Gentrification of peri-urban spaces in France ‒ the surroundings of Nancy

Abstract

The process of gentrification in the peri-urban districts of French cities has scarcely been touched upon in recent research, which has hitherto seen the phenomenon as typically associated with core urban areas. The tendency has been to view the periphery through the lens of the social crisis of the banlieues. In contrast, the present article focuses on gentrification in the metropolitan area of Nancy (Grand Est region) as a development that also plays a role in municipalities around major cities and especially around regional metropolitan centres. Starting with a survey of current research approaches, the article first pinpoints some gaps and methodological imbalances that need to be tackled, before embarking on the case study of peri-urban Nancy. Statistical data and empirical surveys in the form of qualitative interviews indicate how Nancy's peri-urban districts have developed a logic of separation, exclusion and social decoupling -typical features of gentrification -particularly in connection with the construction of new single-family houses as a supplement to existing residential stock. Key questions here concern individual motives for choosing a particular residential location, and the creeping "segregation from above" that accompanies this process. The image of France's peri-urban spaces that arises from this study stands in explicit contrast to the received, markedly negative connotations of the "urban periphery".

Dinámicas de población y vivienda en las áreas urbanas de un grupo de ciudades medias españolas no integradas en áreas metropolitanas

“…En cuanto a sus expresiones territoriales, la dispersión urbana se ha analizado desde la morfología urbana y la planificación urbana (Hall, 2014). La geografía urbana le ha prestado atención a partir de las lógicas de la periurbanización (extensión territorial de la ciudad) (Marchal et al, 2019) o de la contraurbanización (cambio de escala de la ciudad) (Dematteis, 2015). Lo cierto es que la dispersión urbana tiene muchas lecturas disciplinares, interpretativas, territoriales y temporales que son complementarias, aunque la atención se ha dirigido hacia las ciudades de mayor tamaño.…”

Towards Local Forms of Sprawl: A Brief Reflection on Mediterranean Urbanization

“…In this regard, peri-urbanization is a notion specifically adopted by French geographers and forms the background of a multifaceted (positive and normative) debate on the recent evolution of metropolitan systems and its governance [63]. Since the 1970s, the Francophone geography outlined such confused development between cities and the surrounding countryside, where population and urban activities are chaotically scattered in rural areas, with low settlement density [65][66][67]. Peri-urbanization was therefore a neologism proposed to define a migration out of the center of medium-large urban areas, and suburban locations were interpreted as the space resulting from such transformations [68,69].…”

The Peri-Urban Gentrification Process in Cisauk Subdistrict, Tangerang Regency, Indonesia

“…Shaw et al (2020) also explained that such transitional areas are related to land-use changes and social and demographic characteristics. These peri-urban areas appear because of a city's development on the outskirts (Marchal, Stébé, & Weber, 2019). When viewed spatially, the development of built-up land that occurs in peri-urban areas is not limited by administrative boundaries but is based on how the characteristics of built-up land change (Hersperger et al, 2018).…”