This appendix provides an overview of what we mean by rural areas in Britain. The basis of our argument in this book has been the paucity of development of housing that is inclusive of all sections of the population, and which can help facilitate the economic potential of rural localities. The thrust of this argument is that housing development for lower-income groups has been stymied in the smallest settlements of the three nations that constitute Britain, but how do we define which communities we are talking about?

Reviews of definitions emphasise the variety of ways in which rurality can be classified (WAG, 2008c). In part, this variety reflects the purposes such definitions are intended to serve. There are two elements in defining rural areas for this book. The first element reflects the fact that a central argument has been the way that social representations of rural areas impact upon the housing opportunities of households. The way that the idea of ‘rural’ is conceived by various groups translates into contested versions of how the countryside can and should look (see for example, Halfacree, 1993, and also the discussion in Chapter 2). Lowe and Ward (2007) have argued that the balance of different interests in various localities helps to shape the nature of housing markets within these localities, in addition to decision-making within local, regional and national governments. It is the notion of rural idylls that provides an important theme for the book and helps to frame the different housing opportunities for households on low incomes across the various countrysides of Britain.

The second element concerns the need to provide a functional definition, which fixes individual settlements within a hierarchy of rural or urban categories. This approach is essential in providing a geographical reference for our arguments, and a way of locating the smallest communities across Britain's countrysides. The following sections set out the basis of rural and urban definitions that have been developed for policy-makers within England, Scotland and Wales, which provide the basis for our understanding of rural settlements for this book.

A definition of rural settlements

England

Notwithstanding the inevitable arbitrariness in deciding whether settlements count as rural or urban, recent official definitions developed for the national governments have aimed to provide a consistent approach to defining rural localities.