Recent trends in rural development and their conceptualisation

Journal

Pergamon

of Rural Studies, Vol. IO. No. 4, pp. 321-330, 1994 Copyright 0 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0743-0167194 $7.00 + 0.00

0743-0167(94)00055-7

Recent Trends in Rural Development Their Conceptualisation

and

Elena Saraceno CRES Centro Ricerche Economico Sociali, Riva Bartaleni

18, 33100 Udine, Italy

Abstract-The

reversal of rural-urban traditional migration patterns in the last 20 years and the diffusion of non-agricultural activities in rural areas indicate that recent trends in rural development have not followed expected patterns. The paper retraces these recent changes, using as examples the case of France and Italy, two countries with quite different patterns of economic and social development. It follows the characteristics of the real processes under way on the one hand and the conceptualisations and categories used to understand them on the other. The paper concludes that recent trends require a thorough theoretical revision of the traditional assumptions in the social sciences. It suggests that the rural-urban criteria of spatial differentiation is losing significance while the regional or local economy approach provides a more useful framework, to explore the relevant criteria for differentiating rural development.

What we call the “restructuring of the international economy” or the “process of globalisation” refers to an important change which has been ongoing since the seventies. It has substantially altered the ability of different areas, including rural areas, to participate in the production and exchange of goods and services. I would argue that, rather than “rural areas”, it would be better to speak about “local economies” since this appears as the new relevant unit of analysis, but anyone insisting on the concept of rurality should recognise that the old reasons for explaining the inevitable decline of rural areas are no longer sustainable.

Introduction This paper is the ideal continuation of one prepared for the 1993 VIIth EAAE Conference held at Stresa, Italy. At that time, the main idea was to compare recent rural changes in France, Sweden and Italy. The discussion started at that time has continued with the French team and in my own work. What began as an effort to explain why the Italian experience in spatial analysis could be extremely interesting for the current debate on rural development, has become, with further analysis, a more general conceptualisation about the spatial differences at work in the current process of restructuring of the international economy and its rural implications.

Two recent trends are considered crucial for the understanding of rural change: first, the reversal of migration trends and second, the spatial diffusion of economic activities. These trends are described in broad terms and evaluated with old and new conceptualisations, using the examples from France and Italy. The reasons for the increased competitiveness of local economies, including their rural areas, are explored. In the conclusions, several working hypotheses are rephrased in the light of the previous discussion: the declining significance of the rural-urban dichotomy; the higher explanatory capacity of local economies regional and approaches; the importance of assuming the multilinearity of development paths in order to explain spatial differentiation; the need to reconsider hier-

I will argue that the trends and choices which affect rural areas cannot be studied in isolation from what is going on in non-rural areas. In the past, the drain of resources from rural areas could be explained by the attraction of higher paying jobs in industry and services in urban centres. Today, the reversal of migration flows and the spatial redistribution of activities has to be explained in relation to the process of globalisation of the economy. This implies that the urban perspective alone might be insufficient to explain the reasons why some rural areas in Europe have been gaining human resources and competitive advantages. 321

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archically structured classifications of space such as centre-periphery. development-underdevelopment; the rationale to be followed in looking for relevant criteria and indicators of typologies for rural areas; and the need to reconsider current rural policies in the light of recent trends.

Recent trends: a first warning migration flows

from the reversal of

(1) Old conceptualisations Until the end of the sixties and early seventies, migration flows had followed a recognisable pattern: from rural to urban areas, from mountains to plains, from underdeveloped countries to developed countries. The reason generally accepted for these movements was based on the pull effects of better paid jobs, both in industry and services, which allowed upward social mobility and higher standards of living on the one hand and the symmetrical push effects of underpaid work in farming, lack of job alternatives and lack of possibilities for upward social mobility. Developing industrial societies seemed to be able to satisfy their growing need for human resources by attracting first their own rural population to the cities, then, when this source was immigration from less developed exhausted, countries continued to feed the urbanisation process. This general rule seemed to apply to all developed countries homogeneously and over time. “Rural” (a spatial category) has been considered as coincident with agriculture (a sector of activity) and opposed to “urban” (a complementary spatial category), coinciding with industrial activities and services. This ideal division of labour between different spaces and sectors was used as a framework of reference for the modern spatial organisation of the economy and society. It could be seen in an advanced state in industrialised countries and development policies aimed at reproducing it in less developed countries. The logic of this division of labour was never questioned, since it was assumed that economies of scale, concentration and markets operated in favour of the urban location. Less developed countries, which maintained high rates of populati~~n in the countryside and in agriculture, were perceived as internally undifferentiated areas from the point of view of the ruralurban polarisation. Even in the presence of urbanisation processes of varying intensity, the lack of economic development of a country or a region appeared to reduce the significance of rural urban dynamics. This concept has remained in the policies for developing countries and in the identification of

