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Short abstract

This paper draws on an ethnography of England’s southern coast to explore how rural futures are aesthetically negotiated. The rural coast is a frontier to live, to grow food, to accommodate climate change, but also to contest national imaginaries.

Long abstract

This paper looks at restoration, future land use, and the rural coastal idyll.

Many places around the English coast are caught between different visions of future resilience. They are often sites graded as the highest-quality agricultural land, important for food security; often too they result from historic drainage, improvement projects, and enclosure of wet commons. Rural coastal areas are under increasing housing pressure from a growing population and chronic housing shortage, with many agricultural areas being proposed as development sites.

But the rural coast is also vulnerable to sea level rise, and decisions are being made about areas to defend or let the sea breach, through managed realignment and coastal retreat. Such options are proposed through the lens of nature restoration and repair, with re-wetted areas supporting vulnerable species and contributing to national restoration targets. Land is turned back from agriculture to a new wet commons, which can support resilient futures elsewhere by accommodating flooding or sequestering carbon.

Drawing from an ethnography of England’s southern coast, I explore how contestation of the rural coast is both epistemic and aesthetic. Claims depend on the kinds of rurality that are made visible; particularly in a context where images of the rural idyll continue to drive migration to the coast and structure expectations of the future. The rural coast is a frontier to live, to grow food, and to accommodate climate change; it is also a frontier negotiated around how rural life should look, between national imaginaries and resilience in place.