Rural aspects are given emphasis in several geographical analyses. Traditionally, research focusses on agriculture, social factors, settlement patterns or the quantification of the term ‘rural’. Rural geography as a distinctive subdiscipline directs its attention to rural development strategies and evaluates these processes and initiatives in order to adjust to economic changes and globalisation (Woods 2009). Woods (2007) outlines rural areas as the ‘emergent global countryside’ because of their cumulative integration into global commodity, trade and mobility networks through local and external actors. Therefore, rural localities establish themselves in global networks as well as regulations and policies. Recent neo-liberal approaches to rural governance, in particular endogenous processes and partnership working, involve the participation of communities and various actors (Goodwin 1998, Little 2001, MacKinnon 2002, Woods 2009). Originally, the concept of governance was an urban approach through the increasing connection of public, private and voluntary actors for urban economic growth (for example, Chhotray and Stoker 2009, Stoker 1998). These processes were successively transferred onto rural areas whilst research has come to reflect relationships of communities to local state agencies and initiatives (for example, Murdoch and Abram 1998, Pemberton and Goodwin 2010, Ward and McNicholas 1998). In addition, and in the context of regulations and policies, rural-urban interactions have come to occupy a significant role in research. Commonly, analyses delineate the urban fringe or rural-urban interfaces (for example, Bryant 1995, Caffyn and Dahlstroem 2005, Masuda and Garvin 2008). However, rural areas in interaction with urban cores have barely been outlined from a rural perspective. Additionally, the increasingly important aspect of regionalism and global competition seems to be treated most frequently with a metropolitan focus and is hardly applied to rural areas (Hamin and Marucci 2008). An example of this is provided in the outstanding academic and political attention which metropolitan regions in Germany have received over the last few years.