TOWARDS AN AMERICANIZATION OF FRENCH METROPOLITAN AREAS ? Vincent Hoffmann-Martinot Directeur de Recherche au CNRS CERVL-CNRS/ IEP de Bordeaux Domaine universitaire 11, allée Ausone 33607 Pessac Cedex/ France e-mail : [email protected] Paper presented at the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, February 2004, and at the International Metropolitan Observatory Meeting, 9-10 January 2004, Bordeaux, Pôle Universitaire de Bordeaux. The author expresses his gratitude to the LASMAS-IdL and to Alexandre Kych for having allowed him to use 1999 census data in application of the data exchange agreement between CNRS and INSEE, as well as to Monique Perronnet-Menault (TEMIBER-CNRS, Bordeaux) for her invaluable help in producing maps of French urban areas. I. Metropolization and urban sprawl in French metropolitan areas There are two main official measures of urbanization defined by the French census, INSEE (Julien 2000): 1. the urban unit (unité urbaine) fits the agglomeration concept. It includes two categories : a. the urban agglomeration : a group of communes whose population is at least 2.000 inhabitants + a continuity of the built environment, i.e. there are no gaps (agricultural land, forest) of more than 200 meters (a criterion also used in Switzerland) b. the isolated city : the same definition applied to a sole commune France had 1.995 urban units at the last census conducted in 1999. 2. officially introduced in 1996 in order to measure in a better way the so-called periurbanization phenomenon (urban sprawl towards distant suburbs), the metropolitan area (aire urbaine) includes : a. an urban pole (pôle urbain) = an urban unit with at least 5.000 jobs b. an exurban ring (couronne périurbaine), composed of rural communes or urban units in which at least 40% of the active members work in the urban center or in a secondary center that is already attached to the urban center by means of this criterion The metropolitan area (see Appendix 1) was selected as our main unit of analysis in order to encompass the core city or cities, suburbs, and exurbs, the latter being often not contiguous to other communes. As in other countries like Sweden, the metropolitan area is defined according to municipal economic and employment interactions rather than by continuity of the built environment. According to the last census conducted in 1999, there are 354 urban areas containing 77% of the population (45 million), compared with 73% in 1990. In 1999, 3.8 additional million inhabitants have been counted in metropolitan areas. This increase results from two changes : there was a population growth of 1.5 million inhabitants within the metropolitan 2 areas’ limits of 1990, and in addition 2.3 million inhabitants came from the territorial extension of the metropolitan areas between 1990 and 1999. Although the category of metropolitan area was just introduced with the last national census in 1999, it is possible to reconstruct metropolitan areas from 1968 onwards through retropolation methods, based in particular on analyses conducted by Julien (2003). It then appears that the number of metropolitan areas has remained relatively stable : 319 in 1968, 347 in 1975, 359 in 1982, 361 in 1990, and 354 in 1999. At a general level, Figure 1 shows that urban sprawl affected urban poles or agglomerations as they are traditionally defined ; their number of communes increased from 48% in thirty years (from 2.098 to 3.100). But the most important increase was registered among the more distant suburbs, the so called periurban communes, whose number increased by 651% during the same period (from 1.440 to 10.808). While the city is usually defined by contiguity of construction, a periurban area is constituted by an outer belt in form of a mixed space inhabited both by urban workers and by farmers. A periurban area is therefore a rural space as most of its land is devoted to agricultural productive activities; but it is also an urban space because the majority of its employed population works in a city and daily migrates in this direction (on the development of periurbans communes: Cavailhès et al. 2002, Péguy 2000). 