Saraceno disadvantaged areas within developed countries. In its latest EC version, “Objective 1” areas, which include all of Portugal, Greece and Ireland, and important parts of Spain and Italy, are defined as “less developed” as a whole, without differentiating the urban from the rural. Tn the past, without always explicitly acknowleging the difference, the rural-urban criteria of spatial differentiation was used mostly for developed countries and not for less developed countries or regions. In the former, the rural space was conceived as coincident with the modern agricultural sector: in less developed areas the modernisation of the whole economy was considered as a priority, and rural spaces had to undergo ‘“structural changes” usually meaning expelling “excess” population, eliminating subsistence farms, amalgamating property and introducing modern technology. The direction of migration movements in less developed areas was expected to reproduce the same patterns observed in already developed areas, the difference was only one of time. Industrialised countries had already experienced them, while less developed areas sooner or later were bound to follow the same path with economic development. This unilineal approach towards development turned all spatial differences into “stages” through which all areas/countries had to pass. (2) Recent trends From the beginning of the seventies, this consolidated and homogeneous pattern started to change both for developed and less developed areas. The first ones to point out that something new was happening were the demographers. In the seventies many of them remarked that the process of urbanisation had considerably slowed down and that some rural areas, which had been declining in population, remained stable or even gained human resources. These trends were largely confirmed during the eighties and early nineties. They did not assume the intensity and dramatic character of the previous processes of urban growth, but on the contrary appeared gradual and territorially diffused, involving small quantities of population at a time. Seen from a national perspective. this reversal appeared less significant than from a regional perspective, where some areas showed quite significant changes while others continued in the previous pattern. The reversal of traditional rural-urban migration patterns was sometimes difficult to read because in many areas, both urban and rural, birth rates started to fall. As a result a stable or even declining total population could be the result of a positive migration balance and a negative birth rate. This situation

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appeared symmetrically opposite to the past, when rural areas had been characterised by positive birth rates and negative migration rates, while urban areas had positive ones for both. These changes were unexpected for most observers. It was difficult to find in any discipline a forecast or an explanation of why this rural-urban reversal was taking place. Furthermore, it appeared to be a spontaneous process, occurring independently of the existence of policies aimed at reducing rural outmigration and within a general context characterised by stationary or even declining population. One strategy to explain the reversal of migration trends attempted to maintain the established ruralurban conceptualisation unchanged by correcting the definitions of “urban” and “rural”. A good example of this logic is the spatial classification of the French statistical office, INSEE. The rural “periurban” category becomes the main tool for this operation. Rural communities located around cities are separated from the rest and defined as periurban. If their population grows, there is nothing really new since all that is happening is an enlargement of the urban central area. This process of course has no geographical or conceptual limits since one could add new peripheries any time that is needed. What is interesting is that this definition’s criteria are not only based on the urban phenomenon, but also take into account the location of industry. Within the periurban category are included all the industrial communes in which there are at least 100 industrial jobs and an enterprise with at least 20 salaried workers. The “rural” is restricted to communities with less than 2000 inhabitants, all contiguous to each other and with no industrial work of any relevance. And yet, having created an all-rural residual both in urban and industrial category, terms, they still find that between 1982 and 1990 this area has had positive migration rates, even though more modest than the periurban area (Cavailhes ef al., 1993). Within this strategy, even if it is recognised that the old urban centres have been losing population, this is obscured by the fact that the periurban area has been growing with commuters or industrial employment. Never mind if the result is that the whole of France ends up being a huge periurban area, the traditional attraction of the urban centre has remained as the organising principle of space. The periurban as an analytical category has been designed a priori, in order to accommodate the new population trends, stretching, but not questioning, the basically urban-industrial rationale of migration

