Overview

During modernity metropolitan ruralities have been regarded as land reserves for urban expansion. However, there is a growing insight that there are limits to the urban expansion into rural areas. Signs of a new position are the awakened interest in the nature, the authentic and the simple way of living among an urban, academically educated middle class, an actual instance of which is the interest in local food but which also is manifested in rural gentrification. However, a more hardcore turn to nature is also discernible in the renewed interest for green lungs and for eco-services more broadly. In the future, local post-fossil energy may be a main concern regarding rural eco-services utilised by urban areas. We can here imagine flows and exchanges that may demand heavy societal regulation and thus be one of the main objects of future democracy. However, despite these developments urban (and rural) policy and planning is still tightly connected to the modern expansion of the urban into the rural. There are signs of new developments and paradigm shifts but these have to be strengthened to lay the ground for rural-urban resilience.

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9781785607974

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Metropolitan Ruralities explores many of the complex rural/ urban relationships of our time. While previously rural areas were seen as reserves for urban expansion, there is now finally recognition that such a path, if unabated, could threaten human existence. This volume coherently makes this argument. This excellent volume addresses some of the most critical questions about the rural/ urban nexus. It raises complex questions about governance, the consumption of the rural, and focuses on the important dimensions of social class, gender and global location. The important argument is made that the urban-rural fringe needs to be examined as a space in and for itself, rather than a space for something else, and this is an important contribution to current debates on spatial flows. The volume is coherently organised around the four themes of urban sprawl, urbanisation, governance and metabolism. It brings together leading scholars and it is a volume that will be valuable for academics and PhD researchers across the globe. Professor Sally Shortall, Head of School, Queens University Belfast

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Edited by Kjell Andersson, Abo Akademi University, Vaasa, Finland Stefan Sjoblom Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland Leo Granberg, Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland Peter Ehrstrom, Abo Akademi University, Vaasa, Finland Terry Marsden, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

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