Cities, hinterlands and disconnected urban-rural development: Perspectives from sparsely populated areas

This article introduces the special issue 'Rural hinterland development in sparsely populated areas (SPAs): new challenges and opportunities arising from urbanisation within the periphery'. It problematises the relationships between growing cities and hinterland areas in SPAs, such as those commonly found in Arctic, Outback and similar remote resource peripheries of developed countries. Many SPAs are rapidly urbanising, with polarised development becoming an ever-increasing concern for regional planners and policy-makers. This special issue contributes to debates about the impact that urban growth and city-centric development strategies in SPAs might have on the development prospects for small and distant settlements in the hinterland. We first discuss why SPAs are different from other rural contexts when it comes to urban-rural interactions and introduce the idea of regional disconnectedness as a defining feature of SPAs. We then review the papers in this collection, which include perspectives from northern Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Scotland, Alaska, and Australia, and position them according to their contributions to theory, policy and practice. The special issue challenges assumptions that city centric regional development in SPAs will automatically generate spillover or backwash effects for the hinterland. It emphasises the need to consider diverse mobility flows within SPAs as part of urban-rural interactions. It also raises attention to micro-scale urbanisation within the hinterland, with housing, services, and amenities increasingly concentrating in a few small towns. The final discussion outlines important areas for research into more effective urban-rural partnership building in SPAs and on how to embrace regional disconnectedness for more targeted hinterland development.