3 Figure 1. Measuring urban sprawl in all French urban areas: evolution of the number of communes in urban poles and urban belts from 1968 to 1999 1968 1999 1975 10808 2098 1440 3764 3100 2398 2793 2601 5710 7892 1990 1982 Source : data from Julien (2003) N communes in urban poles N communes in urban belts Table 1. The population of the 42 French metropolitan areas over 200.000 inhabitants (1999) METROPOLITAN AREA Population PARIS 11.173.886 LYON 1.647.722 MARSEILLE-AIX-EN-PRO. 1.516.086 LILLE 1.142.887 TOULOUSE 964.914 NICE 933.551 BORDEAUX 925.429 NANTES 711.241 STRASBOURG 611.971 TOULON 564.740 DOUAI-LENS 552.635 RENNES 521.183 ROUEN 518.340 GRENOBLE 514.586 MONTPELLIER 459.946 METZ 429.544 NANCY 410.405 CLERMONT-FERRAND 409.533 VALENCIENNES 399.581 TOURS 376.131 CAEN 370.752 ORLEANS 355.770 ANGERS 332.737 DIJON 326.886 SAINT-ETIENNE 321.953 BREST 303.528 LE HAVRE 296.795 LE MANS 293.094 REIMS 291.701 AVIGNON 290.524 AMIENS 270.809 MULHOUSE 270.752 BETHUNE 268.435 DUNKERQUE 265.906 PERPIGNAN 249.041 LIMOGES 247.881 BESANCON 222.388 NIMES 221.380 PAU 216.868 BAYONNE 214.039 ANNEMASSE 212.451 POITIERS 209.250 MEDIAN 363.261 source : INSEE 5 Most employed people work in the dense agglomeration, but they increasingly live in distant suburbs or exurbs that tend to be more densely populated than before. This trend reflects the declining dynamism of part of the older suburbs : unable to offer new jobs to replace traditional jobs (farmers, craftsmen), older suburbs have become economically more dependent on close poles, leading to a growing mobility of their population. Forty-two metropolitan areas have a population greater than 200.000 inhabitants. These biggest metropolitan areas are represented in Table 1 and Appendix 2. Maps of the metropolitan areas of Paris and Bordeaux are in Appendix 3 and Appendix 4. The 1999 census revealed two general evolutions : a stronger polarization around large metropoles and a continuing urban sprawl (Hoffmann-Martinot 2000). Half of the demographic growth between 1990 and 1999 was concentrated in just 11 metropolitan areas, while a same proportion was concentrated by 19 at the beginning of the 1980s. The largest part of demographic growth is due to a few big cities like Paris, Lyon and Toulouse. However the growth rate in the Paris region has decreased (+ 0,32 % per year) and today ranks below the national average level. But other metropolitan areas registered a very strong dynamism as their population grew at least two times more rapidly than in the rest of the country : Montpellier in particular (+ 1,88 % yearly), but also Toulouse, Rennes, and Nantes. On the whole, the most rapid growth is located in the South-East and in the Val de Loire area. While the Paris metropolitan area covered only 22% of the Ile-de-France region in 1968, it forms today a vast area of 14.518 km² (Appendix 3). Twenty-one percent of its territory is now spreading out beyond the Ile-de-France limits to the North-West. It entirely covers seven out of eight Ile-de-France départements (Essonne, Hauts-de-Seine, Paris, Seine- Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne, Val-d’Oise, Yvelines), 79% of the territory of the Seine-et-Marne département, and covers part of six départements belonging to other regions. Ninety-nine percent of the Ile-de-France population lives in the Paris metropolitan area. Today the Paris metropolitan area includes 1.584 communes (Appendix 3), of which about 400 are located out of the the Ile-de-France region. In 1999 its territory covered 429 6 more communes than in 1990. In Ile de France it extended into the two départements that were so far not totally encompassed, Essonne and Seine-et-Marne. In 1999, only 89 communes in Ile-de-France out of 1.281, all located in the South-East part of Seine-et-Marne, are not included in the Paris metropolitan area. This eastwards expansion has now added to the periurban belt of Paris communes in three neighboring départements, 23 communes in the département of Aisne, 3 in Marne, and 10 in Loiret. But it is in the Northern and Western parts of the region, in the départements of Oise, Eure and Eure-et-Loir that the attraction of the Paris agglomeration and its belt is most visible. Between 1990 and 1999, 135 new communes from these three départements have been included into the Paris metropolitan area: 52 communes in Oise, 45 in Eure, and 38 in Eure-et-Loir. Urban sprawl has developed strongly not only in the Paris metropolitan area but also in other large metropolitan areas. From 90 communes in 1968, the Toulouse metroplitan area covered 152 en 1975, 195 in 1982, 255 in 1990, and 342 in 1999. It includes today the largest part of the département Haute-Garonne (308 of its 588 communes, see Appendix 2) and portions of the départements Ariège (6 communes), Aude (2 communes), Gers (7 communes), Tarn (14 communes), and Tarn-et-Garonne (5 communes). A similar global extensive trend is to be observed in the other metropolitan areas with a population of over 200.000 inhabitants : between the last two census periods (1990 and 1999), the number of communes has noticeably increased in the metropolitan areas of Besançon (from 186 to 234), Bordeaux (149 to 191), Clermont-Ferrand (99 to 147), Limoges (53 to 78), Pau (91 to 142), Poitiers (56 to 83), Rouen (142 to 189), Strasbourg (128 to 182).