The rural is not what it used to be. No longer simply a site for agricultural production for the city, the relationship between the rural and urban has become much more complex. Established categories such as rural /urban and village/city no longer hold true. Rural and urban conditions have become increasingly blurred, so how can we identify and distinguish their specific characteristics? Where is the rural, and what role does it play in an urbanised world? In developing countries the countryside is a volatile and contradictory landscape: legally designated rural areas look like dense slums; factories intersect fields and farmers no longer farm. In contrast, in developed regions, the rural has become a highly controlled landscape of production and consumption: industrialised agriculture coexists with leisure landscapes for tourism, retirement and recreation. This issue of AD investigates how architects and researchers are critically engaging with the rural as an experimental field of exploration. Contributors: Neil Brenner, Christiane Lange, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Sandra Parvu, Cole Roskam, Grahame Shane, Deane Simpson, and Milica Topalovic and Bas Princen Architects: Anders Abraham, Joshua Bolchover and John Lin (Rural Urban Framework), Ambra Fabi and Giovanni Piovene (Piovenefabi), Rainer Hehl, Stephan Petermann (OMA), Huang Sheng Yuan (FieldOffice), and Sandeep Virmani (Hunnarshala)

Table of Contents:
About the Guest-Editors 5 Introduction: Where is the Rural in an Urban World? 6 Inventing the Rural: A Brief History of Modern Architecture in the Countryside 14 Settling the Nomads: Rural Urban Framework, an Incremental Urban Strategy for Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia 20 Indefinitely Intermediate: Processes of Ruralisation in Chisinau, Moldova 28 Cultivating the Field in the Global Hinterland: Community Building for Mass Housing in the Amazon Region 34 Palm Oil: A New Ethics of Visibility for the Production Landscape 42 Notes on Villages as a Global Condition 48 Fieldoffice Architects In Situ: Reflecting on the Rural–Urban Mix in Yilan, Taiwan 58 In the Hands of the People: Harnessing the Collective Power of Village Life in India 66 Designing for an Uncertain Future: Rural Urban Framework, Shichuang Village House Prototype, Guangdong Province, China 72 The Hunstad Code: Rules for the Planning of a Rural Town 78 The Villages, Florida: Small-town Metropolitanism and the ‘Middle of Nowhere’ 86 New Territories: Deconstructing and Constructing Countryside – The Great Divide of Rural and Urban in Hong Kong 92 The Toshka Project: Colossal Water Infrastructures, Biopolitics and Territory in Egypt 98 Best of Both Worlds: Lamenting Our Path to the Future 106 Durana, Albania: A Field of Possibilities 114 The Hinterland, Urbanised? 118 Counterpoint: Don’t Waste Your Time in the Countryside 128 Contributors 134