In urban studies, the ‘rural’ has been defined as a subordinate space of contradictions, an uninhabitable place to tame, of depopulation to contrast, of idyllic countryside and nature to protect, a place for leisure, a productive platform, or an expendable resource, often flattened and objectized, overlooking and underestimating its complexity. The ‘rural existence’ is often legitimized by planning mechanisms considered outdated in urban contexts. The notion of ‘rural’ is proposed not as a defined place but as a lens from which to study territories, phenomena, and conditions. Even those that appear as strictly ‘urban problems’ have an effect elsewhere. Researchers are challenged to understand these effects, to look at less studied territories, and to bring alternative perspectives from ‘known’ issues. Therefore, we should not consider what happens in the rural and the urban as separate phenomena but instead as reciprocally intertwined. The urbanization process is closely related to agrarian and production transformation, while rural elements are present in urban settings and vice versa: in this light, we can assert that the urban question is a rural question. In order to contribute in deconstructing universalist theories that perpetuate the urban-rural divide, we need theory generated from geographic areas where the rural is much more than the non-urban: territories where the rural is vital to the livelihood of many and essential for the understanding of socio-spatial dynamics.

This track addresses the complexity of rural territories by including research methodologies and approaches, new epistemologies, planning scenarios and proposals for large-open spaces, productive and natural landscapes, climate and just transition, multispecies planning, and urban-to-rural migration, among others. The track proposes to open a dialogue and debate on emerging visions of planning and inhabiting the ‘rural.’ It aims to explore, beyond an obsolete view of the division between the city and the countryside, places where rural practices occur inside agglomerations and where forms of urbanization are happening in natural and agricultural territories. The track aims to enrich this discussion by welcoming experiences from the Global South and Global East.

Keywords and topics:

• Planning and inhabiting the rural
• Rural ecologies and rural planning
• Urbanization in rural territories
• Rural practices in the urban environment
• Multispecies planning
• Productive landscapes
• The “rural” in feminist and postcolonial perspectives
• Urban-rural ecosystem services