The Ile-de-France, its economy, its sociology - JP Orfeuil [EN]

The Ile-de-France region, its economy, its sociology

Ile-de-Franceis the capital region of the country, and the wealthiest in terms of GDP  per inhabitant. The first paragraph describes shortly the evolution of the government of territories in France. The following ones are devoted to the analysis of the situation of this metropolitan area today.

 

1 France’s political and administrative organisation:from centralism to decentralisation

The history of France is that of a centralized government dealing with all aspects of social life. The situation   has changed from the top with the building of the European Union ( a growing part of laws in France has its origin in the European parliament) and from the bottom with the decentralisation process.

 

Mainland France covers an area of 550,000 square kilometres.[1] This huge territory, occupied by people of diverse origins and cultures (Mediterranean, Atlantic, Germanic), very early in history gave rise to a strong and centralised State.The shift from monarchy to republic in 1789 did nothing to change this. However, it was only in the second half of the 19th century that developmentalist elites (the so-called Saint-Simoniens) would manage to “unify the peoples of France” by means of railways, primary schools and compulsory use of the French language.

 

The legacy of France’s long history is two levels of administrative division:the communes or municipalities (more than 36,000, 1281 of them in Île-de-France), which today have complete authority over land-use regulation, and the départements (95 in all), an area of appropriate size for a representative of the State living in the main town to travel (on horseback) to any point within a day. Municipal councils are elected by direct universal suffrage, general councils (departmental government) by indirect suffrage.

 

This strong State was present in all fields (economic, social, urban, etc.) after the Second World War, during the reconstruction period and the so-called “30 glorieuses” – the years of post-war development.The omnipresence of the State brought a certain number of successes in the economic domain (e.g. “national champions” policy in the energy and aerospace industries) and advances in the social domain (rise of the welfare state). The record on regional action is more mixed. The so-called “regional development” policies designed to prevent excessive growth in the Île-de-France region by industrial deconcentration and by promoting a certain number of regional cities, have been a success, but local development policies have been something of a failure. In the housing field, the social housing policy with « Grands ensembles » is perceived to have been a mistake and a failure, and in infrastructure, the large-scale development of urban motorways is now rejected, both in itself and because it contributes to urban sprawl. Day-to-day land-use planning as embodied in land-use plans and the medium-term perspectives embodied in development and urban master plans, increasingly came to be perceived as unacceptable on account of the direct control exercised.

 

In the 1970s, the State gradually began to disengage from local intervention, transferring control to local authorities, a trend that accelerated rapidly in the early 80s with decentralisation. A sign of what was to come was the transformation of the regions from mere administrative categories to political entities, with an elected government and a primary focus on economic development and international influence, and above all reform in housing aid for disadvantaged groups. State aid would no longer be available solely for public schemes, but also for individual first-time buyers.

 

This process of decentralisation unquestionably reflected strong public demand, well summed up by Jean Louis Guigou, when he was minister of regional development: “whilst we need globalisation, the regions need us”, especially as the French have a strong attachment to locality. So they wanted “needs focused” local management of land that had become an even more precious commodity as the prospect of indefinite growth faded and the environment became a powerful value in its own right.

 

Much more than a simple “transfer of powers”, decentralisation profoundly changed the rationale of public action and the sources of its legitimacy. The State as planner, if for no other reason than that it intervened simultaneously in multiple areas, had to justify its plans on rational grounds, balancing costs or disadvantages against benefits from a perspective of public interest measured on a national scale. This was the time of what Jean-Marc Offner had called substantive evaluation. This approach, which has the advantage of demanding a degree of objectivity in assessing the costs and benefits of projects, sinned by an excess of functionalism.

 

Decentralisation has changed the rules of the game. The regions are no longer prepared to be sacrificed on the altar of the national interest. The fragmentation of society and the multiplicity of legitimate interests require local authorities to negotiate their plans with a very wide range of increasingly informed and organised local stakeholders. This is the stage of so-called “procedural” evaluation, the first shoots of “participatory democracy” in the sphere of urban planning. What is gained in respect for individual interests was lost in global coherence (especially when the decisions to be made are about “micro-territories” within actual areas of population), and projects can take significantly longer to implement. Faced with this difficulty, and reflecting the growing power of image and emotion in collective behaviour, the authorities tend to seek collective support by motivational projects, replacing (dull) planning, and its focus on constraints, with urban projects, the stuff of dreams. Projects have a greater capacity to act as a vehicle for the imagination, to generate emotions, to unify the multiple interests of different stakeholders. This process has been described as motivational evaluation, where the pursuit of consensus can bring release from the corset of rationality, from financial constraints, and often from the need to assess the effects of projects on behaviour. Public action becomes less a response to rationally identifiable needs than a maker of dreams, able to meet the needs of citizens for recognition, compassion or pride. The citizen's relation to politics, which was fundamentally the sphere of sociology until the postwar years of the 30 glorieuses, now belongs much more to the sphere of psychology.

