Rethinking Urban–Rural Dynamics Through the Lens of Social Geography

Dear Colleagues,

With the acceleration of urbanization globally, urban–rural interactions and relationships have become prominent topics of interdisciplinary research, and the key concepts of ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ have been subjected to constant redefinition, moving away from dichotomic views to more inclusive and convergent understandings and interpretations. As such, the long-standing view on the urban–rural continuum has progressively been replaced by a blurring of boundaries that advances a wealth of concepts and research methods to make sense of the new hybrid forms and practices within the urban–rural nexus. Integral to these efforts, social geography has focused on the new hybrid landscapes and structures to gain critical insights into their social construction, driven by globalization, cultural exchanges, economic shifts, migration, technology and infrastructure. Placed at the ‘fringe’, ‘interface’, ‘in-between space’, studies have searched to capture diversified development models, blending mechanisms and patterns, and social mutations in the realm of emerging ‘hybrid geographies’. Despite advances in research dealing with the urban–rural interactions and relationships, fresh approaches are needed to grasp new forms of rurality and urbanity and their mutual interactions and dynamics.

The scope of this Special Issue encompasses social geography as an analytical tool fostering meaning-making beyond binary thinking on the urban and the rural. Focusing on hybrid structures, processes, contexts, and practices where the urban–rural space is a category in its own right, this collection aims to gather together papers that add nuance and emphasis to power distribution, the generation of (in)equality, and identity-building to lay foundations for sustainable futures. Power is key to understand the meanings attributed to these shared hybrid spaces rooted in social relations and economic practices that vary across time and space. With the blurring of boundaries between the urban and the rural, (in)equality and identity take on new meanings and forms that require further re-assessment and re-interpretation. Building on urban–rural interactions and relationships provides a framework with which it is possible to rethink sustainability and resilience through planning and policymaking. We invite manuscripts that engaging in quantitative or/and qualitative approaches tackle with the multidimensional urban–rural dynamics to enrich the theoretical and methodological framework and to better inform policy.

Relevant topics that underpin contributions to this Special Issue, which aims to encourage renewed conversation on the urban–rural nexus, may tentatively include the following areas of interest:

• Multifunctional development pathways;
• Lifestyle transitions and identity hybridization;
• Governance of hybrid landscapes and communities;
• Sustainability and resilience of hybrid territorial systems;
• Pandemic, working patterns and urban-rural interactions;
• Place and context-based policies.

Dr. Claudia Popescu
Dr. Bianca Mitricǎ
Guest Editors

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