 months with the pandemic-incited fear and an accompanying sudden awareness that the climate crisis could be crisis-like to the extent of the pandemic, interest in the countryside has escalated.
Remote working and Zoom meetings have further set people at ease in considering the countryside as a place to live. Workplaces were forced to experiment with remote working during lockdowns and realised its effectiveness. ‘When we started working remotely, we realised we were working very effectively as we were’, Mike Hampson, the Chief Executive of financial consulting firm Bishopsgate, was quoted in the Guardian as saying.[xix] And the Chief Executive of Barclays Bank in the UK, stated that ‘the notion of putting 7,000 people in [a] building may be a thing of the past’.[xx]
New forms of rural attention have brought sporadic political responses, often on a local scale though with limited power behind them. In September, a Scottish rural local council, Highland Council, voted in favour of a draft proposal to set up a short-term let control area in Badenoch and Strathspey.[xxi] The proposal would require planning consent for any housing that is turned into new holiday-lets in the area, with local people having the right to comment on the application.[xxii] In Salcombe, in Devon, the local council has been considering banning purchases of second homes, and the Welsh government has been reviewing second-home ownership in Wales.[xxiii] Second homes are a burden to rural local councils with some of them unable to be taxed, with owners claiming them as businesses especially if holiday-lets, leading to Cornwall Council losing around £18 million a year.[xxiv]
Rural inequalities have been further exacerbated by access to the countryside becoming increasingly ‘policed’ and criminalised. The UK government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill aims to criminalise trespass on private (largely rural) land, when only 10% of land in England is publicly accessible,[xxv] and half of it is ‘owned by less than 1%’ of the population.[xxvi] Limited attempts have been made to increase access to the countryside. 2009 was the last time the amount of land people could roam on was expanded. Education on how people should act and stay safe in the countryside via the Countryside Code, has been promoted by an annual budget of just £2,000 since 2010 and increased to £50,000 in 2021,[xxvii] much lower than the £721,000 spent on it in 2004.[xxviii]
And restrictions under the pandemic, have alerted people more than ever to the advantage of having physical outdoor space. A monthly survey by Natural England, People and Nature, highlights that in July 2021 ‘Just over half (53%) of those with a total annual household income of less than £15,000 made a visit to a green and natural space in the last 14 days compared to 74% of those with a total annual household income of more than £50,000.’[xxix]
In the face of the climate and ecological crisis, limiting access to the countryside and allowing ruralisation to occur through wealth-migration is not affordable. Orr also warned that ‘if large numbers of people reinhabit rural areas ignorantly and carelessly, the effects on biological diversity and ecosystems will be devastating.’[xxx] Emphasis in current rural policy in the UK is on infrastructure and housing without real connection with the environment and a failure to connect the idea of living in rural areas with employment rooted in rural resources.
The Cambridge-Oxford Arc demonstrates a lack of foresight in developing connections between rural and urban areas through housing and infrastructure.[xxxi] The Arc, is a government plan for house building and developments across rural land between Cambridge and Oxford, including new towns and an East-West railway. Environmental charities, such as the RSPB and the Woodland Trusts, have argued that current plans do not contain environmental ambitions or environmental assessments.[xxxii] Instead, remote working has driven an idea of rural areas as places that urban service industries can simply reimpose themselves within. Again, Orr argues that ‘if we intend to preserve biological diversity, we will have to build a sizable constituency whose livelihood depends on it’.[xxxiii] Some have taken this case up during the pandemic, with arguments for a National Nature Service, both as a means of increasing nature conservation and responding to increased unemployment. [xxxiv]
Globally, Western development paradigms have encouraged ‘developing nations’ to focus on urbanisation whilst also continuing the perverse colonial demand for these nations to feed the west. Demand for the domination of rural communities by large-scale commercial agriculture in ‘developing countries’, at the service of western export markets, was demonstrated by recent speculation over Jair Bolsarno’s claim that Boris Johnson asked for an emergency ‘food deal’ with Brazil.[xxxv] On the other hand, the Indian farmers’ protests over the last 18 months have helped question this paradigm. In September 2021, Jyoti Fernandes from the UK Landworkers’ Alliance, stated that the three Indian farm bills being protested were inspired by underlying UK development assistance ‘encouraging corporate agriculture and reducing peasant/small-scale farming’[xxxvi] as a process of urbanisation. The bills ultimately seek to reduce the number of small farms through removing price-support mechanisms that subsidise them, driving farmers into cities.
