Fisher, Edward B. M.

2018-01-31T11:43:38Z

2018-01-31T11:43:38Z

1977

Depopulation and decline sustained in the Borders counties for over a hundred years reached critical proportions during the 1960's. The shrunken population was skewed to the elderly and the female, and employment opportunities for those remaining were diminished by deterioration of the narrow economic base.

Attempts to redress the downward slide of the economy have focused on the importation of industry from outside the region. These have met with limited success. At the same time, the focus on town -based industrial development has encouraged the threefold effect of migration from countryside to cities, urban overcrowding and unemployment, and farm abandonment, that bedevil governments everywhere. Land -based development, to stem or reverse this flow, has been advocated for developing countries for several years. may be as appropriate for developed nations in some regions.

In this form of development the Borders have an advantage. Without a heavy burden of civil and industrial bureaucracies or of cities with their expensive infrastructures, it is an ideal location for land based, labour intensive operations. It has, as well, estates large enough to establish agro-industries on a viable scale.

In the forseeable future increasing costs and scarcity of fuels will force a substitution of manpower for machinery. Transportation of goods and commuting of workers will be restricted. Land -based development could become obligatory. There are many advantages for the Borders in such a development. Present settlement patterns and employment structures obviate the development rather than hinder it. The extra jobs created would enable the elderly to return to the workforce. Development would be indigenous and would not require large importations of capital.

Education will play a central role in the accommodation to such a dramatic change of direction. Community education, on- the -job, in- service training and continuing, nonformal education will have to be greatly extended to impart new skills and engender new social attitudes and new levels of expectation.

http://hdl.handle.net/1842/28017

The University of Edinburgh

Annexe Thesis Digitisation Project 2017 Block 16

Already catalogued

Planning educational investment for the development of the Borders region of Scotland

Thesis or Dissertation

PhD Doctor of Philosophy