The Rural Creative Class: Counterurbanisation and Entrepreneurship in the Danish Countryside

Abstract

The paper discusses why well educated urban dwellers choose to move to rural areas and start micro businesses, the problems they face, how they try to solve these problems and the implications for rural development. With a dwelling far from the city, the well-educated in-migrants start businesses which seek to combine a less stressful everyday life with a continued career. In the start-up phase, the majority of businesses is in the knowledge sectors, within media and business services, and is oriented towards the metropolitan market. Few businesses seek to private services for the local market. After some years in the countryside, however, the businesses evolve into 'regional lifestyle businesses'. They remain within the urban sector but have now adapted themselves to the regional market in order to minimise time spent on meeting customers in the city. These rural entrepreneurs combine a small number of well-established customers in the city with a broader array of services directed toward the regional market. Although their impact on the local rural area is minimal, they operate over a larger regional area, extending networks and providing 'organisational energy'. © 2011 The Author. Sociologia Ruralis © 2011 European Society for Rural Sociology.