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Abstract
The urban and the rural are increasingly interconnected. Rural areas have become places of consumption, as leisure and recreation have become important functions of rural areas. There are also indications that increased urbanisation even leads to a stronger appreciation of green areas situated far beyond city limits. Rural areas with their highly valued natural amenities nowadays seem increasingly to host urban wellbeing, given the positive relation found between green areas and human wellbeing. We provide empirical evidence for this urban–rural interconnection, using results from a survey in the Netherlands. In addition to their attachment to local and regional green places, survey results show that residents of the capital city of Amsterdam have a high appreciation of a wide range of natural, rural places throughout the country. We argue that these (until now invisible) urban–rural ties should be made more visible because these natural areas enjoyed by urban residents can no longer be taken for granted. Financial and other support for nature conservation are therefore needed. However, to organise support for nature can often be problematic because nature is a public good and collective action is often difficult to launch. The invisible and distant ties of urban dwellers for rural areas complicate the task even more. Nevertheless, it is increasingly recognised that the Internet opens many doors for community building and may help to overcome the “illogic” of collective action. In the research project “Sympathy for the Commons”, we aim to investigate the possibilities provided by the internet by building online communities around nature areas and enquiring into the available support and funding that these communities can provide.
Highlights
The urban and the rural are increasingly interconnected places [1,2]
We explore both theoretically and empirically these until now mostly invisible urban–rural ties. We argue that these urban–rural ties should be made more visible since such natural areas enjoyed by urban residents cannot be taken for granted, and that financial resources and more support in general are required for nature conservation
There are indications that increased urbanisation may even lead to a stronger appreciation of green areas for recreation [5]
Summary
The urban and the rural are increasingly interconnected places [1,2]. The post-productivist countryside offers retreat from the negative aspects of city life resulting in recreational activities, second homes and processes of counter-urbanisation [3,4]. By knowing the positive correlation between green areas and human wellbeing [6], it seems that rural areas with highly valued natural amenities are nowadays increasingly host to urban wellbeing These important urban–rural connections have remained largely invisible, in that city dwellers for the most part formally resided in the urban, but their strong attachment to rural places was not registered in any way. After making these formerly invisible ties visible, we address the governance step: can we build viable online communities?
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