ABSTRACT
Like all ideals, the modern countryside ideal is a creation of the society within which it has developed. It has been fashioned from the combination of historical processes and cultural values of the past three centuries, and must therefore be understood in terms of the evolving experience of metropolitan life. This chapter explores how pro-countryside sentiment has emerged with the rise of urban-industrialism, firstly through the transformation of rural-urban relationships and the respective economies and landscapes of country and city; and secondly through the development of philosophical, aesthetic and social responses to the urbanisation process itself.
