Rural Planning Futures: Principles, Policy and Practice in the UK and Ireland

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 practice that mediates 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 – from climate action, through nature recovery, energy transitions, and food security, to water quality – while also facing more localised conflicts around housing, the siting of infrastructure, and the challenge of sustaining local services. The policy response to these complex challenges has too often been fragmented, siloed, 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 how planning for rural places must be guided by the pursuit of social value rather than protecting private interests. This book is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students in planning, geography, rural studies, landscape studies, and regional studies.