Welsh Journals

8. THE SELLING OF RURAL WALES Joe Howe INTRODUCTION The experience of Britain's rural economies, such as rural Wales, during the second half of the twentieth century has been one of dramatic transforma- tion. The dominant forces shaping this transformation have been the twin processes of economic restructuring and uneven development. Techno- logical advances, coupled with shifts in the international patterns of resource exploitation, have led to a decline in the relative importance of traditional sources of rural employment such as agriculture, forestry and the other resource sectors. These structural impacts have been compounded by the enduring effect of what Curry (1988) describes as the 'no development ethic' in the countryside. The sentiment that the countryside should be preserved as the antithesis of the town that is, that rural areas should be conserved and urban areas exploited has been encapsulated in national and supranational policy by successive governments. The prevalence of this perspective has restricted economic development opportunities and inhibited attempts to broaden the economic base of rural areas away from certain traditionally accepted activities (Newby, 1987). Thus, in terms of its broad historical effects, restructuring has resulted in the decline of the traditional employment base of Britain's rural regions and a failure in these same areas to develop new forms of economic activity to compensate for this loss. Consequently, although it has traditionally been the task of urban commentators to identify and classify a set of interlinked issues under a generic banner of the 'urban problem' not least because in cities the concentration of populations and segregation of areas according to social class or ethnicity has made these problems more apparent an awareness and appreciation of the existence of a similar set of issues in rural areas has