Rural Settlement and Land-Use PlanningAuthor(s): Alan RogersSource: Area, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1978), p. 78Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20001306 .

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78 Rural settlement and land-use planning

Rural settlement and land-use planning

A report of a symposium organized by the Rural Geography Study Group of the IBG and held at the University of Lancaster, 26-27 September 1977.

The Group chose a fairly conventional theme for its September symposium, which was attended by about 40 participants. The location was probably the major factor in keeping the number of academic geographers relatively small, but this gap was more than compensated for by a good attendance from outside the Institute's members, notably from local planners.

David Parsons (Sussex) opened the symposium by considering the process of polar ization of higher socio-economic groups in rural settlements, concentrating particu larly on his findings for villages in South Nottinghamshire and North Norfolk. The limited role of the Census of Population in assessing this process was reviewed and the use of social survey techniques was also considered. The implications of such social changes also formed part of the discussion to the second paper by Robert Gant (Kingston Polytechnic), who took a case study of Gilwern, a settlement in Monmouth shire, as a basis for analysing post-war changes in commuter villages.

The implications of planning policy, particularly key settlement strategies, formed the focus of the second session. Brian McLoughlin (Chelmer Institute) reviewed the operation of key settlement strategies as they had been applied by various planning authorities over the years, and argued that policies had generally failed. He contended that their theoretical basis was weak and, moreover, that they had in general been applied too inflexibly. The twin themes of the role of planners in dealing with rural settlements and the competition between local inhabitants and newcomers were ex plored in some detail in the discussion which followed. The presence of planners from the Lake District Planning Board was especially useful in this context. The discussion continued after dinner when the Group chairman, Alan Williams (Birmingham), led a wide-ranging discussion on the topic of 'What future for rurality ?'.

The first two papers on the second day of the symposium both dealt with research funded by SSRC. Andrew Gilg (Exeter) first considered post-war policies for rural settlements in Devon and then concentrated on the operation of development control procedures. Policies for the special protection for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty seem to have been less than effective from the viewpoint of development control and the evidence from Devon also suggests that the key settlement policy has not been effective in concentrating development in the chosen sites. Research on rural housing was the concern of Michael Dunn (Birmingham). Concentrating on two study areas in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire, he examined the structure of housing in rural areas using a cluster analysis procedure.

The two final papers of the symposium both dealt with situations outside Britain. Ron Layton (Lampeter) considered the role of hobby farming in the rural urban fringe of London, Ontario, stressing in particular aspects of conflict and sym biosis between hobby farmers and commercial farmers and some policy implications which arise. Finally Peter Smailes (Oslo) examined the relationship between the chang ing fortunes of the agricultural economy in South Australia since the end of the war, and the structure and size of retail trade in small towns. A successful meeting of the

Group ended with the chairman thanking Gordon Clark (Lancaster) who had acted as local convener.

Alan Rogers Wye College, University of London

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