It all raises the question as to what do we genuinely wish our rural communities to be? Do we just want them to become exclusive playgrounds that remind us of a ‘mythical agrarian past’? I hope not. If not, will these last 18 months drive governments to review the restoration of local rural communities, devolving power and genuinely drawing ‘a policy worthy of the name to plan future re-ruralisation’[xxxvii]?
Rather than exploiting resources and rural communities in the global south, we need political acceptance of small-scale agriculture and agroecology, which ‘applies ecological and social concepts and principles to the design and management of sustainable agriculture and food systems’,[xxxviii] globally. That includes investing in more diverse, accessible and sustainable farms and rural communities in the UK. A new state-owned and rurally focused National Agroecology and Rural Development Bank should help channel such investments, like the British Business Bank.[xxxix] And a national land-commission is needed to review land-use, access and ownership in England, and environmentally balance demands on rural land-use.
Community should also be fundamental to the future of rural space. It needs to jettison the sudden exclusive-based relevance of rural areas. The sense of community must also imbue what Marc Stears has recently written about as ‘a practical experience of each other immediately together, a sense of joy in people’s company, whether developed through play, collaboration, love, competition, or some shared endeavour.’[xl] Local housing assemblies, along the lines of citizen assemblies, could offer a means of allowing rural communities to unite in having a genuine say over the design, location and to some extent purpose, of mandatory new housing developments, as well as a say on new mandatory second-home and holiday-let applications .
Following the last 18 months, the countryside and rural communities have gained renewed relevance, but the lack of planned ruralisation does challenge this ‘new beginning’ and appears to simply expand existing inequalities. Political wisdom now, should encompass ruralisation as much as urbanism.
[i] Collier, Paul. The Plundered Planet. 1st ed., Penguin, 2011.
[ii]“Urbanization And Migration”. Migration Data Portal, 2021, https://www.migrationdataportal.org/themes/urbanisation-et-migration. Accessed 14 Sept 2021.
[iii] The Business of Cities. The Future Of Cities: What Is The Global Agenda?. 2014. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/429125/future-cities-global-agenda.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2021.
[iv] The Future Of Cities: What Is The Global Agenda?. Ibid. p. 9.
[v] Smaje, Chris. A Small Farm Future. 2020.
[vi] The Plundered Planet. Ibid. p217.
[vii] A Small Farm Future. Ibid. pp18-19.
[viii] Bello, Walden F. The Food Wars. Verso, 2009.
[ix] Orr, David W. “The Effective Shape Of Our Future”. Conservation Biology, vol 8, no. 3, 1994. Wiley, doi:10.1046/j.1523-1739.1994.08030622.x.
[x] Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Rural Economic Bulletin June 2021. GOV. UK, 2021, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/996298/Bulletin-Jun21.pdf. Accessed 15 Sept 2021.
[xi] “Rural Economic Bulletin For England, September 2020”. Ibid.
[xii] “Rural Economic Bulletin For England, September 2020”. GOV.UK, 2020, https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/quarterly-rural-economic-bulletin/rural-economic-bulletin-for-england-september-2020. Accessed 16 Sept 2021.
[xiii] Rural Economic Bulletin June 2021. Ibid.
[xiv] “The Effective Shape Of Our Future”. Ibid.
[xv] Warnes, Indra. “10,000 Airbnbs And Nowhere To Live: Cornwall’S Housing Crisis”. Opendemocracy, 2021, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/10000-airbnbs-and-nowhere-to-live-cornwalls-housing-crisis/.
[xvi] “The UK By Numbers: Urban And Rural”. Esrc.Ukri.Org, 2014, https://esrc.ukri.org/public-engagement/social-science-for-schools/resources/rural-and-urban/.
[xvii] “Number Of Second Homes In England 2018, By Region | Statista”. Statista, 2019, https://www.statista.com/statistics/762846/number-of-second-homes-in-england-by-region/. Accessed 14 Sept 2021.
[xviii] Cheshire, Paul et al. “Why Central London Has Seen The Biggest Rises In House Prices, Despite COVID”. LSE COVID-19, 2021, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/covid19/2021/03/31/why-central-london-has-seen-the-biggest-rises-in-house-prices-despite-covid/. Accessed 14 Sept 2021.
