Laurent Wauquiez walked on velvet, at the end of September, boldly announcing to some 400 rural mayors gathered in a conference in Alpe-d’Huez (Isère) to have decided that the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, which he chairs, “came out of the ZAN system”. The implementation of zero net artificialization (ZAN) by 2050 as imposed by the Climate and Resilience Law of 2021 is “ruralicide”, hammered the putative candidate for the 2027 presidential election. This amounts, he said, to “put the elected officials under cover”. “What we are asking is (…) a living rurality where it is the elected officials who decide on the development policy of their territory”. Applause in the room, cheers from the president of rural mayors.
The law “applies to all (…). Fighting against land artificialization is not an option, it is an imperative”, immediately reacted the Minister of Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion, Christophe Béchu. By the end of 2030, France must concrete half as much as between 2010 and 2019, a first step before the net zero required by 2050. Everything that is taken from nature will then have to be returned. But this approach to land sobriety causes tension, including sometimes among those who are aware of its motivations: the collapse of biodiversity, the need to preserve natural spaces (feeders and carbon sinks), the 20,000 to 30,000 hectares which disappear every year, the equivalent of Luxembourg in the space of ten years.
The profound break with the development model of recent decades – the tandem of “subdivision and city entrances as far as the eye can see” – and the displayed “zero” explains part of the fears. The housing crisis and the blunders of the first version of the 2021 law have not helped anything. At the initiative of the Senate, nine new articles were voted on in July: elected officials gained a few months to update their planning documents, and each municipality has at least one hectare to urbanize (not obligatory). The imminent publication of three decrees, including the one which defines artificialization, should help to see things more clearly.
There will be no shortage of comments, the amended text will still be considered imperfect. Faced with the requirements of the new law, the mayors, meeting from November 20 to 23 in a congress in Paris, have the choice: either they replay the traditional city-country divide, deny territorial interdependencies and rail against technocrats who understand nothing about hyperrurality. Either they consider the requirement for sobriety as an opportunity to regain control over the development of their territory – echoing the words of Mr. Wauquiez – and to no longer suffer from the economy of sprawl which has shaped the landscape these last forty years, and of which everyone at least agrees that she lived.
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