Introduction to Rural Planning: Economies, Communities and Landscapes provides a critical analysis of the key challenges facing rural places and the ways that public policy and community action shape rural spaces.　

The second edition provides an examination of the composite nature of 'rural planning', which combines land-use and spatial planning elements with community action, countryside management and the projects and programmes of national and supra-national agencies and organisations. It also offers a broad analysis of entrepreneurial social action as a shaper of rural outcomes, with particular coverage of the localism agenda and Neighbourhood Planning in England. With a focus on accessibility and rural transport provision, this book examines the governance arrangements needed to deliver integrated solutions spanning urban and rural places. Through an examination of the ecosystem approach to environmental planning, it links the procurement of ecosystem services to the global challenges of habitat degradation and loss, climate change and resource scarcity and management.

A valuable resource for students of planning, rural development and rural geography, Introduction to Rural Planning aims to make sense of current rural challenges and planning approaches, evaluating the currency of the 'rural' label in the context of global urbanisation, arguing that rural spaces are relational spaces characterised by critical production and consumption tensions.　

Nick Gallent is Professor of Housing and Planning and Head of the Bartlett School of Planning at University College London. He is a Chartered Town Planner and a Chartered Surveyor. His research focuses on UK planning policy as it pertains to housing delivery and as it affects rural communities. He has conducted research for a wide range of funding bodies and is the author or editor of several previous works on planning, housing and communities, the most recent being 'Community Action and Planning' (Policy Press, 2014, edited with Daniela Ciaffi)

Iqbal Hamiduddin is a lecturer in transport planning and housing at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. His research specialisms are in transport, housing and particularly the interface of transport and housing policies in residential design. His PhD thesis on the social implications of residential car reduction was based largely on detailed comparative field research undertaken in different neighbourhoods of Freiburg. He has also investigated different elements of transport planning and housing delivery separately in a variety of projects for organisations including the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the Regional Studies Association and the European Union.

Meri Juntti is a senior lecturer in the Department of Law and Politics at Middlesex University. Her research focuses on agricultural and environmental policy decision-making and implementation in the European Union. She has worked on both EU and domestically funded research projects focussing on a number of EU member states and has authored publications on the discursive construction of environmental policy, the role of the socio-material context in differentiating rural policy outcomes and the nature and role of 'evidence' in the policy process.

Sue Kidd is Head of Planning in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Liverpool. Her research interests focus around integrated planning and management. She has a particular interest in exploring ways in which environmental considerations may be more effectively with economic and social concerns in policy making. Sue is a chartered town planner.

Dave Shaw a Professor of Planning in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Liverpool. He is particularly interested in the way rural areas and rural places are being transformed and the role of planning in that process. He also participates in rural affairs and is currently the Chair of the Mersey Rural Leader programme, represents 'the rural' in the Liverpool City Region's European Investment Fund Sub-group and is a Trustee of the Community Forest Trust.