Journal of Rural Studies, Vol. 1, No. 4, pp. 381-390 Pergamon Press Ltd. 1985. Printed in Great Britain

Book Reviews

Voorzieningen in Landelijke Gegieden: een Sociaal- Geografisch Onderzoek in Zuidwest-Friesland (Services in rural areas: a geographical study in South West Frisia), A.A.B. van Bemmel, 190 pp., 1984, Geografisch In- stituut, Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht

What are the spatial opportunities, understood as access- ibility to specific locations, in peripheral rural areas? How do residents, living in those areas, use daily needed services? What preferences do they have for the proximity of each of those services? In order to answer these questions the author has indicated accessibility as the shortest distance between a dwelling and the location of activities one wishes to reach.

The spatial behaviour of residents, their preferences for and the utility values of some pre-selected daily services have only been studied in five small villages. However, the distance to the nearest pre-selected services has been determined for each settlement in the research area. These are the objective spatial opportunities of all the residents. After that the author has constructed what he calls the subjective spatial opportunities by multiplication of all those shortest distances by the utility values of the services, and by adding up these utility values per settlement, taking into account the number of outlets, he has designed a functional hierarchy of service centres with supply-side characteristics.

In nearly all parts of this study one can find rags of theories. By that it is not easy to check how far all kinds of assumptions are confirmed by research experiences. For example, the author assumes that residents living in remote rural areas have less spatial opportunities, because of the longer distances between locations of activities, than in urban areas. For that reason activity patterns of residents in peripheral rural areas will be better organised than in the urban ones. The spatial behaviour of those people will therefore be distance-minimalising and less influenced by specific preferences.

The author shows us that residents of peripheral rural areas do indeed minimalise their distances each time they visit a service outlet and he concludes that their spatial behaviour is therefore rational and efficient. But it also appears that most of the inhabitants can find service outlets within a rather short distance of their living place.

Thus the objective opportunities are not so s l ende r - - and neither are the subjective ones, as later on is revealed to US.

Note: A related study by A.A.B. van Bemmel, 'Utility value of services in rural areas', appears on pp. 375-379 of this issue.

In our opinion it is not correct to conclude that distance- minimalising behaviour is rational and efficient. If people make only single-purpose trips, and that is what is asserted here, then this kind of behaviour is the utmost form of inefficiency. Spatial behaviour in remote rural areas is probably satisfactory rather than rational and efficient, because of a combination of many single-purpose trips and a few multi-purpose trips during some periods.

The motives behind the residents' preferences and utility values are missing from this study. There are several reasons why insight into these motives is necessary. First, the scientific discussion on how to measure and generalize about preferences and utility values has not come to an end. Second, motives may serve as a factor of explanation of differences in preferences and utility values. The author explains these differences only by pointing to the presence or absence of some services in villages. Such an ex- planation is not very satisfying. Possible influences, such as emotional attachments to service outlets or agglomer- ation effects, do not play a part.

Our impression is that inhabitants of this particular peripheral rural area do have latent needs with respect to spatial concentrated services and benefits proceeding from them. For it is exactly these services situated in the middle of the residents' range of preferences whose presence or absence exercises influence. These services are, among other things, general practitioner and secondary school. If those services do not exist in villages, their absence is not important, but if they are present then people appreciate them highly.

The idea of a hierarchy of service centres based on utility values is interesting and stimulating. The author has tried to substitute the traditional supply-side hierarchy of service centres for a sort of demand-side hierarchy. One of the advantages of such a hierarchy is that it can be made with less key (service) elements than before, therefore saving time and money.

Although we are sympathetic to the author's replacement exercise (he needs some point of reference in the form of existing ideas and methods with respect to the functional hierarchy) we still think that a hierarchy based on utility values cannot be a substitute for the existing one. A hierarchy made with utility values reflects a situation as wished-for by residents, in other words, it is a situation which does not exist but which ought to. From the point of view of spatial policy it may be better to compare the wished-for hierarchy of service centres in a particular area with the existing one. Possible deficiencies in the present hierarchy can then be found and the question can then be posed as to how far those shortcomings can be removed.

However, such an approach also creates considerable theoretical and technical problems, for inhabitants of

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382 Book Reviews

some region adapt their behaviour to the present spatial opportunities. Therefore, differences between the wished- for and existing hierarchy may not be very sensational. A solution might be to compare the functional hierarchy of service centres as wished-for or preferred by residents living in a less-deprived rural area with the existing one in a more deprived and peripheral region.

