COUNTERURBANISATION AND RURAL DEPOPULATION REVISITED - LANDOWNERS, PLANNERS AND THE RURAL-DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

This paper reopens the debate between Weekley (1988) and Rowsell (1989 ) over why pockets of depopulation have persisted within parts of rura l Britain which have experienced net growth through counterurbanisatio n. It argues that Weekley has not fully appreciated the context for lo cal population losses, namely the emergence of a new structural relati onship between people, households, and dwellings, and the growing tens ion between production and consumption interests in-rural locales. Mor eover, the paper disputes claims that depopulation is triggered by the actions of either the landowner or the planner. Drawing on case study material informed by critical realism, it argues that planners and la ndowners have been drawn into an asymmetrical power relationship. This has tended to buttress landed interests and, in so doing, reproduce m echanisms which protect the less populous communities from growth and change. Intensive enquiries have unravelled a number of ways in which landowner strategic conduct can set causal chains in motion which culm inate in a localised population downturn. These cannot be recovered th rough a positivist methodology which presupposes that cause, catalyst and outcome will coexist in time-space. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.