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movements, and with the politically difficult result that the “deep rural” is on the way to extinction. The reversal of migration movements in this case is incorporated in the traditional pattern of ruralurban dynamics, with the help of periurban areas and without questioning whether industry remains an urban phenomenon. In this case the rural area is defined in such a way that it cannot but lose population and employment. Any process of diversification or integration with other economies entails automatically the loss of rural status and the passage to the periurban category. I would argue that, within this conceptualisation, rural development is almost a statistically impossible outcome, not only as a spontaneous process but also as the result of rural development policies. The only exception would be a growth in agricultural employment and services in a Commune which remains isolated from any urban centre and below 2000 residents. An alternative way of reasoning has been followed in the Italian context. As a recently developed country, the rural-urban conceptualisation has been traditionally weaker in relation to the regional perspective which has always placed the territorial differences (disequilibria) in development as the main problem, as in the identification of the Mezzogiorno or of Mountain Communities. ISTAT, the official statistical bureau, has detailed rural-urban statistics with extremely elaborate sets of indicators which cut spatial differences into four categories: the rural, the urban and, in between the semi-rural and the semi-urban. In research work, no-one has used these categories as relevant conceptualisations of territorial differences. On the other hand, most scientists recognise that the size of the commune, the smallest administrative unit for which statistics are collected, does not reflect the rural-urban differentiation in Italy. This is because of the presence of an extremely varied system of small and medium cities, a characteristic of the Italian landscape since the Middle Ages, with varying degrees of involvement in agricultural, industrial and service activities. The heart of the matter is that, however defined, the rural-urban differentiation is not considered a relevant category. If we consider the demographic size, it appears that, since the beginning of the seventies, the largest cities have been losing population while small and medium centres (but not the smallest under 3000 residents) have been gaining higher shares of population. If we consider the more sophisticated set of rural indicators, rural areas, semi-rural and semi-urban Communes are increasing, while urban ones are decreasing. Disaggregating national data by region,

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it appears that these trends differentiate greatly according to the major internal geographical divisions. While it is true that the process of large urban concentration has come to a halt, it is not always true that this has implied a symmetrical process of ruralisation: it is the already existing network of small and medium Communes which seem to have captured new population (Saraceno, 1993). In the Italian case, there is no attempt to accommodate these changes within a rationale of continued urban expansion, but rather, in line with the previous consolidated regional pattern of analysis, within territorial differences in economic development. This perspective has undoubtedly benefitted the analysis of economic activities, especially industrial location and regional employment, without an explicit reference to the demographic size of the Commune or its rural-urban classification. The reversal of migration movements has been interpreted as an indicator of the shift in the location of economic activities from the North-western regions to the North-east and Central regions, with some “islands”’ of development even in the South. These national explanations of a reversal in the migration trends illustrate very well how the interpretation of new processes is influenced by previous conceptualisations of spatial differentiation, whatever they might be. Despite these different perspectives, it is evident that two countries, quite different in relation to the time in which they experienced economic development, the spatial distribution of economic activities and their settlement structure, have both shown changes in the direction of previous patterns of migration after the seventies. An intermediate category which in France is called “periurban”, and in Italy “small and medium cities”, has been showing positive dynamics, while previously it had been losing population. Furthermore, in both countries there has been a regional shift in the “centre of gravity” of economic activities among areas.

