Rural Geography
Exam:
2. The rural idyll is a powerful cultural construct that romanticizes the
countryside as a peaceful, close-knit, and uncorrupted landscape. To
understand how it operates, Keith Halfacree breaks rural space down into
three interconnected elements:
Representations of the (The Imagined): This is the idyll itself—the heavily
mediated, idealized images of the countryside (e.g., in tourism ads or TV
shows) framing it as an escape from urban chaos.
Lives of the Rural (The Lived): The actual, everyday social experiences and
diverse lifestyles of the people who inhabit these spaces.
Rural Localities (The Built): The physical, material landscape structured by
economic activities, infrastructure, and land-use policies.
Real-World Impact
This imaginary significantly impacts actual rural localities and lived lives
through counter-urbanization.
Affluent urbanites, driven by the representation of a peaceful village life,
migrate to rural areas. This surges housing demand, causing a material
change in the locality: property prices skyrocket, gentrification occurs, and
lower-income local residents are priced out of their own communities.
The romanticized myth directly alters the material reality, fracturing the very
social cohesion the migrants were searching for.
Lecture 1: Introduction on Rural Geography + What is
Rural
Space and Place are starting points of rural geography
Even taken together, density, population, land use, morphology, economic
structure, and demographic composition leave an unsatisfactory final
Rural Geography 1
, conclusion about rurality’s whereabouts.
→ Is Central Park rural? (It has a near-zero residential population density, and
its primary economic function is outdoor recreation and agriculture.)
→ What about the oil patches of North Dakota? (They are intensely
industrialized, draw on a diversified labor pool, and feature many laborers living
close together in quick-build housing.)”
Defining the rural
functional (measuring, counting) (territorial)
▪ Morphological (Population density/address density/land use; number and
type of buildings, e.g. stables, houses, absence of high-rise)
▪ Settlement hierarchies and land use (extensive land use; agricultural,
residential)
social-cultural
because of gemeinschaft feeling, rural different
▪ Behaviour, mentality
▪ Societies or communities
▪ ‘Slow’, harmonious
› ‘slow, traditional, freedom’
› Tönnies: Gemeinschaft & Gesellschaft
› The rural idyll
› Lacking mental urbanization/noaberschap
› (Traditional) village/community activities
› Traditional organizational/governance structures
› Dialects
social representation (words and concepts)
image that people have in their minds
Rural Geography 2
, 1. Morphological: rural areas in
Europe
Three types of regions:
▪ Predominantly rural regions,
50% of the total population lives
in rural community
▪ Intermediate regions, 15-50%
in rural community
▪ Predominantly urban regions, <
15% in rural community
Mapping rural and urban:
Strong geographical boundaries
But always a bit arbitrary
Rural Geography 3
, effect of larger city in the OECD-
classification
Rural dull vs idyll
Rural idyll:
rural ideologie comes from industrial revolution → rural people started working
in factories and started longing for rural areas
› The rural (re)presented as…
▪ Picturesque
▪ Harmonious
▪ Natural
▪ ‘Grounded in the soil’, ‘rooted’
▪ Homogenous
› Partial, selective and therefore distorted image of reality
Rural as social representation → Rurality in people’s minds, what people image
(picture)
This seems unambiguous, but …..
› For urban people, the countryside mainly has agricultural, and visual meaning
(a nice scenery), and maybe a biodiversity meaning
› For rural people, it is a multifuctional place, with a lot of socio-cultural values
(quietness, freedom, friendly and cosy, some social control, work)
› Young people stress agricultural land use aspects, older people stress socio-
cultural aspects
› Rural and urban are interrelated
› Several approaches to define ‘rural’
▪ Definition depends on approach – rural as social construct
▪ Keep this in mind and dare to be critical of these approaches
Rural Geography 4
Exam:
2. The rural idyll is a powerful cultural construct that romanticizes the
countryside as a peaceful, close-knit, and uncorrupted landscape. To
understand how it operates, Keith Halfacree breaks rural space down into
three interconnected elements:
Representations of the (The Imagined): This is the idyll itself—the heavily
mediated, idealized images of the countryside (e.g., in tourism ads or TV
shows) framing it as an escape from urban chaos.
Lives of the Rural (The Lived): The actual, everyday social experiences and
diverse lifestyles of the people who inhabit these spaces.
Rural Localities (The Built): The physical, material landscape structured by
economic activities, infrastructure, and land-use policies.
Real-World Impact
This imaginary significantly impacts actual rural localities and lived lives
through counter-urbanization.
Affluent urbanites, driven by the representation of a peaceful village life,
migrate to rural areas. This surges housing demand, causing a material
change in the locality: property prices skyrocket, gentrification occurs, and
lower-income local residents are priced out of their own communities.
The romanticized myth directly alters the material reality, fracturing the very
social cohesion the migrants were searching for.
Lecture 1: Introduction on Rural Geography + What is
Rural
Space and Place are starting points of rural geography
Even taken together, density, population, land use, morphology, economic
structure, and demographic composition leave an unsatisfactory final
Rural Geography 1
, conclusion about rurality’s whereabouts.
→ Is Central Park rural? (It has a near-zero residential population density, and
its primary economic function is outdoor recreation and agriculture.)
→ What about the oil patches of North Dakota? (They are intensely
industrialized, draw on a diversified labor pool, and feature many laborers living
close together in quick-build housing.)”
Defining the rural
functional (measuring, counting) (territorial)
▪ Morphological (Population density/address density/land use; number and
type of buildings, e.g. stables, houses, absence of high-rise)
▪ Settlement hierarchies and land use (extensive land use; agricultural,
residential)
social-cultural
because of gemeinschaft feeling, rural different
▪ Behaviour, mentality
▪ Societies or communities
▪ ‘Slow’, harmonious
› ‘slow, traditional, freedom’
› Tönnies: Gemeinschaft & Gesellschaft
› The rural idyll
› Lacking mental urbanization/noaberschap
› (Traditional) village/community activities
› Traditional organizational/governance structures
› Dialects
social representation (words and concepts)
image that people have in their minds
Rural Geography 2
, 1. Morphological: rural areas in
Europe
Three types of regions:
▪ Predominantly rural regions,
50% of the total population lives
in rural community
▪ Intermediate regions, 15-50%
in rural community
▪ Predominantly urban regions, <
15% in rural community
Mapping rural and urban:
Strong geographical boundaries
But always a bit arbitrary
Rural Geography 3
, effect of larger city in the OECD-
classification
Rural dull vs idyll
Rural idyll:
rural ideologie comes from industrial revolution → rural people started working
in factories and started longing for rural areas
› The rural (re)presented as…
▪ Picturesque
▪ Harmonious
▪ Natural
▪ ‘Grounded in the soil’, ‘rooted’
▪ Homogenous
› Partial, selective and therefore distorted image of reality
Rural as social representation → Rurality in people’s minds, what people image
(picture)
This seems unambiguous, but …..
› For urban people, the countryside mainly has agricultural, and visual meaning
(a nice scenery), and maybe a biodiversity meaning
› For rural people, it is a multifuctional place, with a lot of socio-cultural values
(quietness, freedom, friendly and cosy, some social control, work)
› Young people stress agricultural land use aspects, older people stress socio-
cultural aspects
› Rural and urban are interrelated
› Several approaches to define ‘rural’
▪ Definition depends on approach – rural as social construct
▪ Keep this in mind and dare to be critical of these approaches
Rural Geography 4
