Social Geography of France’s Population. Remnants of Urbanization and Spatial Inversions

The social geography of France can no longer be reduced to a simple opposition between wealthy cities and poor rural areas. The analysis of incomes instead reveals a mosaic of territories, structured by highly contrasting social and spatial forms. Two major types of organization can be distinguished: centered forms, inherited from urban polarization, and linear forms or “off-center hubs,” linked to major communication and development corridors. Since the 1970s, centrifugal dynamics have profoundly transformed this organization, through peri-urbanization, residential mobility, and the de-urbanization of certain urban centers. These developments are gradually blurring the traditional center-periphery logic. Former industrial regions may become poorer, while certain peripheral, coastal, Alpine, or cross-border areas become particularly attractive. Social classes thus project themselves into space and form genuine socio-spatial classes, whose location depends simultaneously on income, amenities, mobility, and constraints. But is this mobility really a matter of choice? Who can still decide where to live, and who is forced to move ever farther away from the centers? Does peri-urbanization constitute a residential opportunity, or is it becoming, for low-income households, a genuine social dumping ground? And above all, are we witnessing genuine spatial inversions, in which former peripheral areas become more attractive while certain centers fall behind? The challenge, therefore, is to understand a France in which territorial hierarchies are no longer fixed, but are constantly being reshaped by economic transformations, mobility, and planning choices.