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Chair in Landscape and Environmental Design, Universit!e de Montr!eal, C.P. 6128, Succursale Centre-ville, Montr!eal, Qu!ebec, Canada H3C 3J7
b
Facult!e de lam!enagement, Universit!e de Montr!eal, C.P. 6128, Succursale Centre-ville, Montr!eal, Qu!ebec, Canada H3C 3J7
Abstract
Changes in agricultural practices have led to declines in the farming population and signicant changes within the landscape.
Paradoxically, many rural areas are recording signicant demographic growth. Given the extent of rural areas experiencing these
changes, little attention has been devoted to the relationship between rural migration processes and landscape developments.
Therefore, the various rural dynamics resulting from these phenomena merit closer investigation. Moreover, we should explore these
complex processes at scales where they are most evident. Through the multi-scale research approach used in this study, these
processes are investigated in their regional, local, and domestic contexts.
As shown by regional typological outlines, the great diversity of the rural areas indicates an increasing dissociation between the
agricultural and socio-demographic trajectories. From our local-scale study, changes in lot occupation revealed new residential
settlement patterns induced by an inux of in-migrants. Specic landscape characteristics seem to be a determining force shaping
these population ows. At the same time, these population movements have dissimilar inuences on evolving landscape dynamics.
With the exception of isolated agricultural abandonment trajectories, migrant relocation does not seem to affect specic local-scale
land use development. However, it is signicantly associated with individual domestic practices. These practices are indicative of the
migrants identity in the rural landscape; further, they suggest specic values for the landscapes qualitative dimensions. These
emerging urban and non-farming interests in rural landscapes challenge planning policies to guide the landscapes evolution for the
benet of its producers and consumers.
r 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Urban-to-rural migration; Landscape dynamic; Residential settlement; Rural development; Landscape planning; Southern Qu!ebec
1. Introduction
Rural areas experience continuous transformation in
their social and physico-spatial composition. Productivist to post-productivist (Halfacree and Boyle, 1998),
industrial to post-industrial (Jollivet, 1997) or even
rural to post-rural (Murdoch and Pratt, 1993) are some
of the many visions of the functional changes taking
place within the countryside. Many of these transformations are associated with an increasing inuence of
urban and non-farming interests in rural places and on
their lifestyles. With the migration of specic segments
of the urban population to the countryside, there
emerges increased social demand for an array of new
functions and services (e.g., environmental, recreational,
*Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: sylvain.paquette@umontreal.ca (S. Paquette),
gerald.domon@umontreal.ca (G. Domon).
0743-0167/03/$ - see front matter r 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0743-0167(03)00006-8
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1997; Halfacree and Boyle, 1998; Swafeld and Fairweather, 1998; ORourke, 1999), the dynamic relationships existing between residential behaviour, landscape,
and rurality merit closer investigation.
While some academics have acknowledged that
landscape aesthetics act as driving forces for rural
in-migration (Halliday and Coombes, 1995), it is
unknown how landscape attributes act on migrant
residential settlements, and how they induce a particular
rural socio-demographic evolution. Equally unresolved is how rural migration affects landscape
development itself. Finally, it is unresolved if the
inux of new rural migrants may accelerate rural
landscape transformations or, conversely, help to
maintain their current attributes. The importance of
the landscape as a pivotal element for rural changes
should be better assessed. In particular the way the
landscape modulates social recomposition processes as
well as being recongured by them should receive more
attention.
Many authors view rural repopulation trends as an
opportunity to revitalise rural economies (Newby, 1990;
Stockdale et al., 2000). These questions are all the more
critical given that this development, within the perspective of an ever-increasing incidence of rural consumption practices (Ilbery, 1998, p. 259), is largely associated
with the preservation and the improvement of the rural
landscape qualities. Before addressing the issues that
merit further investigation, some conceptual clarications are essential.
1.1. Rural landscape changes: a conceptual approach
The word rural no longer has a single meaning
(Murdoch and Pratt, 1993; Halfacree and Boyle, 1998).
