The concept of rurality and the urban-rural relationship as perceived by young people

This paper explores the concept of rurality and rural-urban relationship among young people. First, there is a brief review of the main theoretical approaches to the issue of the definition of “the rural”. Then, the theory of “social representations” is taken into consideration to better grasp the elements of attraction towards the rural and natural environment, together with the perception of the difficulties which hinder rural development. Abruzzo Region with its blurred boundaries between rurality and urbanization has been chosen to verify if it is possible to identify a distinction between urban and rural lifestyles and if the residents of urban and rural areas have different criteria of evaluation. With a quantitative model are presented the differences made in questionnaire responses, with the concept of rurality and rural-urban relationship among a sample of students of Abruzzo Region The analytical framework raises some important concerns about the governance of the social-economic development of rural environment and suggest to pay greater attention how different social groups in different social environment understand, explain and articulate the complexity of rurality and rural urban relationship in their realities of everyday life