Introduction: Landscape Change and Rural Development

Abstract

European rural landscapes are changing. Flows of capital, people, goods and information affect functions and forms of the rural landscape and change its character and, more or less, coordinated policies for agriculture, landscape and rural development are applied at different levels. Rural landscapes constitute a number of resources which in various ways can be mobilized by the rural actors and the local landscape is a suitable spatial level for studying and analysing rural transitions and their socio-ecological context. Studying landscapes in transition involves a change of symbolic values (cultural heritage, values and identities), productive structures and functions and ecological/environmental aspects of sustainability. Rural research, especially in the context of sustainable rural development, can benefit from such diverse approaches in understanding and analysing the different aspects of rural landscape and its changes. The papers of this special issue demonstrate the interchange of theories, concepts and methodological approaches in defining, describing, analysing, understanding and unravelling the complex realities of the rural landscape today, with a European emphasis, from different disciplines.