 

Table II.1

The values that public action must reflect

 

Type of value	Importance and evolution	Example in local policy terms
Economic and social efficacy: achieve the best in the public interest with the resources invested	A declining value, with decentralised decision-making, the growing influence of the media and the growing influence of image, emotion and imagination.	A tram, even if it costs more, is always better than a bus lane, even if they are equivalent in efficiency.
Equality as equal opportunities	A powerful value, justifying free public schooling, but dominated in France by equality in condition and protection. Nevertheless, somewhat on the rise because of the now multidimensional nature of the question of inequalities: focus on “problem suburbs”, women, visible minorities, the disabled, etc.	A strongly growing value in public space where everyone (pedestrian, cyclists, etc.) must be able to find their “fair” place through “road sharing”. Strong policies in favour of access to public transport for people with reduced mobility
Equality through government intervention on differences in income and living conditions	The second value (behind the environment) guiding local public action. A value still very strong in France, but characterised by right/left division.	70-80% of transport costs subsidised through tax. Movement towards a single tariff across a region.
Trust in growth that will benefit everyone.	A value that divides the French (who believe in a growing income gap that policies should offset) from their elites (who increasingly believe that growth is needed to make progress in redistribution).	Global desire to protect public services, perceived as one of the vehicles of redistribution
Interest in the environment	Primary value guiding local public action today. A fast rising and widely shared value, the sense of being a long way behind the countries of northern Europe, extensive promulgation of this concern through the media	Fall in road investment, demonisation of the car. Big ambitions for the bicycle, public transport, etc.

 

In the early 1980s, the decentralisation laws signalled the State’s handover of responsibility for spatial planning to the (more than) 36,000 communes (municipalities), at this stage with no concept of the conurbation or metropolitan area.

 

At the end of the 1980s, the State tried to stage a comeback through a set of broad priorities defined in 3 laws.The “Chevenement” law made combined municipal structures much more attractive. The “Voynet” law prescribed spatial planning approaches. The “solidarity and urban renewal” law signalled the State’s preference for recycling rather than expansion in urban development, in principle made it compulsory for all new urban development to include public transport provision and obliged all municipalities within a single conurbation to provide at least 20% of social housing in their areas.

 

The need for further divisions and territorial institutions emerged over time.The regions (22 in all) were created in the 1970s, with a primary focus on economic development and international profile. Their governments are elected by direct universal suffrage. Intercommunalitésare institutions where municipalities voluntarily join forces to pool some of their activities. Their executive is elected by indirect suffrage, by the councils of their member municipalities. In most of the big conurbations outside Paris (with the exception of Toulouse), the development of these municipal groupings has generated strong municipal cooperation around the central conurbation, which comes to play the role of a metropolitan authority. In Île-de-France, by contrast, the process has produced a multiplicity of municipal groupings, without any involvement by the city of Paris. The result is that only the Île-de-France region can claim to be a metropolitan authority, but it does not have the legal prerogatives associated with that role.

 

Although, in principle, the State has overall power over the territorial authorities (which it in fact finds hard to exercise), no territorial authority can claim power over the authorities below it in the hierarchy (e.g. the regions over the departments, the departments over the municipalities, etc.).The relative importance of these institutions can be measured in budgetary terms. The budgets managed by municipalities for the benefit of local populations are greater than those of the departments, whilst departmental budgets are larger than regional budgets. They can also be measured in electoral terms. The elections that generate the most excitement and the highest voter turnout are the presidential election (direct suffrage) and the municipal elections. Since the Fifth Republic (1958) and election of the president by direct suffrage (1962), the power of the executive (the president, who appoints the prime minister, who chooses the members of the government) has been objectively greater than that of the legislature (the National Assembly and the Senate).

 

In addition, France is a founding member of the European Union, which has strong legislative powers, to the point that a growing proportion of “French” laws are transpositions of European directives into French law.

 

2.  Paris, Île-de-France and the State:a long history of mutual mistrust

Francehas always been governed from its capital region (Paris, Saint-Germain, Versailles), except occasionally in times of war.As a result of this long history of centralism, monuments and museums are concentrated in Paris as in no other city, which makes the capital highly attractive to tourists, with road and rail networks radiating out of Paris, although efforts have been made to develop transverse links.

 

Nonetheless, political relations between the State, the city of Paris and the region remain complex.The State has always been wary of the people of Paris, with their propensity to rebel. It maintains exceptional powers over Paris, justified by the city’s status as the national capital.

 

For their part, the representatives of the city of Paris[2] have always mistrusted the State and, for example, designed the Paris Metro in such a way that ordinary trains cannot run on it.     

