Throughout the last decades the countryside was faced with some major changes. This change is noticed by a wide variety of research institutes and in recent years the amount of research into this change has increased considerably. Within this introduction we describe sorne of the major driving forces behind this changing countryside. Furthermore we give a short introduction to all the contributions within this special issue of Ruimte & Maatschappij. The introduction can therefore also be regarded as a guideline to this issue.
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