[xix] Kollewe, Julia. “Why The Home-Working Boom Could Tumble London’s Skyscrapers”. The Guardian, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/27/why-the-home-working-boom-could-tumble-londons-skyscrapers. Accessed 15 Sept 2021.
[xx] “Why The Home-Working Boom Could Tumble London’s Skyscrapers”. Ibid.
[xxi] “Call For Highland Holiday Lets To Need Planning Permission”. BBC News, 2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-58475117. Accessed 14 Sept 2021.
[xxii] “Call For Highland Holiday Lets To Need Planning Permission”. Ibid.
[xxiii] Fitton, Jade Angeles. “The Pandemic Property Boom Is Pricing Locals Out Of The British Countryside | Jade Angeles Fitton”. The Guardian, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/01/pandemic-property-boom-british-countryside-affordable-housing. Accessed 14 Sept 2021.
[xxiv] “10,000 Airbnbs And Nowhere To Live: Cornwall’S Housing Crisis”. Ibid.
[xxv] Monbiot, George. “The Trespass Trap: This New Law Could Make Us Strangers In Our Own Land | George Monbiot”. The Guardian, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/15/tresspass-trap-law-land-travelling-people-rights. Accessed 14 Sept 2021.
[xxvi] Evans, Rob. “Half Of England Is Owned By Less Than 1% Of The Population”. The Guardian, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/apr/17/who-owns-england-thousand-secret-landowners-author. Accessed 16 Sept 2021.
[xxvii] Barkham, Patrick. “‘Make A Memory’: Campaigners Fear Revised Countryside Code Lacks Bite”. The Guardian, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/apr/01/make-a-memory-campaigners-fear-revised-countryside-code-lacks-bite. Accessed 16 Sept 2021.
[xxviii] Barkham, Patrick. “Littering Epidemic In England As Government Spends Just £2K Promoting Countryside Code”. The Guardian, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/littering-epidemic-england-countryside-code. Accessed 16 Sept 2021.
[xxix] “The People And Nature Survey For England: Monthly Indicators For July 2021 (Official Statistics)”. GOV.UK, 2021, https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/the-people-and-nature-survey-for-england-monthly-indicators-for-july-2021-official-statistics/the-people-and-nature-survey-for-england-monthly-indicators-for-july-2021-official-statistics. Accessed 14 Sept 2021.
[xxx] “The Effective Shape Of Our Future”. Ibid. p623
[xxxi] “Government Must Urgently Rethink Oxford-Cambridge Arc To Protect Nature And Climate | Berks, Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust”. Bbowt.Org.Uk, 2021, https://www.bbowt.org.uk/news/government-must-urgently-rethink-oxford-cambridge-arc-protect-nature-and-climate. Accessed 14 Sept 2021.
[xxxii] “Government Must Urgently Rethink Oxford-Cambridge Arc To Protect Nature And Climate | Berks, Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust”. Ibid.
[xxxiii] “The Effective Shape Of Our Future”. Ibid. p623.
[xxxiv] Edwards, Carmel. “Call For A National Nature Service”. Wildlife And Countryside Link, 2020, https://www.wcl.org.uk/call-for-a-national-nature-service.asp. Accessed 14 Sept 2021.
[xxxv] Allegretti, Aubrey, and Tom Phillips. “Boris Johnson Asked For ‘Emergency’ Food Deal, Says Bolsonaro”. The Guardian, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/sep/24/boris-johnson-asked-for-emergency-food-deal-says-jair-bolsonaro-brazilian-president. Accessed 24 Sept 2021.
[xxxvi] Quoted from a Virtual Global Farmers Protest Meeting, Monday 13th September 2021.
[xxxvii] “The Effective Shape Of Our Future”. Ibid.
[xxxviii] “Overview | Agroecology Knowledge Hub | Food And Agriculture Organization Of The United Nations”. Fao.Org, 2021, http://www.fao.org/agroecology/overview/en/. Accessed 14 Sept 2021.
[xxxix] Inspired by the suggestion of a National Agroecology Development Bank in Food, Farming and Countryside Commission. Our Future In The Land. Royal Society Of Arts, 2019, https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/reports/rsa-ffcc-our-future-in-the-land.pdf. Accessed 26 Sept 2021.
[xl] Stears, Marc. Out Of The Ordinary. 1st ed., The Belknap Press Of Harvard University Press, 2021.