The study of the rural landscapes of the developed world. It includes the origin, development, and distribution of rural settlement, rural depopulation, the causes and consequences of agricultural change, patterns of recreational use of the countryside, tourism, planning, and the growing influence on rural areas of urban dwellers. For a review of the sub-discipline, see Roche (2005) PHG 29, 3. McCarthy (2006) PHG 29, 6 argues that recent developments ‘call into question the geographic categories and concentrations of rural geography’.