Harrison, GE;
Clifford, BP;
(2016)
'The field of grain is gone; It's now a Tesco Superstore': representations of 'urban' and 'rural' within historical and contemporary discourses opposing urban expansion in England.
Planning Perspectives
, 31
(4)
pp. 585-609.
10.1080/02665433.2015.1103197.
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Abstract
Ideas about the difference between rural and urban areas are woven into the fabric of English society. This paper asks how two different campaigns against urban expansion and rural homebuilding in England – one interwar and one more contemporary (related to the production of the ‘National Planning Policy Framework’ document) – represent the difference between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ and how they use these representations to justify and naturalise their arguments. Utilising interpretive textual analysis to compare the two periods, we show that, whilst planning has undergone significant paradigm shifts during the period between the two campaigns, in both archives a dominant ‘rural idyll’ is (re)produced and reinforced through the representational themes of beauty, nature, purity, an elite educated class and a traditional social order. This is strongly contrasted to the representation of the ‘urban sphere’ as an unnatural, ugly, modern and socially fragmented dystopia. ‘Urban’ areas are therefore constructed as the constitutive ‘Other’ to the rural idyll. In this way, the apparently natural urban characteristics associated with built-up areas are represented as ‘out of place’ within the rural sphere. These representations work to justify the argument that ‘development’ is a threat to the intrinsic characteristics of the countryside and should not be allowed to take place. This rural idyll/urban dystopia binary is argued to continue to have an important influence on shaping policy debate.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | 'The field of grain is gone; It's now a Tesco Superstore': representations of 'urban' and 'rural' within historical and contemporary discourses opposing urban expansion in England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/02665433.2015.1103197 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02665433.2015.1103197 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2016 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. |
| Keywords: | Representation, Rural idyll, Countryside, Urban development, England |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > The Bartlett School of Planning |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1473023 |
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