New textbook on ‘Rural Places and Planning: Stories from the Global Countryside’

Dr Menelaos Gkartzios, Reader in Planning and Rural Development at CRE has co-authored a new textbook on ‘Rural Places and Planning: Stories from the Global Countryside’, with Professors of Planning Nick Gallent (University College London) and Mark Scott (University College Dublin).

Rural Places and Planning provides a compact analysis for students and early-career practitioners of the critical connections between place capitals and the broader ideas and practices of planning, seeded within rural communities. It looks across twelve international cases, examining the values that guide the pursuit of the ‘good countryside’.

The book presents rural planning – rooted in imagination and reflecting key values – as being embedded in the life of particular places, dealing with critical challenges across housing, services, economy, natural systems, climate action and community wellbeing in ways that are integrated and recognise broader place-making needs. It introduces the breadth of the discipline, presenting examples of what planning means and what it can achieve in different rural places.

The book is published by Policy Press and is available here