If we try to categorise these changes in the ruralurban continuum, we would embark on endless discussions about where exactly to draw the threshold between them, made even more difficult by the fact that it is the intermediate ground between them which is changing the most. The implicit assumption of ranking communes by size is that there is an urban gradient which increases

with size. There is no evidence that this is really so in all cases: the United Nations has admitted that, because these definitions depend so much on previous settlement patterns, each nation should establish how to define its rural areas (Vitali, 1983). If the urban gradient does not always increase with the size of the Commune, then indicators of population density have exactly the same problem and cannot be used as universal standards of the degree of rurality. Most literature (and the statistical categories used) has historically ~onceptualised the rural-urban criteria in order to measure the process of urbanisation, considering the rural area as a residual category. Where there was no concentration of population at a certain density, an area fell automatically into the rural category. The two situations were conceived as a continuum (Pahl, 1966) in which, like communicating vases, one filled up while the other emptied, although, almost by definition, the direction was predetermined: the rural was expected to lose and it was surprising if it gained. Intermediate categories, the periurban and the semirural, provided the necessary links between the two poles of the continuum: they had no concrete and autonomous life but served as “stages” in the transition from one to the other, where everything that did not fit could find a place. It can be concluded that we are dealing with two quite different problems: one is the observation and acknowledgement of a change of direction in traditional migration patterns since the seventies (most developed countries have recognised the existence of such processes); another is the understanding of those changes within the rural-urban national definitions. In this instance, there is agreement that large cities are no longer growing but no agreement on how to classify the evolution of the spaces which are growing, the intermediate categories; precisely because they have no identity of their own, but are defined in terms of a “mix” of rural-urban chardcteristics and allow themselves to be considered either as nearer to the urban or to the rural. In the selection of the appropriate categories, it is probably relevant how far the process of urbanisation has gone, the amount of human resources that have concentrated in the cities and the period of time for a strong polarisation to be produced. The more significant and successful such a polarisation has been, the more likely that the reversal of migration trends will appear as originating from urban centres towards the periurban, while rural areas are perceived as deserted. But the evidence of past patterns shouid not preclude research into the reasons for the recent change in population trends.

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After all, it should be explained why this reversal happened in the seventies and not before or after.

Recent trends: the spatial diffusion activities, including rural areas

of economic

(1) Old conceptualisations As has already been mentioned, up to the seventies the location of new employment opportunities and entrepreneurship in the industrial and service sectors benefitted the urban centres. The industrialisation and tertiarisation of the economy coincided spatially with the urbanisation process. Rural areas, having lost population and pre-industrial businesses, remained as the ideal space for modern commercial agriculture. The economic exchange between rural and urban areas was conceived in terms of a sectoral exchange between primary products and manufactured goods and services. As a matter of fact, the same “model” was applied to the exchange between developed and non-developed countries. In the classic dualistic interpretations of economic development, spatial differences were interpreted as “disequilibria” which would eventually, through the market or with the help of appropriate policies, “reequilibrate” the factors of production (Lutz, 1958). All types of less developed areas, whether rural or mountain, with any kind of pre-industrial development and organisation, were expected to follow the same unilineal path, through the various stages of economic growth, at some time (Rostow, 1960). The effect of this conceptualisation was a homogenisation of all spatial differences into two distinct categories, polarised around the presence or absence of this shorthand idea of development. Policies followed this simplification and applied the same “package” for any less developed area. When an area or a country developed, it was considered as a life membership in an exclusive club: the steady state went on forever, no deindustrialisation or change in any direction could be as significant as this passage to economic development. Traditional development theory has conceptualised space in three different ways, in terms of nations, along a scale based on developed and non developed areas, and as rural-urban differences. I would argue that none of these implies a real explanation of territorial differences. In the case of nations, space is defined by political and administrative criteria. This defines the level at which measurements will be taken and compared with other nations. In the case of developed and non-developed areas (or centre and periphery), the unilinear assumption incorporates spatial differences only as subsequent stages of a