The coexistence of distinct rural experiences reects the
growing diversity of human interactions within rural
places (Mougenot, 1986). As a result, the landscape
can be dened as a tangible imprint continuously
reshaped by changing social representations of the
space. This denition of landscape is derived from the
notion of empreinte-matrice developed by Berque
(1990, p. 44). It designates the in situ results of human
intervention within a given milieu, it also designates the
interpretation and perception of that milieu. This
landscape concept derives from an idea whereby people
represent a given milieu through the way they use it, and
conversely, manage this milieu following the way they
interpret it (Berque, 1990). In this way material
imprints or traces in the landscape, reveal individual
or collective aspirations that are more truthful than
most autobiographies because we are less self-conscious
about how we describe ourselves [through landscapes]
(Lewis, 1979, p. 12). These inscriptions are not merely
neutral facts. Rather, in the context of our investigation, landscape attributes embody the many expressions
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Fig. 2. Location of the study areas. Inset shows location in Quebec (Canada).
Agricultural rural area. As previously stated, agricultural activities were spread out along well-dened
spatial patterns. Even for municipalities where
agriculture is predominant, its signicance has
greatly declined from a socio-demographic perspective. In fact, nearly 75% of the active population
within these municipalities has income from other
sources (Paquette and Domon, 1999, p. 291).
Although the farming imprint is still perceptible in
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Fig. 3. Regional typologies showing: (a) agricultural trajectories (19611991); (b) resulting agricultural proles (1991) and (c) socio-demographic
proles (1991) of southern Quebecs municipalities.
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Visual analysis data. The following indicators, derived from Jacobs et al. (1986) were used for the
4
The resulting database comprises a large sample of the population
(254 of a total of 297 properties located outside hamlets). Residential
settings identied as suitable for study exclude vacant (31 lots) and
inaccessible lots (12 lots).
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Fig. 4. Havelock Townships land use (1997) and dominant topographical locations.
5
Minist"ere des terres et for#ets du Qu!ebec (1978), Carte cadastrale a"
1/20 000 de Ch#ateauguay (Feuille no. 31 H-4 S.O.), Qu!ebec. (Revised
from 1966 aerial photographs.)
6
Minist"ere des resources naturelles (1994), Carte topographique a" 1/
20 000 de Saint-Jean-Chrysostome (Feuille no. 31 H 04-200-0101) et de
Hemminford (Feuille no. 31 H 04-200-0102), Qu!ebec. (Revised from
1992 aerial photographs.)
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Table 1
Visual analysis, landscape trajectory as well as socio-demographic and residential history data used in the Havelock local-scale case study
Variables
Indicators
Empirical materials
Visual eld
In situ observation
In situ observation
Prevailing view
In situ observation
Topographical entity
In situ observation
Viewshed
Visual accessibility
In situ observation
Aerial photographs
Aerial photographs
Aerial photographs
Aerial photographs
Pasture-to-foresta
Aerial photographs
Residential transformation
In situ observation,
aerial photographs
In situ observation,
aerial photographs
In situ observation,
aerial photographs
Occupation
Interviews
Abandoned land-to-forest
Interviews
Place of birth
Interviews
Interviews
Interviews
Age group
Interviews
Family acquisition
Present, absent
Interviews
Interviews
Relatives
Present, absent
Interviews
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Table 2
Residential practices (home characteristics, use of exterior space and land use) documented for the Havelock domestic-scale case study
Variables
Indicators
Empirical materials
Home condition
In situ observation
Exterior facing
In situ observation
Major renovation
Present, absent
In situ observation
building permits
interviews
Home orientation
In situ observation
Building renovation
In situ observation
building permits
interviews
In situ observation
Boundary type
In situ observation
In situ observation
Lawn area
In situ observation
Shrub areaa
In situ observation
In situ observation
Flowers
Flower bed area
In situ observation
Recent, well-established
In situ observation
o10%, none
In situ observation
Tree areaa
In situ observation
In situ observation
Tree development
In situ observation
Property condition
In situ observation
Ornamental elements
In situ observation
Present, absent
In situ observation
Aerial photographs
Aerial photographs
Aerial photographs
Aerial photographs
Garden shed
b
a
b
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Fig. 6. Overview of residential practice clusters, their associated socio-demographic proles and landscape contexts as well as the resulting domestic
landscape trajectories.
