HORIZON EUROPE RURALITY Project: Rural Renaissance: An Inspiring Life in the Countryside
- Type Project
- Status Firmado
- Execution 2025 -2028
- Assigned Budget 6.494.227,21 €
- Scope Europeo
- Main source of financing Horizonte Europa 2021-2027
- Project website Proyecto RURALITIC
Rural areas are facing drastic sociodemographic changes due to their evolving role in the ecological, digital, and bioeconomic transitions. The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified these changes, creating rural regions that are now as diverse and complex as urban areas. Public policies are proving ineffective in addressing the unique needs of today's rural communities. A lack of understanding of rural diversity hampers the implementation of effective and inclusive policies.
In this context, the EU-funded RURALITIC project will explore the concept of "rural" and examine socio-geographical relationships. By generating new data, indicators, and typologies, RURALITIC will provide information for informed and tailored public policymaking. Through pilot projects and scenario building, it aims to guide sustainable and resilient policies for diverse rural areas across Europe.
In recent decades, rural areas have undergone profound sociodemographic transformations, driven by their role in the ecological, digital, and bioeconomic transitions. These transformations, further accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, have led to significant diversification, making rural regions complex and unevenly similar in many ways to large cities. Therefore, a key issue concerns our knowledge and perception of these places because the tools, concepts, and, above all, public policies traditionally applied are no longer adequate to address the growing diversity of contemporary rural areas.
Our consortium, RURALITIC, is academically equipped and well prepared to face these challenges.
The first step involves rethinking rural areas and examining the intricate relationship between social groups and geographic spaces. This conceptual redefinition of what rural areas are and can be will allow for the development of new scientific concepts and tools, including new data, surveys, indicators, knowledge, and typologies, that will allow for a new and synthesized view of the current dynamics and processes of change and aid public authorities' foresight.
Second, these new concepts and typologies will be implemented to analyze the factors driving attractiveness, existing public policies, and innovative initiatives within rural areas. By implementing pilot projects and creating a library of initiatives, we will be able to adapt the recommendations to diverse social and rural contexts.
Ultimately, RURALITIC aims to visualize and produce several scenarios for the future of rural Europe. The main outcome will be a reorientation of public policies, from general policies to policies tailored to different rural areas, while maintaining the main orientations of European policies, focusing on sustainable prosperity, resilience, connectivity, and infrastructure.
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