Future Society in 2024: 21st Century 'Good Life' - Rural Economy ...

maintaining the spirit of the countryside, government initiatives have helped farmers to make this
transition.
11.2 Main features
In this scenario countryside is treated, to all extents and purposes, as a protected remnant of English
heritage – resulting in a huge effort to ensure its preservation, including traditional English flora and
fauna, which will have difficulties surviving due to climate change and the effects of ‘alien’ species
taking over key habitats.
The countryside is recognised as a piece of British cultural inheritance and therefore efforts are made
to restore it to an ideal condition. Britain has left the European Union, and national identity issues
are very high up among voter concerns. There is a resurgent English (and Welsh) sense of
nationalism/patriotism. English and Welsh identity politics are therefore foremost among political
concerns. Socio-economic issues have very much faded from the political agenda and instead politics
revolves around ‘post-material’ concerns such as identity politics – expressing who you are by your
attachment to place or origin. This incorporates both the politics of national identity, the politics of
regional identity and of countryside identity.
Planning controls are very strict and do not allow any inward migration. Inward flows are primarily
now from the wealthy retired, rather than those in working life. There is therefore a renewed lifecycle
element to rural population movements, with the young moving to the city to find work, who
then ‘cascade out’ to the countryside in later life.
Strict planning controls are the result of political pressure on the part of established rural residents.
Regionalisation of political structures gives rural areas stronger control over land use policy. There is
a strong upsurge in the political salience of rural issues, with the consequence both that there is
political support for rural interest parties (e.g. the Countryside Alliance) and recognition of the
importance of rural issues among established political parties. Local politics are driven by a strong
sense of ‘NIMBY’-ism. There are relatively vibrant communities among those that have bought into
rural life, in particular among the affluent, mobile and sometimes single elderly population. These
communities however tend to be ‘communities of choice’ – often with members from far and wide
across rural Britain, who happen simply to share certain interests.
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