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Norwegian rural policy over the past 15-20 years has undergone a political change from municipalities as clients of the state, to municipalities as proactive competitive political actors. Strongly influenced by rural policies of the rest of Europe, competitiveness and attractivity has thus become core concepts of municipal development strategies, where the municipal tasks are not only about providing basic services to the inhabitants, but also to promote the municipality as an attractive place for residents / immigrants, tourists, jobs and capital. In this paper we investigate the discursive formations of attractivity in some rural communities at the out-skirt of the urban coastal areas of southern Norway. As part of the EU-Interreg programme, LISA-KASK, these communities are involved in development activities where the creation of attractive rural communities is at the top of the agenda. The questions we will raise are about how the discourses of attractivity are produced, by whom, and out of what reason. We also discuss implications of these different discursive formations for making development strategies in the municipalities. The paper concludes that development challenges now revolves less around issues of production; the traditional employment and work-place perspective of Norwegian rural policy,and that that rural development now seems to be about consumption and living conditions. Norwegian rural policy has traditionally been focused on the development challenges for the settlement of the outermost periphery where out-migration and loss of work places have been seen as the main challenges. The communities studied here are different and maybe more representative for the typical rural community of today, where the challenge of local industries is more or less ruled out due to a less place-bound labour market, increased mobility and rearrangement of the rural settlement pattern.