Crofting communities are the future: promoting sustainable rural communities in Scotland and the North East
PROFESSOR MARK SHUCKSMITH, Professor of Planning, Newcastle University
Date/Time: 21st October 2008, 17:30
To hear a recording of this lecture:
Crofting communities are the future: promoting sustainable rural communities in Scotland and the North East.
How can rural communities survive and prosper into the twenty-first century? Most of us aspire to live in rural communities, notwithstanding changes in farming and commuting which have altered our rural economies and societies fundamentally. The remoter rural areas, including much of the North East, face particular challenges.
Last year, Professor Mark Shucksmith was asked to chair a government committee of inquiry into the future of Crofting in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Its report was published in May, and the Government has just announced its response. In this lecture Mark will set out the Committee’s analysis and its radical recommendations to ensure the future of crofting. He will ask which aspects of these prescriptions might also have relevance to rural areas more generally, including those in the North East. And he will reflect on the role of a University academic engaged in public policy development and how this relates to ideas of knowledge-exchange.