*
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domestic landscape changes associated with urban-torural migration. These opposing trajectories emerge
from the conjunction of both social and physical
landscape dynamics. Generally, our results suggest that
the migrants relocation into rural areas, while often
associated with landscape aesthetic motivations and
lifestyle choices (Coppack, 1988; Halliday and
Coombes, 1995; Swafeld and Fairweather, 1998;
Walmsley et al., 1998), do not produce unique consequences, such as a systematic rural gentrication
movement. The results also provide some insight into
the various underlying motives of migration as well as
their distinct impacts on domestic-scale landscape
dynamics.
437
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Fig. 7. Some small-scale landscape illustrations of: remote view-oriented residential settlements with (a) no and (b) ltered visual links to the road;
(c) a well-kept migrants residence with abandoned farm buildings, the lots are cultivated through rental agreements with local farmers; (d) a case of
advanced agricultural abandonment; (e) preservation of a stone wall illustrating traditional farming landmarks and (f) a conventional farming lot
with new farm buildings.
local scale. From this viewpoint, the landowners sociodemographic proles do not seem to be a determining
factor with regard to local landscape trajectories. As
previously recognised at local (Domon et al., 1993;
Paquette and Domon, 1997; Pan et al., 1999) and
regional scales (Meeus et al., 1990; Paquette and
Domon, 1999), biophysical attributes (e.g., geomorphological deposits, topography) are more signicantly
associated with land use changes. It could be argued
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5. Conclusion
At the regional, local and domestic scale, this
exploratory study revealed specic trends in social
recomposition and landscape dynamic relationships.
Regional typological outlines show the important
diversity of contemporary rural areas. Moreover, they
illustrate the increasing dissociation between agricultural and socio-demographic trajectories. The paradoxical
demographic growth of some rural municipalities that
nevertheless show a regression in agricultural practices
exemplies this tendency.
The changes in lot occupation documented within the
Havelock Township case study revealed new residential
settlement patterns induced by the inux of migrants.
Some of these in-migration ows appear to be signicantly associated with specic landscape contexts.
Although it cannot be explained by a single process, the
appeal of some landscape characteristics seem to be a
determining force shaping the social recomposition of
rural communities.
Rural in-migration shows dissimilar inuences on
ongoing landscape dynamics. With the exception of
conned agricultural abandonment trajectories, migrant
relocation does not seem to imprint singular landscape
changes at the local scale. In contrast, our results
revealed that migrants are signicantly associated with
specic domestic practices once settled. These results
suggest that social in-migration dynamics and local land
use development do not evolve in a one-way relationship. More fundamentally, the phenomena observed are
indicative of the new residents identities in rural places
and generate specic values for the landscapes qualitative dimensions. From a planning perspective, these new
social interests challenge resource-based development
policies and actors to transcend their productionoriented goals (Marsden, 1998; Mather, 2001; Erickson
et al., 2002). Future planning recommendations must be
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Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge Tracey Hesse and Kevin
Marks for editing, Martin Joly and Karine Faure for
their help on cartography. We would like to thank two
anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an
earlier draft of this manuscript. Fellowships from the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada (SSHRC), the Universite! de Montre! al and the
Canadian Forest Service helped Sylvain Paquette to
complete this research paper. Ge! rald Domon received
research grants from the SSHRC and the Fonds pour la
Formation de Chercheurs et lAide a" la Recherche
!
(FCAR) of the ministe" re de lEducation
du Que! bec.
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