Inverness: The Rural and Urban Divide
Across the world, people are moving from the countryside to cities. What tensions are emerging as a result, and how can we address them?
We’re living in an age of cities. By 2050, the UN predicts that 68% of the world’s population will live in urban areas. Today, more than 55% of people already do. The urbanisation trend puts cities of all stripes at the heart of the major global power shifts happening this century—and the mounting tensions that accompany them.
As the prominence of cities increases, the divide between urban and rural areas is widening. Life today is a drastically different experience depending on whether you live within or outside of a city. The gap between the urban and the rural is made up of many things: transport, investment, services, infrastructure, digital connectivity, access to opportunities, and even fair representation. It’s perhaps no wonder, then, that Scotland’s sparsely-populated areas expect to lose a third of their population by 2046, according to estimates by the James Hutton Institute.
The Scottish city of Inverness is one of the fastest-growing cities in Europe, with a population increase of 15% since 2001. It’s an interesting case study for the broader trend because a quarter of the total Highland population already lives in or around it. Striking the right balance between urban growth and rural empowerment could see Inverness become a global leader amongst small cities in the years ahead. So how big is the challenge?
Shifting demographics
Inverness became home to Scotland’s newest university, the University of the Highlands and Islands, in 2011. The institution has created a new pull for younger people from the surrounding rural areas, but the outward flow of young, educated people from the countryside has varied roots. The features — or lack of features — of the rural locations themselves is a major contributor. The Recharging Rural Report, published in 2018, identified that two key factors are prompting youth migration away from rural communities: a lack of viable employment prospects and poor digital connectivity infrastructure.
The problems of rural life are, causing a depopulation spiral. This, in turn, makes rural life less viable and appealing for everyone, and drives further outward migration. Older people are also drawn to cities, attracted by easier access to retail, healthcare, and workplaces, especially as essential services like banks and post offices shutter their sites in rural areas. Fewer people means too few consumers for businesses and less income for the authorities to invest back into the community. The ultimate result? A lack of facilities and services—which prompts yet more people to leave.
It’s not only rural population decline that’s an issue though. The composition of the population left behind also changes. It’s not just fewer people, but different people. Those who remain tend to have lower incomes and fewer options, creating less mix and less resilience in the community. To make matters worse, such issues and their consequences for rural citizens are often lost in the scope of national conversations, with action concentrated in areas with the highest density of people — i.e. cities.
Rural resilience, rural vulnerability
From Melbourne to Manchester and from Berlin to Bangalore, the effects of urbanisation are accelerating all across the world. While the main focus is often on the cities, the trend impacts both urban and rural communities. To create better conditions for a place like Inverness, the rural areas have to gain too.
Professor Sarah Skerratt is director of programmes at the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She’s also a renowned researcher who spent 22 years at Scotland's Rural College, a higher education institution specialised in agriculture, studying the resilience and vulnerability of rural communities. Sarah believes that Scotland’s rural communities lack a voice or a platform to express themselves and that this issue is often overlooked by policymakers and decision-makers. She says:
“A vast ‘other’ exists in rural areas: those who aren’t represented by land-based organisations, for example. There’s something like 18,000 farms but an actual population of one million in rural Scotland. Those non-farmers still experience rural life, but they don’t belong to a single-voice organisation that represents their interests more widely. Of course, there are democractic means of being heard such as through local councils, MSPs, and MPs. In reality, though, most of the time it’s left up to individual champions to raise the profile of an issue or cause affecting rural communities. But champions are human beings: they only have so much capacity and resilience, and they can easily burn out.”
So how can we better manage the relationship between rural and urban? How can we ensure rural populations have a voice, adequate representation, and that things are fair?
New cross-border coalitions
One possible solution is the creation of rural coalitions to rival the urban equivalents. If Rotterdam and Toronto can work together where their interests align, then why not the Scottish Highlands and Rural Denmark, too?
Dr Bettina Bock is professor of inclusive rural development at Wageningen University and professor of population decline and quality of rural life at the University of Groningen, both in the Netherlands. She’s also involved with ROBUST, an EU-funded knowledge project that includes 11 “living labs” representing typical rural-urban settings throughout Europe. She believes that the rural coalitions are a productive venture—and perhaps an inevitable one. Bettina says:
“We often see big cities collaborate with one another and lobby together to get what they want. It’s a different way of exerting power and taking action. It happens away from the nation-state and the formal structures of democracy. In the Dutch context, we’re already seeing rural communities start to do the same; to work in collaboration with peers to better represent the issues that impact them. This dialogue back and forth—not only between nation-states and rural populations but between cities and their rural neighbours as well—will grow more and more important. Some of the biggest challenges the world faces require solutions like sustainable energy production and localised food resources, which involve collaboration between rural and urban areas. We will likely see the interdependence increase.”
This century, Inverness has the opportunity to become a stronger, better-known and more resilient city. But no city exists in a silo. The city must ensure a good relationship with its rural neighbours by bringing the countryside in as part of its identity and future plans. If it can get the balance right, this small Scottish city could set the global standard for cities seeking to navigate the rural and urban divide.
As always, thank you to Lauren Razavi for her research and editorial support, and to Robyn Johnston for her illustrations.
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The pandemic has prompted a widespread rise in both state and corporate surveillance, alongside a shift towards more authoritarian policies.
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