Planning for Recreation in Rural England

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze recent rural strategy initiatives in England in an attempt to explore the relationship between planning policy and the provision of outdoor recreation. Notwithstanding a wider rhetoric of accessibility to the countryside, much recreational planning activity has been based on the discriminatory notion of acceptable leisure activities. Acceptability in this case is associated with a land use planning system in which land itself assumes a form of naturalness, in contrast to its uses, which are seen to be socially constructed. This dualism is based not on any definition of demand, need, or public interest, but on a continuing spatial determinism in which rights of land ownership are constructed as both socially and morally superior to other rights. This continues to legitimize a rationalized form of protection through the statutory planning system.