New rural economies: Introduction to the special themed issue

The initial idea for this special issue emerged from a session on the evolution of new regional economies, held as part of the Institute of Australian Geographers annual conference in Wollongong in 2011. The session focused on the forces of change affecting regional economies and the communities they support, including the changing international demand for local resources, shifting demographics associated with extant in- and out-migration patterns and processes, boom and bust economic cycles, and the growing influence of amenity values over rural land uses. Empirically, most if not all papers approached these themes from an Australasian perspective. The challenges faced by rural and regional communities are well recognised but also complex, leading rural geographers and sociologists to study economic transformation from many angles, including post-productivism, multi-functionality and neoliberalism. An important aim of this special session, then, was to consolidate some of the more important and yet still disparate research themes current in Australasian rural geography but also to 'think through' the ways in which the then mineral and energy resources boom was reconfiguring economy, population, policy and environment across rural Australasia.