‘Coronavirus holidays’ stoke rural fury
This is the flip side to the previous story lamenting the loss of tourists. Im not surprised that the virus is bringing rural/urban tensions to the fore. The story tells us:
The Covid-19 crisis has prompted some to seek to escape the city. Green spaces are more appealing than cramped apartments and quick transmission rates. Culturally, city dwellers have long imagined country life to be cleaner, happier and healthier than being in conurbations. Current war metaphors in politics and the media might also cause people in the UK to think of the Blitz, when more than 1.5million Britons were evacuated to the countryside — with good reason. But the virus is not a bomb nor a visible enemy. Data from genetics professor Tim Spector’s Covid-19 symptom tracker app already suggests that people leaving the city have unwittingly packed the virus with them.
In reality, the impact of second homes can’t be separated from the wider social and economic processes that continue to change the countryside. Change can be necessary and innovative. Change can also cause harm. Research by the Prince’s Countryside Fund found that rural residents across Britain are feeling increasingly remote. Physical distance hasn’t changed. Instead, shops and schools have closed, services centralised and options squeezed. The same sense of getting away from it all that charms city dwellers can feel bleak to locals.
Coronavirus hasn’t created anger that wasn’t already simmering. Those privileged enough to slip the city for a second home haven’t created the challenges rural communities face. But they have exposed the inequalities between those who can relax in the rural idyll, and those struggling to find a house, get a job or catch a bus. We won’t solve these differences with spray-painted signs or forced resignations. But we do need to solve them.