The author also gives some policy recommendations. He pleads in favour of a spatial policy that pays attention to the functional dependency of settlements and their residents in rural areas. The population threshold is, seen from a theoretical standpoint, higher in small settlements which are functionally bound together than in each particular small settlement. Although it is worthwhile to consider Cloke's ideas in the context of the Netherlands, we are apprehensive of a detailed and partial elaboration of these ideas into policy proposals; the future social, economic and demographic situation of rural areas is too critical. Personally, we support a kind of planning for decline in which Moseley's policy options have system- atically been placed. The functional dependency of small settlements may, among other things, influence the im- portance of some of these options in a particular region. Because of the original and rather risky ideas we do appreciate this study.

HENK DE HAARD Provinciale Planologische Dienst

Province of Overijssel Zwolle

Netherlands

Crisis and Conservation: Conflict in the British Country- side, Charlie Pye-Smith and Chris Rose, 213 pp., Penguin, London, 1984, £3.95

This book is the latest in a line of very respectable protests about the deplorable state of the British countryside. Its contribution to the argument is also its problem, for it moves the discussion on from mere disaffection to talk of action.

Ten years ago the countryside was as far above criticism as Royalty. Its bland popular literature fell into two categ- ories: natural history, which could sometimes be dignified as ecology; and celebration, sometimes shelved as local history or geography. Its tedious academic literature confined itself to arcane community ecology or wan books on planning. The political truce was one of the country- side's charms: safe from the conflict of the cities; the embodiment of Butskelist consensus; an open field for value-free social science. The survival of consensus was as remarkable as its sudden collapse.

The mould-breaker was Marian Shoard's searing Theft of the Countryside, about which the carpet-of-bluebells groupies came to speak of in the same wheezy breath as The Communist Manifesto. Even now, it is felt to be too controversial to be recommended to at least one M.Sc. course about the countryside; and neither the teachers of such courses nor the groupies could any longer turn to the

academics for assurance. Howard Newby's very respec- tably academic analyses of class structures and hegemony in the real-life countryside of the eighties turns out to be quite as radical as Marion Shoard. A new attraction was added to the countryside's many others: it now smelt of a good fight; it provided easy pretexts for attacking the establishment over secrecy or muddle-headedness; it might even see the triumph of the rambler in the Mountain Goat minibus over the landlord in his Range Rover.

Enter Charlie Pye-Smith and Chris Rose. They have a splendidly rousing introduction which plots the ~privatiz- ation of the heritage' from feudal times to the present, and the belated rear-guard action that began in the nineteenth century. They then go for the jugular, and attack the "agents of destruction': farmers, foresters and the (often overlooked) water engineers. The next two chapters expose some of the restraining forces: planning, in which they still place hope, and the nature conservation move- ment about which they are much more gloomy. They then indulge in a long and encyclopaedic chapter on 'habitat destruction', and finish with a rather broad-brush 'recipe for the future', which is really little more than a pot pourri of pious hopes about sharing the commons, land reform and government accountability on the one hand, and on the other, more specific political action, including, when all else fails, 'direct action'.

The trouble with this kind of call to arms is that it is contained within the covers of a book and not on the accessible pages of a journal. Even journals like Ecos are left high and dry by the tide of this kind of debate. Perhaps the hoary literature of celebration and academic analysis were chosen by publishers just because they don't date. Polemic, however good, rapidly loses its savour. The commander of the Light Brigade didn't have to wait for printers to produce the cry to advance. The wave these authors are seeking to crest moved on before the type was set.

British nature conservation has swept by with amazing speed in the last two years. Water engineering was exposed first as an engineer's work-ticket. Now agriculture and land drainage have been uncovered as shallow disguises for the cultivation of subsidies. Forestry cannot be far behind. The countryside scene resounds to talk of claw-back instead of expansion. Land values are falling. The Government's own countryside bodies have built up their budgets against the national trend. The voluntary bodies have so much labour some don't know what to do with it. Parliamentary committees are closing in on the arrogance of MAFF. The war is far from won, but the battlefield has changed.

What can one now write about the countryside that will stand the printer's delays? Not facts and figures certainly; these are old before they reach the statisticians. Not detailed prescriptions for political action, for the ground is constantly changing. If publishers cannot bring out books in under a year they had better go back to those analysts and celebrants of the consensus years.

ANDREW WARREN Ecology and Conservation Unit

University College London U.K.