The rural is not what it used to be. No longer simply a site for agricultural production for the city, the relationship between the rural and urban has become much more complex. Established categories such as rural /urban and village/city no longer hold true. Rural and urban conditions have become increasingly blurred, so how can we identify and distinguish their specific characteristics? Where is the rural, and what role does it play in an urbanised world? In developing countries the countryside is a volatile and contradictory landscape: legally designated rural areas look like dense slums; factories intersect fields and farmers no longer farm. In contrast, in developed regions, the rural has become a highly controlled landscape of production and consumption: industrialised agriculture coexists with leisure landscapes for tourism, retirement and recreation. This issue of AD investigates how architects and researchers are critically engaging with the rural as an experimental field of exploration. Contributors: Neil Brenner, Christiane Lange, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Sandra Parvu, Cole Roskam, Grahame Shane, Deane Simpson, and Milica Topalovic and Bas Princen Architects: Anders Abraham, Joshua Bolchover and John Lin (Rural Urban Framework), Ambra Fabi and Giovanni Piovene (Piovenefabi), Rainer Hehl, Stephan Petermann (OMA), Huang Sheng Yuan (FieldOffice), and Sandeep Virmani (Hunnarshala)

For America’s rural and suburban areas, new challenges demand new solutions. Author Randall Arendt meets them in an entirely new edition of Rural by Design. When this planning classic first appeared 20 years ago, it showed how creative, practical land-use planning can preserve open space and keep community character intact. The second edition shifts the focus toward infilling neighborhoods, strengthening town centers, and moving development closer to schools, shops, and jobs. New chapters cover form-based codes, visioning, sustainability, low-impact development, green infrastructure, and more, while 70 case studies show how these ideas play out in the real world. Readers —rural or not—will find practical advice about planning for the way we live now.

Printed on Demand. Limited stock is held for this title. If you would like to order 30 copies or more please contact books@worldbank.org Contact books@worldbank.org, if currently unavailable. This paper is part of a four-volume series of publications on rural transport promoted by the World Bank's Rural Transport Thematic Group under the aegis of its knowledge management activities. The four volumes are Options for Managing and Financing Rural Transport Infrastructure, Improving Rural Mobility, Developing Rural Transport Policies and Strategies, and this paper on Design and Appraisal of Rural Transport Infrastructure.

Rural regions in Colombia have untapped potential to boost wealth and well-being in the country. Despite remarkable economic growth over the last two decades, Colombia’s development policy needs to increase its focus on rurality, as regional inequalities remain high by OECD standards and structural challenges still prevent greater development in rural places.

“Green Stormwater Infrastructure for Sustainable Urban and Rural Development” offers some of the latest international scientific and practitioner findings around the adaptation of urban, rural and transportation infrastructures to climate change by sustainable water management. This book addresses the main gaps in the up-to-date literature and provides the reader with a holistic view, ranging from a strategic and multiscale planning, implementation and decision-making angle down to the engineering details for the design, construction, operation and maintenance of green stormwater techniques such as sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) and stormwater control measures (SCMs). This book is particularly recommended for a wide audience of readers, such as academics/researchers and students in the fields of architecture and landscaping, engineering, environmental and natural sciences, social and physical geography and urban and territorial planning. This book is also a resource for practitioners and professionals developing their work in architecture studios, engineering companies, local and regional authorities, water and environmental industries, infrastructure maintenance, regulators, planners, developers and legislators.

Contributed articles on microfinance and small business in India.