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single path towards development, repeated through time. In the case of rural-urban differences, space is equated with specific sectors of activity and treated as a sectoral concept instead of a spatial one. This is why there is difficulty explaining what is happening in rural areas from a territorial perspective as opposed to a sectoral agricultural one. This transformation of spatial differences into something else shows the difficulty of economic theorisation in incorporating and explaining space as a central variable in development. (2) Recent

trends

Usually, a change in population trends is an indicator of a change in the location of economic activities. Industrial economists, quite independently from demographers and without paying too much attention to the rural-urban aspects of their analysis, have been pointing out that small and medium enterprises could, in certain contexts operate quite efficiently in the world markets and in certain cases showed competitive advantages in relation to,large enterprises in the same sectors of activity. This was more true in some sectors than in others but conceptually it meant a major theoretical breakthrough: a multiplicity of technological and organisational productive systems could coexist, competing with each other and reproducing along differentiated patterns, instead of moving towards one best and most efficient organisation for all enterprises, and one type of developed space. This was demonstrated with research on diffused industrialisation in Italy (Fua and Zacchia, 1983) and industrial districts (Becattini, 1987; Brusco, 1989) but has also received much wider and international attention within the analyses of the crisis of the fordist model (Piore and Sahel, 1987; Boyer, 1988; Pyke et al., 1990; Salais and Storper, 1992). The study of real processes has showed that there are multiple paths towards economic development, and spatial differences persist and are relevant even after the initial development for maintaining competitiveness. In France, the employment in periurban areas in the eighties has had the greatest rates of increase in industry and services, while it was less pronounced but still positive in the “deep” rural areas. Here the decline in agricultural employment has not been able to balance the increase in nonagricultural employment; but for the periurban areas, total employment has increased. The net effect is that the redistribution of employment is less significant than the redistribution of population (Cavailhes et al., 1993). In Italy, however, a different pattern to that observed in France has emerged. The redistribution of employment is more pronounced than that of population and favours

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medium small towns. Furthermore, the employment growth occurs in both the industrial and service sectors. The result is that rural intermediate areas, however defined, have been diversifying the activities ~~~~~u~e~z~~~y both in Italy and France, faster than labour supply in Italy and slower than labour supply in France (Saraceno, 1993). If the average size of the enterprises that increased their demand for labour during the eighties in both countries is analysed, we find the overwhelming presence of small and medium enterprises. The conclusion is that. even with very different economic systems inherited from the past, the rate of variation of employment in the last decade indicates quite clearly the increasing competitiveness of those intermediate areas between the deep rural and the urban, with some influence even in the deep rural. Again, aggregate data are misleading since these processes are true only for certain areas and regions in both countries. Analysis of the changes in the distribution of population and employment from the perspective described above suggest that the current radical changes may be further advanced than would be indicated by analysis within the traditional conceptual framework. Furthermore, recent literature from industrial economists has given interesting insights on the existence and competitiveness of alternative productive systems. Some of these are based on small and medium enterprises, which stress “space” as a peculiar and unique combination of productive factors. Each productive environment is seen in its relationship with the global market, having to reproduce its competitiveness through time and considering the possibility of gaining or losing in this endeavour. This implies that each one of these productive environments cannot be located once and for all in the “development club” but has to continuously “renegotiate” its membership. Its own position in one of the spatial hierarchies proposed by development theory loses significance: centres and peripheries may change roles and some rural areas may become more competitive than some urban areas. The national boundaries, especially of large countries, seem too large as spatial references in order to identify and follow different productive environments. The relevant spatial reference appears to be the region or, more appropriately, the local economy. The link between the reversal of migration flows and the more diffused location of economic activities becomes understandable if we are willing to question our traditional spatial categorisations. Outmigration from rural areas has been spontaneously slowing down and sometimes it has turned into immigration,

