Category: Society

Rural Mobility

Gary Bosworth / / Economy, Society

Addressing the needs for improving rural mobility is a wide-ranging question.  Our research to date has identified a range of innovations that could make a real difference – not all based on technology.  The first requirement is organisational innovation to bring public budgets and transport planners together to address to collective mobility needs of rural people, not segregated between health, education recreation and work-related categories of travel.

Planning and infrastructure development are also needed to enable rural areas to keep pace with and embrace more radical mobility technologies that are coming on-stream.  Our view is that rural hubs (e.g. https://mobihubs.eu) are an important focus for “first mile” or “last mile” mobility solutions, for both people and goods.  Over time, these hubs can also provide business opportunities through increased footfall, sites for mobile public services (including health outreach services) and locations for the development of innovation hubs and flexible workspaces, thus reducing the need for longer distance commuting.

Building on this model, autonomous vehicles (such as the one being trialled by the University of Lincoln pictured here), drones, demand-responsive transport, lift-shares facilitated by smart payment technologies can operate alongside, and enhance traditional forms of public transport.  These are all forming our initial thoughts for a Rural Mobility Toolkit which will be produced with Midlands Connect in September. More details to follow soon…

The Future of Rural Mobility

Gary Bosworth / / Economy, Society

Rural Visions has just started an exciting new project to explore the scope for advances in mobility and connectivity technologies to improve social and economic development across rural areas of the Midlands.  Funded by Midlands Connect, this project will develop a toolkit of options that can be implemented by policy-makers and by pro-active, innovation local communities themselves.  Critically, this project starts by considering the challenges faced by communities and businesses in rural areas and then seeks to identify how new technology and different types of innovation can make a difference.

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Rural Communities – cohesion or isolation?

Gary Bosworth / / Society

The latest meeting of Rural Visions focused on rural socio-economic challenges and sought to identify the key research questions that could help to address these.  A central theme to the conversation was rural isolation and loneliness – not unique to rural areas – but a growing concern with rising rates of rural homelessness and ageing rural populations.

Dr Wesley Key discussed his research into the “older old” in rural areas whose service needs become harder to meet. Fen Kipley highlighted the specific challenges of creating cohesive communities in villages on former military bases in rural areas and Dr Gary Bosworth identified the growing penetration of digital technologies as a further threat to the sociability of village communities for those who are off-line.

More positively, we learned of a number of new projects that involve members of Rural Visions.  Prof. Carenza Lewis described how heritage-based initiatives not only provide a valuable social outlet but they also address a topic that interests older people and enable them to share their knowledge in spaces where it is most valued.  Dr Jennifer Jackson also described the successes that she has seen through her involvement in the Lottery-funded TED programme in Lincolnshire which simply provides opportunities for older people to get together and Talk, Eat and Drink.

Two questions will be examined further by members of the group with emerging research proposals to be presented at a future Rural Visions meeting.  These are: (i) To what extent are rural communities becoming less cohesive, and how does this impact on certain groups of rural society. This will begin by revisiting the work of Tonnies and rethinking its relevance for the 21st century along with the perpetuating representation of community-spirited rural places. (ii) How should we define and understand isolation and what can be done to alleviate rural isolation?  This may include new mobility technologies but also social innovations and community-led initiatives as well as the different types of community spaces or “third places” (Oldenburg) that can strengthen rural community cohesion. As Rural Visions develops, these are questions that will continue to bring us together in our quest to improve contemporary rural lives.

Rural Visions and our Civic Mission

Gary Bosworth / / Economy, Interpreting Rurality, Society

Last week saw the official launch of Rural Visions, the University of Lincoln’s new research group focusing on economic and social geography of rural areas. We began with a discussion about Rural Visions’ role in contributing to Lincoln’s mission to be a New Civic University.

Having been established with the backing of major institutions in Lincoln and Lincolnshire, the University has a responsibility to contribute to economic growth and prosperity, cultural enrichment and social wellbeing across the region, alongside enhancing education and skills.

Although “civic” can denote urban areas, we stress the importance of the wider meaning of the term: “relating to the duties or activities of people in relation to their town, city, or local area.”[1]

For our work to provide a platform for informing activities that sustain a civic mission across the largely rural county of Lincolnshire, we must draw on a blend of international research and local engagement, especially with rural businesses and communities.

At Lincoln, we already have established research centres and institutes covering environmental and climatic threats (Lincoln Centre for Water and Planetary Health), public health (Institute For Health) and innovation in the Agri-food sector (LIAT). Rural Visions focuses on social science, economic and community issues to fill a critical void for the wellbeing of people in our region.

Although we aim to collectively assemble beneath three specific research strands, i.e. Economic Visions, Cultural Visions and Policy Visions, in order to encompass and indicate the vast wealth and range of diverse rural subject areas and research activities, we also acknowledge, appreciate and welcome the vast opportunities for further interaction between and across the strands.

The University is rightly proud of its contribution to supporting economic development. Rural Visions aims to strengthen this further through its “Economic Vision” strand of activities. This includes work to investigate the role of new technologies in creating economic opportunities in the region (e.g. CORA), studies of rural innovation (RUN-IN; SalFar), evaluation projects to influence rural funding initiatives (LEADER) and new research to investigate the role of changing population and migration dynamics across the region (CEERA; Boston).

These projects all draw from local and international dimensions. Working with European partners, the team is advancing theory on Social Innovation in rural areas (Bosworth et al., 2016) and projects from other parts of the UK as well as China are exploring how best to capitalise on rural tourism potential within the limits of sustainability (FeiFei Xu, 2018). Although not always considered “rural”, the significant impact of military land uses in the county, and new uses for redundant sites is another specialist area where the University must continue to play a leading advocacy role (Kipley, 2016).

A common themes across much of this work is the role of the Community – whether as research participants or as enactors of change themselves. As Rural Visions develops, we recognise the importance of building multi-actor networks to ground our activities in the real challenges and needs of local populations.  We also aim to showcase our innovative and broad-ranging methods tailored to rural research as these can set us apart from other research teams. This will attract the best postgraduate students and ensure that we can apply the most effective tools and techniques to carry out the research that can make a real difference to rural communities, wherever in the world that research takes place.

Rural Visions’ next event, on 4th April will bring together some short presentations of these innovative rural methods as the starting point from which to build a Rural Research Methods handbook. A full list of our upcoming events is here: https://www.lincoln.ac.uk/home/geography/research/ruralvisions/events/

[1] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/

Challenges for delivering rural broadband

Gary Bosworth / / Economy, Planning, Society

On Tuesday 23rd January, Dr Gary Bosworth is representing the University of Lincoln at the Scottish Affairs select committee where he will draw on a range of past research projects to offer advise on the best ways to deliver better broadband to more remote rural areas.  The initial submission of evidence is available here:  Rural Broadband Call for Evidence – University of Lincoln

In particular, we highlight the need for policymakers to help to bring together enough demand to build an attractive package for private sector providers.  This requires significant engagement to highlight the potent opportunities that better broadband can provide to communities and businesses in rural areas.  To enable businesses to take advantage of the technology, any roll-out of improved technology must also be accompanied by training programmes, effective communication and opportunities for firms to try out new technology before making significant investments.  We also warn against approaches that assume “digital is best” which can risk marginalising people who are less comfortable with new technology whilst promoting opportunities for universities as well as the public sector to act as key facilitators in delivering the skills needed for rural areas to take advantage of increased digital connectivity.

The progress of the Select Committee can be viewed here: Scottish Affairs Committee and the panel can be viewed at: http://parliamentlive.tv/