Objectif ZAN (Zéro artificialisation nette) et territoires ruraux : du débat national à la parole d’acteurs locaux
The Zero Net Artificialization (ZAN) objective is designed to fight urban sprawl and preserve biodiversity and natural agricultural and forest areas. After 2050, ZAN will be effective, meaning that any new artificial surface will have to be compensated by an equivalent “renaturalized” surface. To ac...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Université de Reims Champagne-Ardennes
2025-03-01
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| Series: | L'Espace Politique |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/espacepolitique/13661 |
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| Summary: | The Zero Net Artificialization (ZAN) objective is designed to fight urban sprawl and preserve biodiversity and natural agricultural and forest areas. After 2050, ZAN will be effective, meaning that any new artificial surface will have to be compensated by an equivalent “renaturalized” surface. To achieve this target, objectives are defined by decade. The intermediate objective for 2021-2031 is the consumption of space compared with the previous decade. Since its inclusion in the 2021 Climate and Resilience Act, it has given rise to an inflation of expressions and debates raised in particular among elected representatives. While urban issues such as urban renewal and densification had already been defined, the aim of this article is to understand how the implementation of ZAN in rural areas is being addressed in the national debate and in the expressions of local actors. This article is based on several sources. The analysis of the debate comes from the expressions of major national actors. Then it focuses on the parliamentary debate by analyzing the minutes of the public sessions of the two French assemblies, the Senate and the National Assembly, which led to the law of July 20th, 2023, a law “aimed at facilitating the implementation of objectives to fight the artificialization of land and to strengthen support from elected local representatives”. The way national press covered this debate provides a complementary perspective. As a counterpoint, by changing scale and focusing on the more concrete implementation of the ZAN objective in rural territories, the article uses local actors’ opinions gathered in a survey conducted from March 21 to May 21, 2024 in the Gard and Hérault departments. The ZAN objective calls into question regional planning and development models. The 2023 parliamentary debate puts small rural communities at the heart of concerns. They symbolize a rural community fearing to be left behind by elected representatives’ vertical policy, even though it appears that rural areas make a fairly significant contribution to the artificialization of lands. The flagship measure of the 2023 law is the guarantee given to each commune to be able to consume one hectare (10 000 m2) during the 2021-2031 decade, preserving the ability of elected officials in small communes to act, but it risks compromising, in a number of territories, the construction of inter-communal projects. The parliamentary debate has highlighted controversies over the diagnosis, inter-territorial relations and approach to territorial development. This national debate reflects only a fraction of the questions that are being asked locally. The implementation of ZAN in rural areas is a tense issue, where questions of identity and territorial control are at stake. It is approached differently, depending on the age of the planning process and the diversity of issues identified by local actors. Like other transition policies, the ZAN objective confronts societies with complex dynamics of transformation. Open debate is not over yet and elected representatives’ real-life experience in rural areas go beyond land issues. |
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| ISSN: | 1958-5500 |