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Rural planning, rural communities

We have an ongoing interest in the future of rural communities and the planning and development challenges that arise. Rural areas are at the sharp end of many of our most pressing issues - climate change, biodiversity collapse, food security, energy production and the route to net zero carbon, which needs to involve a massive shift in how we travel for our everyday needs.

You can read some of our thinking around this subject in the following:

  • The quiet life must be heard - an article by Hana Loftus for Icon magazine, arguing for a new focus on rural issues (2020)
  • Growing Villages: How should village growth be shaped in rural areas? - a practical guide to developing rural-specific planning and design approaches through co-creation with local communities, written by Hana Loftus as part of her three-year secondment to the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service, where she produced nine Village Design Guide SPDs.
  • You can read more about this work in Going Rural, an article Hana wrote for Cambridge Architecture.

Visit our Rural projects page to see how our thinking has shaped our approach to projects that we have delivered at a range of scales.