Rural Gentrification

Like its urban counterpart, rural gentrification refers to processes of social replacement and displacement that are the outcome of changing investment strategies, economic restructuring, and changing government policy. Together, these pressures both produce and foster continuing migrations of people to and from rural places. Many of the areas that experience rural gentrification have historically been characterized by extraction-based or subsistence-oriented economies and land uses, such as activities related to hunting, the gathering of foods and fiber, agriculture, cattle ranching, timber production, or different forms of mining. Researchers have described this process and its social and environmental impacts in several parts of North America (particularly the American West) and Europe (mainly Great Britain), but it is likely more widespread.

Although the processes that drive rural gentrification are ...