Grandstand. In France, everyone wants to live in the same place, where there are jobs, cultural and educational centres, but also public services, as well as transport and leisure infrastructures. This trend is reinforced by the fact that most of the wealth and political or economic decisions are currently concentrated in the big cities.
While the latter are particularly well served (TGV, airports, etc.), medium-sized towns, which are less well off in all these areas, have more difficulty in attracting businesses and populations. Admittedly, the health crisis and the increase in telework could move the lines, but this development must be encouraged by the public authorities.
In the meantime, the population is concentrated in the same cities and the same neighborhoods, unwittingly sustaining pressure on available housing, which is necessarily rare and expensive.
Several realistic proposals deserve to be studied to reduce the housing shortage. For example, why not generalize the Action heart of the city program, currently limited to two-thirds of medium-sized towns in our country? This system, which promotes investment in the context of housing rehabilitation, could be a real lever of attractiveness for territories threatened by desertification.
A nuanced reality
The development of peri-urban areas, which today account for nearly 30% of the population, is another decisive project. If we read here or there that the French are turning away from the big cities to go and live in the countryside, the reality is more nuanced. Indeed, departures from city centers are often made for the outskirts. We are now talking about Greater Paris or Greater Lyon.
At the gates of the city, peri-urban areas must be redesigned to meet the strong aspirations of French society: more surface area, less noise and proximity to nature. Between the relocation of employment, the rehabilitation of housing and accessibility, the peri-urban space forces us to rethink the city.
France is divided into a certain number of zones which determine the tension of the real estate market and condition in particular housing aid as well as the various investment schemes. This zoning was defined in 2003 and its most recent revision dates from 2014. It is now obsolete in its definition and does not take into account the population movements observed in recent years which impact the dynamics of the territories.
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