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France looks forward to a rural rebirth
Innovative policies stem the countryside's decline

http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1041281,00.html
Jon Henley in Matour Saturday September 13, 2003
The Guardian

On the face of it, there is nothing exceptional about Matour. It is a
pretty village, but there are many prettier in this part of Burgundy. It is
off the main tourist trail, and has nothing noteworthy to visit: no temple
to haute cuisine which would make it, in the words of the Michelin guide,
worth a detour.

But Matour is exceptional. Over the past few years, its population has
increased (to 1,026, at the last count).

It has a newly-arrived dentist, physiotherapist, hairdresser, baker,
butcher, florist, potter, notaire, and restaurateur, and is hunting hard
for a plumber or electrician to take over the vacant shop opposite the
church.

It is prospering. Two dozen local clubs meet in its newly refurbished
Maison des Associations; there are well-attended, twice-weekly film
screenings (Terminator 3 this week) at the Rural Animation Centre. In
summer, a solar-heated municipal swimming pool, a campsite and the
renovated dormitories of a former boarding school bring in holidaymakers.

It has taken money, a far-sighted village council, and hard work to rescue
Matour from the fate of countless small French villages: an ageing
population, young people fleeing at the first available opportunity, shops
and services which close one by one as their owners retire or go bankrupt.

For the first time since the second world war, France's countryside has
stopped losing its population to the cities. In 1999, the last year for
which figures are available, it gained 410,000 new inhabitants; 72 of the
country's 95 départements boast what the statisticians call a "positive
migratory balance".

The repopulation of the countryside, said Le Monde this week as the
government presented a package of 80 laws aimed at encouraging the shift
further, is "no longer a minority trend but a genuine sociological
phenomenon".

A survey showed 63% of French city dwellers dream of becoming neo-rurals
and 93% of rural mayors have been approached with inquiries about moving to
their village. The newcomers are not just office workers who, thanks to the
35-hour working week and the internet, can spend several days a week in
their holiday homes. Nor are they commuters (another new trend in France)
happy to add a couple of hours to their day in exchange for a semi-rural
idyll. Nearly half find jobs where they move to or in the nearest small
town or set up their own businesses. In Matour these range from accordion
maker to driving instructor.

Not every project comes to fruition and the more remote areas of the French
countryside still face seemingly insurmountable problems. According to the
CGT union, the post office is considering closing up to a third of its
10,000 rural offices - often the only link between remote communities and
France's public services. The hard-pressed state railway, SNCF, is also
reducing traffic on its less-used lines.

But for villages like Matour determined to create the right conditions for
the new influx, there is, for the first time in decades, a prospect not
just of survival but of success.

The mayor, Armand Charnay, 63, said: "Our approach was simple. A decade ago
the village was dying on its feet. So we began buying up everything just
about that was for sale, houses and commercial property, renovating it and
renting it out for a reasonable sum to people with the right kind of
project."

The council now has 30 tenants in the village centre (with 10 more
planned), and succeeded in attracting small businesses employing 40 people.
It has also prepared a number of new construction sites and sold them off,
at a loss, for new residents to build homes.

New services

At the same time, the council realised that newcomers to the village needed
more than just shops and housing. "The countryside's fine, there's fresh
air and calm and a good quality of life," said Mr Charnay. "But people used
to city life need services that didn't exist here before." So the
municipality set up a creche and a network of qualified childminders and
renovated a disused building on the Grande Rue to house a youth club, a
music school, a library and a retired people's centre.

"The villages around think we're mad," said Thierry Michel, an agricultural
engineer and deputy mayor. "But they don't understand what people need
nowadays, nor what needs to be done to make a rural community really live.
They're jealous; they say we must be richer than them. But we've got no
more money than anyone else - we've just spent it, and spent it with a real
goal in mind." Matour achieved its transformation with an annual budget of
some £750,000-£800,000 a year, 75% of it from its municipal resources
and regional, state and European aid.

Other villages have adopted different strategies which are also beginning
to pay off: Le Dorat, near Limoges, has created a hothouse for 10 young
internet-based companies; Neuvy-le-Roi near Tours has turned part of its
school into a rural business centre which has created 150 jobs in five
years; Auzet in Provence (population 40) has attracted four young farmers
and built a large chalet for school visits which is now occupied
year-round.

"What it takes," said Christine Thierry, who opened her flower shop in
Matour this year, "is really active and committed people at the mairie, and
a population that sees the sense of what they're doing.

Joel Louveau, who lived for 30 years on the outskirts of Paris before
moving his accordion business to Matour, said the village was "a breath of
fresh air. It's still a fragile success - it would only take three or four
shops to close and the whole thing could start to crumble again. But it
shows what the French countryside could be like."

Urban drift is reversed

· One French citizen in four lives in the countryside; one in five works
there.

· Compared to Britain or Germany, France retained an essentially rural
population until relatively late: not until 1932 did city-dwellers
outnumber country-dwellers.

· The trend is in reverse: over the past decade, 2.2m French people have
left cities for the countryside with 410,000 moving in 1999 alone, more
than outweighing the ratio of rural births to deaths, which remains
negative

· The phenomenon crosses class and job boundaries: from 1990-1999,
167,000 managers and independent professionals left cities, 440,000
white-collar and 407,000 blue-collar workers.

· Retirees also make up a large proportion: 312,800 over the past decade.

· The most favoured parts of France for this exodus are around the
cities, the west and the south, both along the coast and some way inland.

· Some 45% of new jobs created in the countryside over the period are
directly linked to the newcomers' arrival.