The ‘Built Rural’ – Housing, Renewable Energy and Critical Service Infrastructures

Gallent, Nick; Scott, Mark; Blair, Neale and Mabon, Leslie (2025). The ‘Built Rural’ – Housing, Renewable Energy and Critical Service Infrastructures. In: Scott, Mark; Sturzaker, John; Gallent, Nick; Parker, Gavin; Burnett, Amy and Mell, Ian eds. Rural Planning Futures: Principles, Policy and Practice in the UK and Ireland. New York: Routledge, pp. 60–83.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003423164-4

Abstract

This chapter details the nature and scope of the ‘built rural’. It contends that the built rural, comprising economic, social-cultural, and environmental infrastructures, is the domain of settlement planning, of land-use and development changes that are traditionally under the purview of planning control: housing, retail and employment, energy, schools, transport, service infrastructure and so forth. Taking three examples of built infrastructures, namely housing, renewable energy, and critical service infrastructures, the chapter begins by outlining the drivers of rural housing stress, rooted in counter-urbanisation and planning constraint, key challenges around critical energy infrastructure, and the familiar domain of service infrastructure: why ‘thinner’ rural markets are unattractive to private enterprise and why higher per capital delivery costs present an obstacle to public service delivery. How the delivery of these key infrastructures is complicated by unfolding societal challenges is discussed, before three examples of effective planning and partnership, often with affected communities, are presented from across the UK and Ireland. The chapter concludes on lessons for future planning practice.

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