Full Description
Recent research suggests that rural residents in the global North are happier than urban populations in the same countries. This goes against received wisdom in the field, where the opposite is usually assumed. Is quality of life better in the rural areas? How and under which circumstances is this the case? What can we learn from digging deeper into the rural-urban happiness paradox and which critical questions does this leave us with for the future? What might policymakers, planners, architects, and other decision-makers learn about how, when, and where to intervene? Rural quality of life delves deeper into these matters by asking what quality of life in rural areas is all about - in everyday life, through interventions in the built environment, in civil society and measures of subjective well-being.
An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.
Contents
Foreword - Bryonny Goodwin-Hawkins
1 Introducing rural quality of life - Pia Heike Johansen, Jens Kaae Fisker, Henrik Lauridsen Lolle, Anne Tietjen and Evald Bundgård Iversen
Part I: Everyday life
Framing essay I - Pia Heike Johansen, Jens Kaae Fisker and Martin Phillips
2 Wellbeing for Whom and at Whose Expense: COVID-19 through the Lens of Moral Geographies in Two Rural Colorado Communities - Michael Carolan
3 The difference that rural rhythm makes - Pia Heike Johansen and Jens Kaae Fisker
4 "Everybody loves living here": beyond the idyll in life within the gentrified countryside - Martin Phillips, Darren Smith, Hannah Brooking and Mara Duer
5 Urban-to-rural lifestyle migrants in peripheral Japanese island communities: Balancing quality of life expectations with reality - Simona Zollet and Meng Qu
6 Alaskan Native quality of life: Culture, rurality, and the sacred - Maria Christina Crouch and Jordan P. Lewis
Part II: The built environment
Framing essay II - Anne Tietjen and Jens Kaae Fisker
7 Spatial planning and rural quality of life - Mark Scott
8 Rural placemaking for sustained community well-being - Anne Tietjen and Gertrud Jørgensen
9 The creation of child-friendly spaces for nourishing rural areas: A South-African reflection - Elizelle Juanee Cilliers and Menini Gibbens
10 Art in rural placemaking - Meiqin Wang
11 The contribution of affordable housing to rural quality of life in England - Nick Gallent
12 Planning for quality of life as the right to spatial production in the rurban void - Nils Björling
Part III: Civil society
Framing essay III - Evald Bundgård Iversen
13 The role of civil society in securing self-assessed quality of life in rural areas - Evald Bundgård Iversen, Michael Fehsenfeld and Bjarne Ibsen
14 Rural youth: Quality of life, civil participation, and outlooks for a rural future - Anders Melås, Maja Farstad and Svein Frisvoll
15 The role of civil society in cultural heritage, digitalisation, and the quality of rural life - David Beel and Claire Wallace
16 Volunteering neighbourhood mothers: A capability approach to voluntarism, inclusion and quality of life in rural Norway - Kjersti Tandberg and Jill Merethe Loga
17 A comparison of health-related quality of life in rural and metropolitan areas of Australia: The Contribution of Sport and Physical Activity - Rochelle Eime, Jack Harvey, Melanie Charity and Hans Westerbeek
Part IV: Measuring rural quality of life
Framing essay IV - Henrik Lauridsen Lolle
18 Differences in subjective well-being between rural and urban areas in Denmark - Henrik Lauridsen Lolle
19 Subjective well-being in urban and rural Italy: Comparing two survey waves (2008-2018) - Federica Vigano, Enzo Grossi and Giorgio Tavano Blessi
20 Subjective wellbeing in rural and urban areas under the Covid-19 crisis in France - Marta Pasqualini
21 Using a new method to map quality of life - Rolf Lyneborg Lund
22 Outdoor recreation and the wellbeing of rural residents: Insight from Scotland - Kathryn Colley, Margaret Currie & Katherine N. Irvine
23 Does urban green add to happiness? - Ruut Veenhoven, Nivré Claire Wagner and Jan Ott
24 Conclusions: What have we learned about rural quality of life and how do we procede? - Pia Heike Johansen, Anne Tietjen, Evald Bundgård Iversen, Henrik Lolle and Jens Kaae Fisker
Index
