Regulated spatial planning is in large number of countries primarily concentrated on urban areas, while the rural areas are less strictly planned, especially in the context of natural resource development. As Slovenia is a small county with very limited spatial conditions for non restricted development planning (ie. flat, no geographical or/and environmental restrictions), the idea of more or less detailed spatial planning in rural areas was adopted already in early 70es. The reason for starting with this kind of planning was mainly connected with the competition between urban and industrial development planning and agriculture for the best lands. In the paper we discuss the development of methods of rural spatial planning, present effects of past approaches on usage of rural space and the proposal of the future rural areas planning models.