ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the public protests and media campaigns by focusing on a key area of conflict, housing development, before briefly discussing conflict over road building and the construction of wind power stations. It establishes the context by examining in more detail the trajectories of the pro-development and preservationist discourses in rural politics. The politicization of the British countryside at the end of the twentieth century resulted not only from the social and economic restructuring of rural regions, but also from a concurrent shift in public attitudes towards the countryside. Whilst agricultural practices generated the greatest level of concern, the Social Attitudes Survey also revealed a hardening of opinion against the development of urban and industrial land uses in the countryside. In order to keep people in the countryside the modernization of the rural economy, rural infrastructure and rural housing were all believed to be necessary.
