Sarah Mukherjee - Policy making must break down the barriers between rural and urban communities

I’m going to Paris before too long. A friend who’s been living there needs to bring back some stuff to the UK and I have rather recklessly agreed to accompany him in the van around the Paris périphique, the French capital’s equivalent to the North and South circular combined with stock car racing.

“Be careful of Paris syndrome” said my son, barely looking up from his computer. I was wondering whether he was referring to the anxiety currently felt by tourists, caught up in the (literally) incendiary demonstrations at the moment. But no – it’s a syndrome that’s been around for a while, apparently, manifesting itself as “a sense of extreme disappointment exhibited by some individuals when visiting Paris, who feel that the city was not what they had expected” (thank you, Dr. Google). Instead of the film set cleanliness they had been led to believe was the case from all manner of films, tourists, even those travelling outside demonstration season, find a working capital city – dirty in places with a creaking infrastructure, full of grumpy people trying to get to work. Like anywhere else.

As we all know, Paris syndrome is not restricted to Paris. I all too vividly remember my first real trip to the countryside, with posh middle-class people from university. They all seemed to undergo a complete personality change on the way there. The wan-faced lot smoking roll ups and drinking black coffee from unwashed cups became rosy cheeked Scout leaders, dressed in boots and sturdy walking gear that I did not possess or even recognise. The countryside full of tea shops and red-faced farmers I expected turned out to be muddy fields with no toilets, with limp sandwiches from a damp rucksack taking the place of my long salivated-over dream cream tea. But - once I had the sun on my face and I had climbed that first hill, the sense of peace and wellbeing was addictive, and getting outside and walking is now one of the central parts of my life every week.

But the initial appeal of this first walk was limited because of course, like Paris, the countryside is a working landscape, not the film set for some feel-good Sunday afternoon TV series. The communities living there have the same issues as people living in towns – housing, transport, jobs, and cost of living.

So why is it that we end up concentrating on the things that separate us? Because, I would argue, there is far too little interaction between rural and urban. There are so many barriers stopping people from finding out how important time spending time in rural landscapes can be, and this inevitably leads to very little understanding of the different needs of each community. I would love to see policy making that broke down, rather than entrenched, these barriers. For example, how could we make it easier for NHS budgets to be spent on green prescribing? There is a growing body of evidence that curated access to green space represents fantastic value for money in terms of better health outcomes, and yet I still hear from many initiatives in this space that it’s immensely difficult to get long-term funding for the future, however successful the project has been in the past.

It's these sorts of issues I am really looking forward to getting to grips with at the Future Countryside event. There are so many ways in which rural and urban can support each other, when unfortunately, we have concentrated sometimes in the past on what differentiates us. I hope you will be able to be part of the conversation.

Sarah Mukherjee is the Chief Executive of IEMA.