City region thinking, a zombie idea in regional and rural development? Scotland and Finland compared

Abstract

Both regional and rural development have enduring “received wisdoms” to which wise practitioners and policy makers pay lip-service. In the case of the latter the role of land-based industries as drivers of the rural economy is ignored at peril, whilst regional policy makers must pay their respects to cities and towns as the engines of growth. We suggest that city region thinking is a “zombie idea”, which refuses to die, though unsupported by evidence. In this paper we trace the influence of city region thinking in the context of rural Scotland and Finland and explore the way in which it coexists with rural development policy. These two case studies provide examples of different approaches to reconciling the received wisdom and traditions of regional/urban and rural development policy. City region thinking is influential in both countries, but policy legacies and governance structures lead to different outcomes. We suggest that city region thinking may become increasingly anachronistic in the post-Covid world and needs to be superseded by rural/regional development paradigms fully refreshed by evidence of twenty-first century rural-urban relationships.