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| Introduction |
| Many different elements must come together for rural
development: there must be creative human actions (the element
of innovation), and certain natural resources must be available (the
element of resource dependence). Rural development options greatly
depend on the availability of (transportation) infrastructure and the distance to
markets (the element of location dependence), as is obvious when we
compare the possibilities of Northern Sweden with the conditions in
the Netherlands or Germany. We also can expect rural development to
flourish only under certain political, social, and economic conditions (as we
have seen from the rural and agricultural disaster of centrally
planned economies in the Former Soviet Union, North Korea and the
pre-reforms period of China). Sometimes a process of rural
development is triggered by an individual or a small group of
innovators; sometimes it is promoted by changes in the economic or
legal framework on the national or international level (the element
of different hierarchical layers in the development process).
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All these observations point to one
fundamental fact: rural development is
characterized by its great diversity of conditions, actors and
options - especially in Europe. There is not one single factor or
small set of measures, which would automatically promote (or
prevent) rural development. What may work in Finland may not work in Spain, and what
may be possible in Austria's mountains may not be possible in the
highlands of Scotland. If we take this serious, we cannot just study
basic principles of rural development or design formal economic
models; we must instead analyze multiple driving factors and
dimensions of development, we must look at different (hierarchical)
layers in the development process and, most of all, we have to deal
with the great regional diversity of conditions and possibilities.
For this reason we have adopted a two-tier research strategy:
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| 1. |
On
one hand, we are conducting Europe-wide comparative analyses
(at the level of NUTS 3 regions) to identify, analyze, and hopefully
project general trends in major dimensions of rural
development. These spatially explicit statistical analyses should
lead to the development of scenarios for the future of Europe's
countryside. |
| 2. |
On
the other hand, we are doing a series of case studies, to
analyze selected development initiatives in detail. We hope that
these studies will help us to better understand the inner workings
of rural development processes. |
| We
are currently in the field to visit a first round of about 15 rural
development initiatives in various parts of Europe. For details
about the projects see the links below.
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| Additional
information
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