Rural Accessibility in European Regions explores concepts, methodologies, and case studies dealing with accessibility in European rural areas, embracing cultural, socioeconomic, and governance aspects that play a key role for accessibility policies in rural and peripheral areas. In the first part, the chapters introduce rural accessibility challenges, present a methodology to support policymaking for enhancing accessibility in rural areas and apply it to case studies in the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, and Sweden. In the second part, additional cases from Poland, Germany, Greece, and France provide alternative approaches to the topic, and a research agenda is proposed. Overall, the book contributes to a conceptualisation of rural accessibility, addressing challenges and potentials for rural accessibility and urban–rural relationships in European regions. The book fills a gap in the existing bodies of literature on accessibility and on rural planning, bridging the two spheres with an interdisciplinary approach to rural accessibility for mobility, planning, and regional studies.

Rural Accessibility in European Regions explores concepts, methodologies, and case studies dealing with accessibility in European rural areas, embracing cultural, socioeconomic, and governance aspects that play a key role for accessibility policies in rural and peripheral areas. In the first part, the chapters introduce rural accessibility challenges, present a methodology to support policymaking for enhancing accessibility in rural areas and apply it to case studies in the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, and Sweden. In the second part, additional cases from Poland, Germany, Greece, and France provide alternative approaches to the topic, and a research agenda is proposed. Overall, the book contributes to a conceptualisation of rural accessibility, addressing challenges and potentials for rural accessibility and urban–rural relationships in European regions. The book fills a gap in the existing bodies of literature on accessibility and on rural planning, bridging the two spheres with an interdisciplinary approach to rural accessibility for mobility, planning, and regional studies.

Despite an EU-wide commitment to rural development, research has rarely focused on the lives of young people in rural areas, their experiences in education and employment, their perceptions of policies relevant to them, and their possibilities of participation. Based on a two-year European research project on policies and young people in rural development, this edited volume examines these issues and considers young people's experiences of rural life in Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Portugal and Scotland. The volume is organized thematically with each chapter addressing a specific topic in one or more countries. These topics comprise: the attractiveness of rural areas to young people; the impact of programmes under the European Employment Guidelines; rural youth in local community development and partnerships; rural development programmes and their impact on youth integration; the role of social networks; and the transition from education to employment. A number of implications for policy and practice are drawn out in conclusion. This book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the future of rural areas and with those who live in the European countryside.

This book is one of the main outcomes of the projects “Development Programmes and Rural Change in the European Union: governance, results and lessons to share”and “Successes and failures in the practice of neoendogenous rural development in the European Union (1991-2013)”, funded both of them by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. This publication aims, on one side, to clarify and deepen the knowledge of the social, economic and territorial effects of the LEADER approach, and, on the other, to analyze the importante of the participation of several stakeholders (young people and women) as well as some traditional activities –agriculture- or modern ones (tourism) linked all of them to the rich cultural and natural heritage of these areas. It also provides an in-depth study of the causes that lead to the generation of successful projects in the practice of neoendogenous rural development and also explores the reasons that cause certain projects to fail in the path towards LEADER support so that they are finally not implemented. In addition, it is shown the problems, results and best practices that cause the neoendogenous rural development in different areas inside of the European Union: Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and United Kingdom. Thereby it helps to improve the decision-making in rural development, both on a local and regional scale. The multidisciplinary and international character of the authors, as well as the specificity of the research trajectory of each of them, in the analysis of rural development, enriches the publication and facilitates the different and critical reflections on the contributions, errors and meaning of the neoendogenous local development. Researchers in this discipline and technicians working in the practice of rural development along the European Union are the main audience of the book.

Rural areas are often viewed as isolated and stagnating areas and urban areas as their opposites. Against such a backdrop, this book seeks to unveil a set of dynamics that view rural areas as ‘translocal’ in the sense that they are ‘changing’ and ‘interconnected’. Social transformations take place in rural areas as the result of intense exchanges between different people, settings and geographies. Accordingly, rural-urban but also rural-rural interrelations on international and national scales are strongly contributing to rural change. Translocal ruralism is exemplified through the analysis of local and global migratory flows, the activities of rural firms in national and global arenas, the spread of different forms of transportation and dislocation, and the growing information society, which enables rural spaces to be connected to the world and improves new ways of interconnection and sociability practices. The book is structured into two parts, which intertwine the dynamics of rural spaces. The first part, ‘Linking nodes: people and networks connecting places’, is concerned with mobilities such as migration and commuting, and the establishment of national and global networks. The second part, ‘International mobilities: a tension between scales’, analyses the dynamics of international migration and mobilities in rural areas.

Leading researchers from around the world show, in this volume, the importance of accessibility in contemporary issues such as rural depopulation, investments in public services and public transport, and transport infrastructure investments in Europe. The trade-offs between accessibility, economic development and equity are comprehensively examined, and a variety of approaches to measuring accessibility and equality presented. The book’s interdisciplinary contributions also provide different geographical contexts, from the US to various European and developing countries, and cover ex ante and ex post evaluation of transport investment. Improving transport accessibility is a main objective in transport policy and planning in developed and developing countries all over the world. Investment is motivated by the need to develop and/or reduce spatial or social inequalities. However, the economic and equity implications of investments in transport are not straightforward. The concepts of accessibility and equity can be defined and operationalized in many different ways, influencing outcomes and conclusions. Moreover, equity and efficiency goals are often conflicting. Accessibility models not only help to explain spatial and transport patterns in developed and developing countries but are also powerful tools to explain the equity and efficiency impacts of urban and transport policies and projects. This state-of-the-art overview of the accessibility–economic efficiency–equity relationship will appeal to researchers as well as transport and urban planners interested in accessibility issues and transport/regional developments.