This book examines the multiple ways in which rural regions in Europe are being restructured through globalization and the regional development responses that they have adopted. It provides an understanding of the key challenges and opportunities for rural regions arising from the major economic, social, political and cultural changes associated with globalization, including trade liberalization and economic deregulation, increased international migration, and the rise of global consciousness about environmental issues. Drawing on examples and findings from a major European research project, DERREG, the book presents detailed case studies of ten regions in different parts of Europe, exploring the factors that lead to different experiences of globalization in each of the regions, and highlighting examples of good practice in regional development responses. The book concludes by proposing a typology of regional responses to globalization and considering the policy implications of the research findings. As such, ’Globalization and Europe’s Rural Regions’ is important reading for geographers, sociologists, planners and economists interested in understanding the impact of globalization in rural regions, and for rural development professionals seeking to mobilize effective responses.

This book provides an up-to-date account of the many processes shaping and transforming rural space in various parts of the world. The various case studies focus on the multi-functionality of the rural world and the driving forces behind it. The book demonstrates that rural areas are no longer simply characterized by an agricultural economy, and instead accommodate multiple complementary activities. It also touches upon two major changes that have taken place. The first is the process of rurbanization, which has led to the clear distinction between town and countryside becoming blurred: urban traits have penetrated rural areas, and rural traits have invaded towns. The second change is that rural areas are increasingly seen as multi-functional, providers not only of food and other natural resources but also locations for the generation of renewable energy (wind farms, solar farms, biogas) and regions for the preservation of biodiversity. These transformations have resulted in a new understanding and self-image of rural areas and their populations.

By the end of this century, 9 out of 10 Europeans will live in an urban area. But what kind of city will they call home? You'll find all the answers in CITY, TRANSFORMED, the new essay series from the European Investment Bank. This panoramic first essay in the series lays out a great sweeping history of European cities over the last fifty years—and showcases new directions being taken by some of our most innovative cities. Urban experts Greg Clark, Tim Moonen, and Jake Nunley based at University College London take a definitive look at how Europe's cities transformed from post-industrial decline to thriving metropolises that are as prosperous and liveable as anywhere on Earth.

This book focuses on the transformation of rural places, peoples, and land endemic to the contemporary manifestations of globalization. Migration, global economic restructuring, and climate change are rapidly transforming rural places across the globe. Yet, global attention characteristically focuses on urban social and economic issues, neglecting the continued roles of rural people and places. Organized around the three core themes of demographic change, rural-urban partnerships and innovations, and landscape change, the case studies included in this volume represent both the Global North and Global South and underscore the complexity and multi-scalar nature of these contemporary challenges in rural development, planning, and sustainability. This book would be valuable supplementary reading for both students and professionals in the fields of rural land management and rural planning.

Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.

Contemporary immigration processes, e.g. forced migration and labour induced mobility as well as lifestyle and leisure oriented movements increasingly affect areas in Europe that are considered as peripheral or rural. This edited collection sheds light to the diversity of in-migration, their specific implications for development and strategies to cope with. Contributions from various sub-disciplines of the social sciences, e.g., human and cultural geography, sociology and spatial planning with different regional foci, aim at encouraging theoretical discussions, enhancing empirical knowledge and providing stimuli for practitioners involved in migration and development issues. The structure of the volume therefore follows four main themes: (1) conceptual reflections on immigration to peripheral rural areas and development prospects; (2) patterns and types of immigration processes, drawing on various case studies from all over Europe; (3) realms of integration, i.e., housing, economy and social life; (4) immigration management with a special emphasis to regional and local strategies, undertaken by policy-makers, the private sector and civil society.

Essays that examine globalization’s effects with an emphasis on the interplay of race and rurality as it occurs across diverse geographies and peoples. Issues of migration, environment, rurality, and the visceral “politics of place” and “space” have occupied center stage in recent electoral political struggles in the United States and Europe, suffused by an antiglobalization discourse that has come to resonate with Euro-American peoples. Race and Rurality in the Global Economysuggests that this present fractious global politics begs for closer attention to be paid to the deep-rooted conditions and outcomes of globalization and development. From multiple viewpoints the contributors to this volume propose ways of understanding the ongoing processes of globalization that configure peoples and places via a politics of rurality in a capitalist world economy, and through an optics of raciality that intersects with class, gender, identity, land, and environment. In tackling the dynamics of space and place, their essays address matters such as the heightened risks and multiple states of insecurity in the global economy; the new logics of expulsion and primitive accumulation dynamics shaping a new “savage sorting”; patterns of resistance and transformation in the face of globalization’s political and environmental changes; the steady decline in the livelihoods of people of color globally and their deepened vulnerabilities; and the complex reconstitution of systemic and lived racialization within these processes. This book is an invitation to ask whether our dystopia in present politics can be disentangled from the deepening sense of “white fragility” in the context of the historical power of globalization’s raced effects.

Globalization and Development draws upon the experiences of the Latin American and Caribbean region to provide a multidimensional assessment of the globalization process from the perspective of developing countries. Based on a study by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), this book gives a historical overview of economic development in the region and presents both an economic and noneconomic agenda that addresses disparity, respects diversity, and fosters complementarity among regional, national, and international institutions. For orders originating outside of North America, please visit the World Bank website for a list of distributors and geographic discounts at http://publications.worldbank.org/howtoorder or e-mail [email protected].