Saraceno because more and varied employment opportunities are now present, or may be reached, from rural areas. The spontaneous process of spatial diffusion of economic activities is not the only significant trend that is diversifying rural areas. Other factors have contributed to this process: good communication infrastructures linking all parts of a territory with each other and not just to one urban centre have been crucial in reducing the relevance of distance. This has been useful for the diffusion of economic actitivies but also for the intensification and enlargement of commuting areas which have often diversified the population of rural areas independently from existence of employment the new opportunities. It may be argued that early developed countries, having had longer and more intense periods of depopulation, loss of diversified activities and a high concentration of resources in urban centres, find themselves today in a disadvantaged position to rediversify their non-urban spaces, since they often find them desertified. The progressive “periurbanisation” of rural areas, observed in France, and also in England (Newby, 1979), might indicate that this has been the peculiar way in which these areas have responded to the recent trends in the economy and that the process of diffusion is starting with population rather than with employment. From this perspective, the new sensibility towards the environment, rural amenities and country living on the part of former urban residents could be understood as the social response to the economic restructuring. On the other hand later deveioped countries, which have undergone a shorter and less intense process of depopulation in rural areas, have maintained more diversified rural areas, both in terms of human resources and economic activities. It must be admitted that these areas are in a comparatively better position to diversify within the recent economic restructuring than such areas in countries which have been developed for a longer time. From this perspective the liability of small and medium enterprises and the growth in employment in the local economies in the Italian case, together with the relative weakness of the periurbanisation processes, and its urban sensibility towards the environment and rural amenities, becomes understandable. We have here the combination of two processes which work in the same direction. The first is the redistribution of employment and enterprises in favour of non-urban areas. The second is more social and reflects the changing lifestyles and preferences of the population, especially the urban one. *My

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personal impression is that, in current analyses, the economic process has been underestimated in earlier developed areas, while the social process is overestimated as an explanatory factor. The reverse is probably true in the later developing areas. But these differences of conceptualisation also indicate something about the peculiar way in which different economic and social organisations are responding to the new trends. It should be noted however that, from both the social and the economic perspective, rural areas are diversifying their resource base. This calls into question the traditional idea of the rural area as the ideal place for modern agriculture, and its role in the sectoral division of labour between town and country. Rural areas should therefore be analysed by considering the three types of population that might be present, quantifying their consistency and evolution: the traditional population of large modern farmers; the rapidly changing population for whom farming is a secondary or hobby activity and who work in the local economy (either in the same rural area or in a nearby urban centre); the rural population which no longer has any ties with farming activities and either lives, or lives and works, in rural areas. From an economic perspective, this labour market dimension of the rural area might be insufficient. In this case, it is the enterprises, their competitive and co-operating relationships, their links with the global economy that we should look at in order to evaluate its competitiveness. (3) Towards

new conceptualisations

of recent trends

If it is true, as it seems, that there are indeed alternative production systems, the spatial dimension of the “productive environment” becomes a crucial concept, since it becomes the unit of reference where a specific combination of factors (social, economic, technological, institutional) are organised in a particular way and determine its competitiveness. We should keep in mind, however, that political economists and neo-classical theory have constructed a conceptual framework, perfect market competition, which detaches the enterprise from any spatial or historical anchorage, making it extremely difficult to go back to the real world and conceptualise why we find alternative production systems (Becattini and Bianchi, 1987). For the time being, the new conceptualisations of recent trends have, in a way, suspended or left aside the theoretical problem and are proceeding with single concepts that appear to better interpret ongoing changes in spatial differentiation. Industrial economists ment of small and

describing the recent developmedium size enterprises have

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pointed out their territorial diffusion, contrasting it with the concentrated urban pattern of traditional large scale industry. The association of this type of development with the rural-urban differentiation has never been considered an important dimension in the literature. It is the regional or local economy, in which the small and medium sized enterprises operate, which has to be described as a whole; its multi-sectoral aspects and interrelationships, its links with society; its institutional organisation and capacity to reproduce over time, and its integration with other local economies, national or international. Among these aspects, the presence or absence of one large urban centre, several small cities, and the nature of the exchanges between rural and urban areas is relevant and necessary information, but in itself is not sufficient to discriminate between one regional or local economy and another, or to identify its competitive advantage. This relative indifference should not blur the fact that, within the recent process of internationalisation of enterprises, the rural location may have greater or lesser opportunities to acquire competitiveness, and this alternative seems much better than the fatalistic decline to which rural areas were bound in the previously perceived concentrated urban development. However, these better chances are not predetermined nor do they apply generally to all rural areas as is often thought. On the contrary, it is the local context of each specific rural area which determines its capacity to play an active role in the local economy. The presence of an urban centre is a possibility, but some industrial districts are located in rural areas which have developed quite autonomously from major urban centres. The maintenance of diversified activities in rural areas, the presence of small farm systems, simple forms of co-operation among enterprises, independent and artisan work are no longer to be considered as obstacles for the modernisation of rural areas, but rather as precious human capital that should be sustained in its evolution and permanence. The presence of a non-agricultural rural population plays a central role in the process of diversification of activities and in the generation and circulation of entrepreneurship. This implies that in today’s less developed areas, instead of expecting the decline of peasant farming and the abandonment of rural areas, we might aim successfully at a change in the sector of activity without a decline in the rural population, since the location of non-farm activities need not be necessarily urban. The concept of competitive advantage, applied to a productive environment, which could describe a specialised area in a specific sector (industrial or

