ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an empirical exploration of how rural development can benefit from applying mobilities and relational place thinking to the development, planning and management of the rural district. The inhabitants of rural districts face the well-known challenges of meeting mobility needs and desires for a twenty-first-century way of life with its complex time-space obligations, as they are often still using mobility infrastructures developed in a time when life in the rural districts was not as dependent on geographically distant co-presence as today. This chapter unfolds how the rural district as a place is both developed and challenged by current mobility struggles, and how conventional rural planning and development needs to integrate a mobile and relational place thinking approach to provide a framework for positive development and address mobility challenges. The chapter is based on a number of mobility projects and investigations from the rural district of Hjørring Municipality in Denmark and includes tales of mobilities and rural places shared by youngsters, senior citizens, municipal authorities, local community associations and the public transport provider in the rural district. In conclusion, the chapter discusses the mobility challenges that place management faces in rural areas and provides suggestions on how mobile place management can facilitate better rural mobilities.
