Serving countryside? Accessibility of rural services

The Lead partner of the project is Finnish Environment Institute. Ruralia Institute is responsible for the Case study in Kouvola region. Aims of the project are: to examine the concept of service accessibility and ways to measure accessibility, to produce accessibility zones of both private and public services, to classify rural areas according to accessibility and other factors, to reveal the role of second homes in sustaining the services in the countryside (The Case study in Kouvola), to study the means to develop service accessibility through new innovations and with the potential of second home users and to study the ways in which the research results can be used in local and regional land use and service planning.