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agricultural districts) or a mixed area with various sectors of activity with different degrees of interrelationships and integration, allows for a less predetermined evaluation of different spaces, whether defined as rural or as local economies. Comparative advantages on the other hand, do not appear to explain the changing nature of advantages over time but rather a static and predetermined reproduction of the same advantages, typical of the classical theorisation of development.

What are the reasons for the increased competitiveness of local economies, including rural areas?

Having considered recent trends in population and employment, and how old and new conceptualisations greatly affect the recognition and explanation of these trends, it might be interesting to indicate reasons for the increased economic and social competitiveness of some local economies and their rural areas. Let us start with the economic reasons. As was mentioned at the beginning of this paper, local economies and rural areas should not be seen as spaces isolated from the global economy. It is precisely when we focus on these exchanges, apart from the traditional ones between town and country, that we are able to grasp them. There is no general consensus among observers but the following reasons have been put forward. Probably the most important reason for recent changes is the growing segmentation of the demand for certain products in the world market. Economists have distinguished between sectors with a standardised and stable demand and sectors with a segmented and variabte demand. The first ones are characterised by long series production processes with capital intensive plants and a low labour qualification. This type of production, contrary to what was always believed, tends to migrate to developing countries where there is abundant labour and where capital can be transferred. The other sectors are characterised by short series production processes and must maintain a highly flexible technological organisation and a versatile and qualified labour force. This type of production process tends to concentrate in industrialised countries (Becattini and Bianchi, 1987). It is this new classification of activities in terms of the characteristics and variations of the demand which opens up the way to understand why small and medium enterprises have acquired a role since the seventies. It is because this type of enterprise responds better to these new requirements of short series production that their competitiveness has increased. As they were located in smaller centres

Saraceno and regions different from the previous “leading” industries, this explains the shift of the “centre of gravity” in the location of economic activities towards emerging local economies and their increase in competitiveness, including the rural areas. Of course, where local resources were significantly impoverished, the possibility of taking advantage of these new opportunities was greatly reduced. This explains why we have to speak about some local economies and some rural areas, and not all of them as a homogeneous category. Other, more frequently mentioned, reasons for the increased economic competitiveness of rural areas are: (a) the growth of niche or guaranteed markets which may protect a well-defined location, often a rural area: (b) the more frequent co-operation among enterprises in networks which operate in different locations in order to integrate the specialised advantages of each one of the members; and (c) the opportunities offered by new communications technology to work in non-central areas. There is also a social explanation which, as already mentioned, has emphasised a different type of explanation for recent trends. An urban perspective, in this case, is quite evident and dominant in relation to the global market perspective of the economic explanation, but also relies on the changing characteristics of demand. Large urban concentrations create a new demand for rural space. A new sensibility is growing which manifests in various ways the incapacity of the urban environment to reproduce over time the conditions of its initial success in the early stages of industrialisation. The cost of living, working and reproducing in a large city is perceived as growing much faster than income. The negative effects of pollution have diminished the quality attributed to urban living. On the other hand the cost of space, housing and a safer environment appear more favourable in the rural environment, From this perspective the recent changes in rural areas have been perceived in terms of “rural amenities” for which there has been a growing urban demand (Cavailhbs et al., 1993). The rural renaissance is explained in terms of longer commuting distances and availability of these new desired goods. This explanation may very well be correct, but an effort should be made to understand whether this urban logic explains all that is happening or whether it depends on traditional and unquestioned conceptualisations. This could be the situation typical of the early industrialised countries. The greater degree of integration between the urban and periurban population suggests that, even in this explanation, a local economy approach would be more appropriate, since the exchange tends to diminish the traditional division of labour between

