Rural figures of the generalized urban through the filter of sustainable mobilities – FRUGAL

Following the first methodological knowledge coming from PUCA and PREDIT research in Picardy and Franconia regions, the research proposal has been initially based on the relations between mobilities and morphologies. By expanding the research field to the French metropolitan territory, 14 squares of 50 kilometers side each have been identified excluding those having the presence of cities with more than 20 000 inhabitants, coastal zones, high mountain or PNR zones in order to ensure a comparability between the squares. Thus defined, these selected areas entail in the same way rural and peri-urban spaces and cover a huge diversity of landscapes and rural substracts (« bocage » countryside, openfield, mediterranean landscape, mid-mountain areas).
Interdisciplinarity of the team made possible to get larger investigations on field with people or inhabitants, based on thourough studies at the scale of testing areas(ecological, ethnographical, geographical and archituctual surveys…) Several squares were used as laboratories (Picardy, Limousin, Brittany). The complete process has explored several issues:
. The morphology of dispersion of built agregates (little city, village, hamlet) and the logical of the last half century development.
.The distribution of the populations, of jobs and services within the built agregates, which determines the possible accessibility to different resources and the territorial systems organisation;
. mobility practices between house and job are stressing the part of the related proximity relations
. Energetic adaptation of the housings and of the small social livings,
. the place of food opportunities and biodiversity within scattered housings ;
. Finally, local urban planning and economic dynamics specific to these territories.

Several thematic results deeply modify the prevailing representations linked to these low density spaces. Their unity can be expressed mainly in 7 breaks. 1- First, the dynamic of population density and land occupation is not reducible to the urban sprawl issue or in other terms, what we use to call urban sprawl cannot be summarized to an erratic scattered housing. 2- Subsenquently, the shopping facilities and services offer doesn't depend on the large distance. Whereas the dispersion of urbanization is often perceived as geographical distance, a relative proximity to shops appears equally for those who live in a village or a hamlet. 3- Fragmentation and interpenetration of land uses doesn't jeopardize the landsape sustainability. In these interfaces between dwelling and nature, a familiar diversity, food crops practices and adaptation forms to the climate reveal coexistence between humans and the natural world. 4- The daily mobility, in order to access employment, is very far from being exclusively dependant on the large distances to be covered. On the contrary, it tends to be characterised by proximity for the large majority of inhabitants. 5- The companies are not very sensitive to mobility constraints linked to law density and dispersion mainly due to the existence of a good road network and to the loyalty of the labour force because mainly locally hired . However, access to a skilled labour force and to high speed internet network turns out to be crucial. 6- Transformation of law density territories are not limited to inherited centrality. Today, the actual space rational at work may be a a new way of approaching these territories. 7- Lastly, city and regional planning principles, largely planned from and for urban areas and applied to national territory are unlikely to seize and enhance the innovative local initiatives in mainly rural areas.

At the earliest stages of this research, an expansion of the sustainability issue was obvious. First limited to find alternatives to a car based urban planning, it was rapidly extended to the regional systems of scattered urbanization following notably the first results of works dealing with morphologies of dispersion. This very large and detailed exploration has revealed the very wide diversity of morphology and organisation of the spaces and has, from the start, asked the question of the most pertinent distribution of the population within the regions and the most equitable organisation of the centralities which contribute to its structuring. In this to a large extent inherited geography, but at a time of a (almost) widespread accessibility, be it physical or virtual, thanks to transportation and communication networks, Today what kind of changes are to be expected, accompanied and guided?

Numerous publications, such as articles and chapters in collective volumes. The most important thing is the publication of a volume of almost five hundred pages during the next year (publisher and funding already booked). It will provide a comprehensive view of our team's works.

Rural figures of the generalized urban state through the filter of sustainable mobilities

How can low density spaces, whether they participate in the rural or the peri-urban (depending on the INSEE categories), contribute in their way to the development of globally more sustainable territories ? The present research proposal postulates that, next to and in addition to the compact, dense and diversified figures of the dense urban, there are “rural figures of a generalized urban state”, whose spatial characteristics and mobility practices are still very badly known.
The issue is thus stated in the following way: how can low density spaces participate in the project of the “sustainable city” without denying their morphological specificities ? More precisely, how can the simultaneous approach of loose ways to use the land and of transport means, especially those alternative to the “all-car”, enable us to outline leads for a sustainable mobility in low density territories.

An approach in positive for low density spaces
First of all, we have to overcome the “negative” approach of these low density spaces, “counter-relief to the urban”, as it was expressed in 2003 by the work group on the “Structuration of the rural space : an approach through population catchment areas” (INSEE, SCEES, IFEN, and DATAR, 2003). In that same perspective, two studies, led by some members of our team within the frame of the PUCA and the PREDIT on a sample of territory between urban poles, have enabled us to draw some conclusions which reinforce the relevance of this approach : relative isotropy of the seedbed of grains and small distances separating them, dense distribution of the services within this seedbed in nearness relations which often remain potential, and represent a potential of accessibility through transport means alternative to the all-car ; but, as an counterpoint, lack of recognition of those alternative mobilities in the development of routes within the grains and from grain to grain, and dissociation of the approaches of the road network and the green and blue grids.
From these first methodological knowledges, we suggest to broaden the field of this approach to the scale of the metropolitan territory and to explore the specific characteristics of these not dense spaces on four levels:
? on the morphological level of the dispersion of built aggregates (small cities, towns, villages, hamlets), of the layout of the transport networks that serve them and of the network of the green and blue grids which are very specific to these territories ;
? on the socio-demographical level of the distribution of populations, jobs and services within this seedbed of built aggregates and which enables to determine the granulometry of the ground occupation and the potential accessibility to various resources ;
? on the level of the effective mobility practices which will be pieced together from statistical works and interviews. In particular, we will bring out the distances travelled and the part of nearness relations which can arise from them ;
? lastly, on the level of local policies for the development of these not dense spaces at the various scales of governance and planning (region, county, intercommunalities,...) and of the economic dynamics which are specific to these territories.

From then on, urban, geographical and social organization, and mobility practices, are compared so as to bring out the territorial systems on the levels of distances and polarities present in the low density and to determine their capacity to contribute to the development of globally more sustainable territories on the level of alternative mobilities to the all-car.

This exploration will rely on the analysis of fifteen “samples” chosen in the French regions (fifty-kilometre sided “squares”). These “regional squares”, located in France, will cover the diversity of landscapes and rural heritage (hedged farmland, openfield, Mediterranean area, highland).