Newcastle University

Rural Development

Rural areas have undergone fundamental economic and social change in the last few decades as a result of shifts in the size and characteristics of their population and businesses. This restructuring is likely to continue in future as rural communities are affected by a range of ongoing and new processes, including demographic ageing, environmental change and a shifting policy and institutional landscape.

Researcher has helped to develop the concept of ‘neo-endogenous development’ to describe socio-economic development that is locally-rooted in rural areas, but outward-looking and embracing of the opportunities of increasing interconnectedness through globalisation.The concept underpins the OECD’s new thinking on rural development in advanced economies. Future work within the rural development theme will focus on analysing the impacts and implications of these ‘local-global’ processes and relationships for rural areas.

The characteristics and performance of rural businesses and households will continue to be a central strand of work, as will the themes of rural governance, demographic ageing and social change. Exploring the impacts of new challenges such as climate change adaptation and flooding will be central to our future research work. Our research focuses on the local, regional, national and trans-national scales of governance recognising the multi-levelled system in which rural areas now exist. Geographically, our work cuts across all scales too, drawing on links with researchers across the OECD countries, particularly in the EU, US and Asia.

Within the Rural Development theme, a number of sub-themes have been identified to further focus our work:

• Rural Development and Governance
• Rural Businesses and Rural Households
• Demographic Ageing and Social Change in Rural Areas
• Living with Environmental Change
• Innovation and Knowledge Exchange in Rural and Regional Development
• Rural Evidence Base
• Rural Policy Development

Research Projects - Rural Development

• PRIMA: Prototypical Policy Impacts on Multifunctional Activities in rural municipalities
• TIPTAP: Territorial Impact Package for Transport and Agricultural Policies
• Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) Network Market Research and Stakeholder Engagement Project
• EconWelfare
• Foresight Analysis for Rural areas Of Europe (FARO)
• Northern Rural Network (NRN) Phase III
• Responding to change: An investigation into the processes of rural place-making in the face of ageing

Details and comprehensive list of research projects undertaken in rural economy can be found on the Centre for Rural Economy's project pages.