2024 Volume 12 Issue 3 Pages 1-15
New ruralism presents a new spatial planning principle based on the future. It is oriented as a more advanced concept of ruralism in four practical features. These four features are ‘Conservation’, ‘Cultivation’, ‘Community’, and ‘Creativity’. The purpose of this study is to specify the relatively less studied concept of Creativity among the four characteristics of the New Ruralism concept through a qualitative content analysis. In this context, the EU’s RURITAGE Project, which was conducted to continuously revitalize rural areas based on Cultural and Natural Heritage sites, can provide a solid example to make a case study for ‘Creativity’ in rural areas. This study aims to explain the explicit features in a ‘Creativity’ concept from RURITAGE Project SIAs (Systemic Innovation Areas), a creative concept of the RURITAGE Project aimed at rural regeneration based on heritage, and to see how each of the six SIAs are applied to each other. These six SIAs area are Pilgrimage, Sustainable Local Food Production, Migration, Art and Festivals, Resilience, and Integrated Landscape Management. Based on the report published by the RURITAGE Project team, relevant literature sources such as reports, news articles, and blogs were collected on Role Models (Role Model projects) of RURITAGE SIAs. To explore the concept of Creativity in rural areas, 135 related texts were analysed through a qualitative contents analysis targeting 13 role models of SIAs in the RURITAGE project in the EU. The study found that 456 sub-concepts were derived. These 456 sub-concepts were classified into 19 conceptual nodes, which were organized into concepts corresponding to the New Ruralism 4Cs. In conclusion, this study defined how the six SIAs of the RURITAGE are composed, how they work interactively, and how to define the Creativity-related concepts in SIAs and 19 conceptual nodes. In the results, Creativity is described as an important factor in solving social problems. In New Ruralism, ‘Creativity’ can be defined as the ability to create new things that did not previously exist in rural areas as well as activities that lead to new solutions to challenges that current rural areas are experiencing.
