Regions and Communities Dividing? Australian Rural Development in a Multifunctional Context

In Australia, an increasingly clear divide - economic, demographic, social and spatial - appears to be opening up between regions contingent on their abilities to offer to residents and visitors diverse employment opportunities, heterogeneous social and cultural avenues of expression, and attractive, inspiring landscapes. In many other parts of the world, it has become customary to view this rift as signifying a wider structural shift in advanced economics and societies from productivism to post-productivism, or a post-productivist transition (Halfacree, 1997; 2007; Ilbery & Bowler, 1998; Wilson, 2001). ... The purpose of this chapter is to explore how the drivers of consumption, protection and production are moulding land uses, demographic structures and the internal social dynamics (e.g. social cohesion) in three Australian rural communities. In the remainder of this chapter, I briefly review recent conceptualisations of rural space in the aftermath of the post-productivist transition (PPT) debate, noting the considerable latent potential within 'multifunctionality'. The bulk of the paper is concerned with interpreting the recent social, economic and demographic dynamics of three New South Wales (Australia) rural communities, positioned in quite starkly contrasting environmental, locational and agronomic settings, via Holmes' conceptual framework. In this way, I aim to contribute to the development of a more carefully contextualized account of contemporary rural change, one that enables the prediction and envisaging of future trajectories and geographies for different types of region.