According to INSEE, rural territories designate “all of the municipalities that are not very dense or very little dense” and bring together 88 % of the municipalities and 33 % of the French population. In comparison, and according to the same study, 28 % of the citizens of the European Union lived in rural areas in 2015.
Should we deduce that France is a rural country? Historically, yes. Long associated with the peasant world (from Latin page, “from the village, the canton”), rurality concerned 78 % of the French population and made agriculture live nearly 67 % of French in 1789. At the time, it It was however not more than the other countries of the world, this “immense peasantry” in the words of the historian Fernand Braudel.
Today, if this link between rurality and agriculture is less and less true – in 1968 already, only 42 % of the rural population lived from agriculture -, the postulate of a specifically rural France is equally. And this, despite the affirmations of certain political leaders, such a vision, in addition to forgetting that two thirds of the French population reside in an urban unit, has the double defect of not understanding rurality in its diversity and Make it a myth while its issues require concrete answers.
stakes specific to each space
Indeed, it is better to talk about ruralities. This is why INSEE distinguishes four categories of rural spaces which draw a “peri -urban” France – with its municipalities under strong influence and under low influence of an employment center – and “hyper -rural” – with its municipalities autonomous little dense and very little dense.
Now, each of these categories faces clean issues. If only in terms of employment, transport, access to health or digital coverage, the rate of which varies according to their distance from the places of attractiveness that are metropolitan and large cities, and their geography – mountain, plain or coast.
Rurality is therefore not a block. Nor can it be a myth. Far from the image of an “eternal France” structured by its bell towers, its landscapes and its sweetness of life, it is also a space of constraints which requires concrete responses and adapted to its various realities. Among these measures, some are first of all the state. From a financial point of view, allocations aimed at supporting investment in local projects, in addition to being perpetuated, must be more readable.
The need for real reform
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