Counterurbanisation and rural depopulation revisited: Landowners, planners and the rural development process

This paper reopens the debate between Weekley (1988) and Rowsell (1989) over why pockets of depopulation have persisted within parts of rural Britain which have experienced net growth through counterurbanisation. It argues that Weekley has not fully appreciated the context for local population losses, namely the emergence of a new structural relationship between people, households, and dwellings, and the growing tension between production and consumption interests in rural locales. Moreover, the paper disputes claims that depopulation is triggered by the actions of either the landowner or the planner. Drawing on case study material informed by critical realism, it argues that planners and landowners have been drawn into an asymmetrical power relationship. This has tended to buttress landed interests and, in so doing, reproduce mechanisms which protect the less populous communities from growth and change. Intensive enquiries have unravelled a number of ways in which landowner strategic conduct can set causal chains in motion which culminate in a localised population downturn. These cannot be recovered through a positivist methodology which presupposes that cause, catalyst and outcome will coexist in time-space.