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Report n°1: The new constraints of urban development
Factors in periurbanisation
The reasons for urban sprawl are, of course, strongly influenced by the geographical and cultural situation of each agglomeration. Nevertheless, we can highlight some aspects that appear to be common to all the cases studied.
The role of transport and the sociological factors in urban sprawl
In all the situations of urban sprawl mentioned here, the phenomenon has been facilitated by the development of modern transport. The strongest period of urban sprawl in the Ile-de-France region was in the period from 1928 to 1935, which saw housing developments, relying simply on railway stations, brutally urbanise 16,000 hectares, reaching a total of 210,000 plots which were gradually endowed with the necessary amenities. The growth of private car ownership that enabled the subsequent increase in urban sprawl.
In fact, the percentage of car ownership among French households rose from 250 to 456 vehicles per 1,000 inhabitants in 25 years. Today in France, four out of five households own a car, four times as many as in the fifties. In addition, 30% of households have two or more cars. The percentage of multiple car ownership has therefore increased very significantly, as it was only 16.7% in 1982. The increased distance from urban centres and this dramatic rise in car ownership reflects ways of life in which there is a dissociation between areas for living, work and leisure, thus making individuals heavily mobile in a geographical sense. Traffic from private vehicles has thus risen 30% between 1987 and 1999. This not only reflects the increase in mobility and distances, but also an almost systematic use of the car. In the European Union, people use their cars for one journey in two when travelling distances under 3 kilometres, one journey in four under 1,000 metres and for one journey in eight under 500 metres. The car has thus become an automatic choice for any trip, replacing walking or cycling, the methods previously suited to travelling the distances given.
The influence of single family housing
At a sociological level, it is interesting to examine the motivations of households in leaving city centres or moving slightly further out.
Households moving to the outskirts of cities can be explained initially by the availability of property. In fact, one of the implacable logics of urban sprawl is that people are always looking further away for less expensive property. This factor, combined with a strong desire for property ownership and the scarcity of supply in densely populated districts and of collective housing, as well as the role of accommodation as a social mirror and the favourable image of single-family houses within our societies, strongly influences households' "desires" as regards housing type.
In fact, the primary expectation of a citizen is traditionally called "the desire for single family housing". In France, 56% of main residences are single-family houses. After a dramatic rise between 1982 and 1990, single-family housing progressed only slightly in the nineties, but nevertheless represents 58% of occupied accommodation built since 1990.
In France, the difference in proportions of single-family houses within agglomerations is partially explained by the differences in household income. This factor is, however, largely dominated by another factor with a clearly cultural basis. Before the periurbanisation process was triggered in the sixties, agglomerations initially had very different housing structures across the regions, although greatly similar to that of adjacent European countries. Except where site constraints have contributed to restricting periurbanisation, single-family housing has also spread within agglomerations where it was not the usual tradition. But we still find traces of old traditions in the places where they were strongest. These traditions correspond to new collective housing production that is more prevalent in the east or southeast than in the north or west, the land of single-family houses. Conversely, we can notice in the case of Bordeaux that despite less land being available due to the extensive forest and vineyards, the tradition of single-family housing has not wavered in this area where it is so firmly established. This shows that the intensity of periurbanisation is also the result of cultural factors.
This desire for single-family housing also reveals increased demand for comfort. Calm, tranquillity and privacy within the home are the reasons given for leaving collective housing, as well as the need for space and nature. Space has in fact become an integral part of comfort and so houses are getting bigger. The average number of rooms per main residence has risen from 3.08 in 1962 to 3.86 in 1999, while the number of people per household diminished simultaneously, dropping from 3.1 people to 2.4.
New rurban population
Another trend could be called the desire to live both in the city and the country. In France, rural areas are increasingly regarded as landscapes and as living environments, more for the surroundings they provide than in relation to what actually happens there. So they have a growing appeal for urban populations. Furthermore, the increase in periurbanisation has favoured fairly extensive planning in rural areas. In France, individual perceptions of the place of residence differ noticeably, in fact, from spatial statistical classifications. In particular, 85% of inhabitants classed within periurban belts consider themselves as living in the countryside. In total, almost half of those claiming to live in a rural zone live in the "predominantly urban area", in INSEE terms.
In any case, the rural area seems to have a genuine appeal to urban dwellers: 27% of them claim to be planning to move to a small municipality (in the countryside, by the sea or in the mountains) in the coming years. In contrast, only 8% of rural dwellers say that they want to move to an urban zone within the next few years.
Security and "Gated Communities"
Particular attention must also be drawn to a new form of housing: secure residential blocks. Gated communities, initially golden ghettos for Americans, are becoming more diverse in their country of origin, yet this phenomenon is taking on significant proportions in other countries across the world, from the gated communities of Johannesburg and the new secure residences of France to the condominiums of Cairo. The conjuntos cerrados, the Latin American cousins of gated communities - purpose-built or arising from the closure of pre-existing city blocks containing single family houses - are becoming more firmly established in metropolitan areas such as Bogota or Sao Paulo. In fact, the security factor has primarily prevailed in the development of these districts, a trend which seems to be universal (for example, in the United Kingdom, 15% of homes have multiple security). Today, there is also the opportunity for living among people and social groups who share the same values, the same aspirations and who look out for each other. The need for security is now associated with the need for a sense of community, which means that apartments are available in these residences rather than just single-family houses. In France, the phenomenon is just beginning to emerge, but there are already more than 20 residences of this type within the Toulouse agglomeration, as well as some in Tours, Avignon, Nantes, Montpellier, Lyons, Marseilles and Bordeaux.
Thus, with a growing position in terms of space occupied or share of population living in this type of accommodation, it is a reference model that is gradually becoming widespread and that has moved away from the affluent classes who adopted it originally. Basically it is a new model for living, which has been highly upgraded and replicated by the middle classes. The obvious security factor does not, however, lessen the social factor: the status attached to this type of residence is clear.