Adam Czarnecki (p), Dominika Milczarek-Andrzejewska, Łukasz Widła-Domaradzki, Anna Jórasz-Żak

David Castells-quintana

Recent research confirms the growing scale and frequency of land-use conflicts. Such conflicts primarily affect rural areas and farmland due to urban expansion or transformations towards multifunctionality. This paper therefore aims to identify changes in the scale and structure of farmland-use conflicts among the three main competing functions (production, consumption and protection) drawing upon Holmes’ conceptualisation of the multifunctional countryside. Unlike other research based mainly on qualitative case studies, we use Shannon entropy and the administrative courts’ database to analyse farmland-use conflicts in a quantitative approach. We focus on rural areas in Poland, which seem to be well-suited for investigating farmland-use conflicts, due to the growing demand for farmland and the number of land-use conflicts involving different parties, such as farmers, real-estate companies, local authorities and individual investors.
Our results show the growing dynamics and changing conflict structure observed in time and space but also, to some extent, depending on the composition and configuration of land functions. The results also prove the importance of agricultural and environmental policies in increasing the number of conflict cases. As a consequence, the shifting conflict-line from mainly production-consumption conflicts to conflicts within one function (production-production) and production-protection ones were observed.
However, in the light of this study, land-use conflicts, often perceived as socially undesirable, are not necessarily “unfavourable” as they manifest the increasing capacity of dispute engagement and the inclusion of forgotten or deliberately excluded actors in the resistance-building process. This capacity-building process was accelerated after the introduction of extensive CAP measures, mainly supporting farmers financially. On the other hand, the EU conservation policies supported the institutions responsible for the implementation of law enforcement in this area, which in turn strengthened the protection function.
Thus the policies introduced have changed the nature and subject of conflicts from those in which agriculture is pushed out by other functions and activities to those where the conflicts occur within the production function. The current reform of the CAP, including, among others, increasing support for smaller and medium-sized farms, may exacerbate such types of conflict. The COVID-19 pandemic appears to be another important factor influencing the dynamics of conflicts over farmland in the future as it has changed tourism patterns and increased urban-sprawl tensions due to the boosted development of the housing function observed in many countries.

Marta Meleddu (p), Bianca Biagi

Adam Czarnecki

The paper investigates the urban-rural dichotomy in life satisfaction explicitly disentangles the role of quantity and accessibility to services/amenities and social relations. Using surveys data for 2013-2018 on self-reported life satisfaction in Italy, findings indicate that people in urban contexts are less satisfied. However, it is not going rural to guarantee a higher life satisfaction but living in rural areas with specific features: wealthier in income, services and amenities.

David Castells-quintana (p), Maria Lopez-Uribe, Thomas McDermott

Marta Meleddu

In this paper, we study the effect of displacement of population into cities on urban conflict in developing countries. To do so, we construct a novel measure of exposure to floods, using data on more than 3,300 flood events worldwide, as an exogenous source of population displacement. We combine this with city level observations of more than 9,000 urban social disorder events over the period 1985-2015. Exposure to floods is found to be associated with higher intensity of urban social disorder. Our evidence suggests that the effects of floods on urban disorder occur in part through the displacement of population into large cities. Exploring the information on urban disorder events in more detail, we find that the association between city growth and urban disorder is strongest for events related to public service provision, prices and wages.