Land Consolidation as an Example of Local Social Activity Leading to the Sustainable Rural Development

Abstract

Sustainable rural development comprises, among other things, social development in relation to the need to build new infrastructure. Land consolidation provides such an opportunity. The consequences of land consolidation have many aspects and layers, and touch upon all functions of rural areas. They refer to the spatial structure, production structure and the social structure of rural areas, while affecting their development. Local social activity, which is understood as all types of actions within a specific local area to satisfy the needs at the local level, is an effect of land consolidation that had not been previously noticed in literature and that is discussed in this paper. Local activity during land consolidation refers to public participation and to other actions taken in the course of land consolidation proceedings and regulated by law; those actions give the ability to participate in the land consolidation proceedings (“co-organise”, “co-manage” the proceedings – the so-called communitarianism). The underlying thesis of the paper is that active participation of the local community in land consolidation actually supports sustainable rural development and that such actions may be described as a communitarian concept of development.

Keywords

• land consolidation
• sustainable rural development
• local social activity
• communitarianism