the urban playgrounds for golf, boating, horse riding, off-roading, walking, bird-
watching, picnicking. The siting and appearance of rural purpose buildings, and
control over adverse visual smell and noise effects, are controlled by regulatory
mechanisms of the zoning and by-law kind – box 5.6, chapter 5. Within the urban-
rural band the outcome is a mixed message – a person may believe they have left
town, but in reality this is the beginning of an urban-rural landscape – a surro-
gate countryside. And if some of the often contrived ‘rural’ vistas over private
land are attractive to the passer-by, then by all means look and enjoy, but do not
touch, and do not feign hurt when the landowner decides to put up acres of glass
housing, park some old cars, stable city folks’ ponies, or allow trail biking on the
weekend, or subdivide into broad-acre (lifestyle) homesites.
Some urban-focused people prefer to live in a quasi-rural way as urban-ori-
ented non-farming residents. Their contention is that they have sufficient means
and mobility to enjoy the secure and individualized ‘rural’ living ideal. A problem
arises in that this ‘ideal’ can be at odds with national imperatives to ensure that
good farmland is retained for food and fibre production and to meet the ‘tourist
gaze’ (Urry 2002). The result: urban-rural houses get intermingled with a confu-
sion of play spaces, dump grounds, glasshouses, training tracks, garden plant
shops, commercial signage, and other footloose urban functions beached in the
countryside. Within this quasi-urban belt some enlightened city administrations,
and some city-state conjoint agencies have purchased tracts of
rural landscape and waterscape as weekend playground space for
city-dwellers and out-of-region visitors.^15
Beyond the peri-urban penumbra, in the full countryside, the dominant crop-
ping is ‘food and fibre’ – or is it? Tourism receipts exceed ‘food and fibre’ income
throughout rural swathes of the OECD. Here, and beyond, in the open area land-
scapes marginal to agriculture and silviculture, base ownership patterns begin to
fade into other interests and rights. There arises a sense to the passer-by that this
landscape partly, at least, ‘belongs’ to them. Sovereign or state land acquisition
retains some marginal lands as public-owned national parks,
forest reserves or wilderness spaces. But in these times of low
intervention on the part of government (and state, provincial or
regional) agencies, the worthy acquisitions have usually been
already made, this being in its highest form the now publicly
owned, yet in many ways artificially construed, National Park
estates.^16
Ostensibly out of generosity, mostly on account of guilt, private
landowners of sites of natural diversity and attraction, or owners
of sites of first-settler or first-people historical significance, often
bequest or covenant designated areas to the ‘nation’ a ‘national’
authority, or a local governing body. The cautious would warn
those who bequest such a gift in one century to make legal pro-
vision to ensure that it cannot be sold on in the next! The pro-
claimed objective is for the private landowner to protect and
conserve the natural heritage and cultural heritage landscapes for
their own enjoyment andthat of their progeny andthe wider152 Practice
Preserving Rural Character,
Fred Heyer, 1990.A privately arranged
conservation company
(Marunui in Northland,
NZ) in which my family
has a shareholding and
cabin (where much of
this book was written)
manages 2,000 acres of
regenerating rainforest
on land of no productive
utility. The whole is
covenanted to a
‘conservation trust’.
Throughout a 100-acre
corner the 20 owners
occupy carefully selected
recreational cabin sites
with vehicular access
only. (See sketch in
figure 4.4)