ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the growth of population and the decline in essential services which have characterized rural Britain. It identifies the “accessibility problem” that many rural residents experience, in particular those without an automobile, outlines the policy response, and considers the possibility that community initiatives may increasingly have to fill the very real gaps in service provision that have developed. Large cities declined substantially in population while the rural areas, and not just the most accessible ones, grew markedly. The most striking feature is that depopulation — long a key problem in remote rural areas — is very largely a thing of the past. In the 1970s, the population of rural Britian grew at about one percent per year, while the number of service outlets declined at a roughly similar rate. Part of the explanation for this decline — and it has characterized both the private and the public sectors — lies in rising economies of scale.