Recent Trends in Rural Development town and country. As a result, even within this explanation, the types of population present in rural areas are no longer represented exclusively by the farming population (with large and small farms) but introduce the presence of a growing rural population without links with farming activities. Conclusions: towards spatial differences

a new

conceptualisation

of

The broad and synthetic reconstruction that has been attempted should be considered as part of work in progress, which needs more thinking and empirical/comparative evaluation. At the same time that it proceeds in various disciplines, a parallel work on critical evaluation of traditional conceptualisations must take place. The original contribution of this paper relates much more to the time consuming effort of interdisciplinary interaction of “bricolage” than with a single theoretical perspective. Since agrarian economists have understood their work in sectoral terms, in order to adopt a territorial perspective, they are obliged to go through this exercise. The hypothesis I would like to sustain is that the rural-urban reading of spatial differentiation has been meaningful, while the processes of urbanisation and industrialisation worked in the classical concentrated way that was typical of the first generation of developed countries. However, with the decline of the spatial coincidence of both processes (diffused industrialisation, new leisure functions of rural areas, decentralisation of public services), the original homogeneity of these analytical categories has been progressively blurred, cancelling the neat division of labour between rural and urban areas, thereby reducing its explanatory capacity. While rural reas remained the domain of modern agricultural activities, their homogeneous nature was evident both within one country and between different countries; they did not need to be contiguous to each other since the logic of their aggregation was found in their similar characteristics - the predominance of agriculture - which distinguished them from urban areas, which were also non-contiguous, and their similarity was based on the concentration (high density) of population and the presence of industrial and service activities. We have demonstrted that, both from an economic and a social perspective, the redistribution of population and activities in areas that were formerly considered as rural forces the reconsideration of the relevant spatial unit of analysis. It is a new type of area which has proved to be the most dynamic one, which was a rural area but has

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recently been becoming either a periurban or diffused industrialisation area for which we still have to find an appropriate label. If we insist on its rural nature we should acknowledge the growing differences which distinguish them from the common meaning attributed to the term. There is also a second objection to the term “rural” and it is that, if the rural and the urban are increasing their integration, we should consider a more comprehensive term that includes both. It is within this conceptual framework that the term local economies has been suggested. The third reason is that regional differences appear to explain much more the spatially shifting nature of competitiveness over time than rural-urban dynamics. If we accept the concept that economic development is not unilineal but multilineal, the function of space as a differentiating factor becomes unavoidable from a conceptual perspective, and also allows consideration of the time dimension. Neither aspect was relevant in neo-classical theory. With the multilinearity of development the rigidly hierarchical organisation of spatial differences, implicit in the developed-underdeveloped, rural-urban, centreperiphery and other dualistic readings, becomes more open and does not necessarily refer to areas at different stages of the development process but rather to a network of relationships between one area and many others, competing in the world market. The criteria for differentiating rural areas must take into account the fact that rural areas and local economies do not reproduce in isolation but as a part of the whole. This is the theme that requires more work in the future. From what has been said, it appears that at least two dimensions should be considered in constructing typologies: internal diversification and external integration. Attention should be concentrated on the analysis of the new types of area, i.e. the intermediate areas which were rural and have been diversifying either their population or their employment. It is from this kind of analysis that rural development policies should be developed. The first acknowledgement is that the processes of diversification have been going on spontaneously for the past 20 years and public policies should not “invent” anything but simply accompany and try to imitate, with a soft hand, what has been going on, having learnt from the successes and failures of the past. I am personally convinced that, in the process of looking for a solution to the many problems of the Common Agricultural Policy, rural development appeared to be a general panacea. It may solve problems, but rural development policies should not just be con-

Elena sidered as a way to solve the shortcomings of agricultural policies, but a way to encourage real processes that have been going on without being noticed. This would reduce the cost and increase the efficiency of rural development policies.

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