The future of rural communities
I’ve written a lot about future cities over the years. But this is perhaps the first time I’ve been asked to look at the future of rural communities. Fibrus, fibre broadband provider for rural regions - Northern Ireland and Cumbria today - asked me to prepare a variety of future scenarios for 2050 for a report.The reception to it has been incredibly positive, with coverage on national TV and in a number of national newspapers. Obviously there is a slight slant on the report towards the digital, given who commissioned it, but I’d stand by everything in it.
Perhaps the most controversial idea is that rural areas will continue to outgrow cities, as they have done since lockdown. I think there is good reason to believe this is true, for even more reasons than we could squeeze into the report.
Remote and hybrid work is increasingly normalised, and easy
Return to office mandates largely seem to be failing, with the most powerful working class - experienced middle to senior managers - the ones with the most to lose
A higher proportion of jobs will be suitable for remote work in future as our transition to a service economy continues
Our expectations for quality of life versus scale of financial reward have fundamentally shifted
If you can work remotely at least some of the time, why not choose to live somewhere you can afford a nicer home?
Access to nature seems to be increasingly prized - perhaps a reaction to our increasingly digital lives
None of this is to knock cities, or to argue that this phenomenon will necessarily prove true outside of the UK. We’re a compact country and even many of what we might term ‘rural’ areas contain usefully-sized small towns and have rapid access to major urban hubs. But it might form part of a rebalancing of the UK economy - as long as the rural areas that see all the investment aren’t in the south east.
You can download the report here: https://fibrus.com/the-future-of-rural-communities-report/
