The regeneration of the countryside induces a regional planning logic which must take into account the specificity of each territorial context.
par Jerome Saddier, President of Bouge ton coQ!, Corentin Emery, founding member of Bouge ton coQ!, Rémi Branco, initiator of The Call of the Territories, Thierry Germain, expert associated with the Jean-Jaurès Foundation et Corinne Royer, novelist
The campaigns seem to have disappeared from the national narrative. While the France of towns and villages inspired the construction of the republican edifice, influenced the outline of its administrative limits, forged its agricultural and industrial framework, provided its elected representatives and nourished its vital forces, everything happens as if the The future was now being played out elsewhere. At a time when our democratic, social, economic and ecological model needs to be discussed in light of the dangers that await us and the hopes that we have, a third of French people legitimately question their full belonging to the nation.
We allow one in three young French people to atrophy their dreams and limit their abilities, we are deaf to farmers’ questions about their identity and the paradoxical injunctions which undermine their love of the profession, we seem to accept that the health of some is less important than that of others, we pretend to ignore that the erosion of purchasing power in the countryside limits the acceptability of the energy transition, heightening the tragedy of the closure of a local service essential to daily life.
However, rural society is reinventing itself, innovating, tackling the issues that concern us all head on. It fully participates in the reinvention of our common story, according to a model that is specific to it and which as such carries a desirable path (and desired) by all French people. None of the difficulties inherent to the rural way of life are accepted by those who live there. The feeling of abandonment, the anxiety, the impression of relegation of rural populations is not something to be taken into account, it is a limit which is constantly pushed back by the immense crowd of citizens, mayors, associations, local businesses who will never give up inventing their own way and thereby promote a certain art of civic living.
This new rural society is embodied in the associative dynamics, the density of solidarity links at the neighborhood level, the dedication of rural mayors, the creativity of multi-actor cooperation which reinvents the very way in which we can produce community services. daily in a context of limited resources. We measure every day to what extent the rural way of life and the model of cohesion specific to the village, mixed with trust towards one’s loved ones and distrust towards distant powers, do not constitute an obstacle to initiative but resources for the benefit of the general interest.
The regeneration of the countryside induces a regional planning logic which takes into account the specificity of each territorial context. Contrary to planning reflexes, guided by statistical rationalization removed from the sensitive experience of this or that territory, a credible territorial development policy is based on support for local initiatives. This requires reinventing the relationships between organized civil society and those responsible for local and national public policies by favoring support in engineering, financing and skills for the benefit of the myriad of local experiments which contribute to the emergence of awareness and a rural imagination in its own right.
Rural inventiveness is shaping a new way of life in the countryside. It is based on the promotion of the assets specific to rural areas, the commitment of citizens, local association leaders, local elected officials, the abundance of initiatives designed from the first kilometer of needs and each draws an exemplary figure of the story that is missing to rural citizens to define themselves as full members of the nation. The support and attention given to the rural narrative carries with it the promise of a national narrative that no longer eclipses 20 million French people determined to take their part in the invention of the French model of the 21st century. This little book (1) invites us to debate it in order to produce concrete actions and decisions now.
(1) You from the cities and me from the fields, rural areas in the 21st centuryéditions de l’Aube and Fondation Jean-Jaurès, in bookstores on November 22, 7 euros.
Source: www.liberation.fr
