What Future for Rural Areas? Scenarios for Possible Development Paths

The purpose of this chapter is to outline the main trends for a prospective study of rural areas, based on a brief presentation of future scenarios that respond to the need to identify the main potential avenues of development for these regions. The purpose of these differentiated but well-reasoned scenarios is to foster reflection on the various possibilities, by envisaging extreme trajectories of change. This work helps reflect upon differentiated development processes, adapted to the idiosyncrasies of rural and peri-urban areas. We examine successively five major, but often overlapping, possibilities of future development, respectively: (1) the possible preservation of agricultural activities and their prevalence; (2) the unrelenting rise of urbanization and peri-urbanization; (3) the role of industry and business in rural areas; (4) the development of services to individuals and of the residential economy; (5) the coexistence of different land uses, and competition between them, in certain areas. As a result, the five scenarios proposed for the development of rural and peri-urban areas correspond to the following items: (1) Towards a preservation of agricultural activities?; (2) The unavoidable progress of peri-urbanization; (3) Intensification of industry and business; (4) The countryside: a new El Dorado for the service sector?; (5) Mixed or competing land uses: an arena of conflict and segregation?