The city of Paris, which achieved its current size through the annexation of a number of towns and villages in the 19th century when Baron Haussmann was adapting the city to the modern world, for a long time took little interest in its suburbs, except as a repository for necessary amenities unwanted within the city limits (lunatic asylums, waste tips, polluting factories, etc.).Today, the périphérique orbital road, built in the 1960s, has become the symbol of this division.

 

The Île-de-France region, which is not a region with a strong identity like Brittany or Alsace in France, or Catalonia in Spain, experienced strong demographic growth, particularly during the 30 glorieuses, the years of post-war development.The fear that this growth might empty the country was very real (Jean-François Gravier’s book – Paris and the French Desert – is still a familiar text) and gave rise to a major political programme of spatial development, underpinned by a strong institution, the Datar. These efforts produced very positive results (with a dozen French conurbations claiming the status of “metropolis”), but made scarcely any inroads into the capital region’s primacy, a characteristic that France shares with Greece and the United Kingdom. Still today, because of its status as capital, it is a region where decentralisation is incomplete. The State has, for example, retained a “right of veto” over the regional masterplan, a document that should in principle be none of the State’s business.

 

3. The demographics of Île-de-France:from fear of overpopulation to fading attractions.

Franceis a country of low population density (110 people per sqkm) compared with its neighbours in the “blue banana” (Italy, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, England).For a long time, population growth was somewhat lacklustre, a fact attributed to the initial defeats in the first two world wars. However, it now boasts amongst the highest demographic Europe. Several factors have contributed to this change: a policy of birthrate incentives, with marked support for large families, adopted after the Second World War; immigration encouraged by the industrialisation of the 1950s and 60s, and the influx of Algerian French in 1962, and of course, as elsewhere, greater life expectancy. The birthrate is still high enough today to roughly maintain generational turnover, which is the exception in Europe and one of the few sources of optimism for the French population.

 

Within the country, the demographic weight of the Île-de-France region (population currently 11.8 million) increased from 12% at the beginning of the 20th century to almost 19% in 1975, making this small region (12,000 km², 2% of the country’s land surface) a very densely populated area (966 people per square kilometre and 3920 for the 9.3 million inhabitants of the Paris conurbation).    

 

Table II.2

The share of of Île-de-France population relative to national population

 

	1900	1950	1975	2007
French population	40.7	41.7	52.7	61.8
IdF population	5.0	7.0	9.8	11.6

 

This demographic weight has scarcely changed since, despite economic internationalisation and metropolisation, which have expanded the role of the most populated regions.The region’s demographic growth is fed by a significant rate of natural increase (the population here is younger than the French average), but net migration between the capital region and the rest of the country has been negative for two decades, with population inflow primarily associated with education and initial employment, and outflow with the quest for a better life amongst young couples with children. A recent survey shows that 40% of people living in Île-de-France would like to move, a higher proportion than in any other region. This lack of attractiveness, which we will return to later, is a sign for politicians that “something is wrong”.

 

Even within Île-de-France, there is a great deal of demographic variation.Over some 30 years, the population of Paris (a very densely populated area) has remained virtually stable. The inner suburbs (the departments of Hauts de Seine, Seine Saint Denis and Val de Marne) have experienced slow population growth, whilst population growth in the outer suburbs (the departments of Seine et Marne, Yvelines, Essonne, Val d’Oise) has been faster. The difficulties of building in the central zone and the cost of housing, the construction of 5 new towns (within the outer suburbs), the natural tendency to urban sprawl, and the fact that household service jobs follow population, have contributed to these changes.In half a century, the demographic weight of Paris in the region has halved. Paris’s contribution to total employment is also dropping, but from a higher starting point, with the result that Paris still accounts for 30% of employment within Île-de-France.

 

Table II.3

Population and job distribution within Île-de-France

                              

 

	Population (thousands)			AAGR 1950 -2007	Jobs (2007) (thousands)
	1950	1975	2007
Paris	2787 (40%)	2280	2193 (19%)	-0,4%	1685 (30%)
Inner suburbs	2563( 37%)	3976	4349 (37%)	+0,9%	2020(36%)
Outer suburbs	1606  (23%)	4019	5057 (44%)	+2,0%	1900  (34%)
Idf	6956	10275	11599	+0,9%	5605 (100%)

 

4 The economy of France and of Île-de-France

With 19% of the total French population, Île-de-France employs 22% of France’s working population and generates 29% of the country’s added value (€534 billion in 2008, €46,000 per person).This high level of production is partly explained by higher employment rates (fewer retired people, more working women) and partly by the types of jobs available (28% of managers as compared with 12% in the rest of the country, and conversely 14% of unskilled workers compared with 25% in the rest of the country), as well as by the business sectors present in the region. Agriculture and the processing of agricultural projects represent only 1.7% of added value, industry, energy and construction 13.1%.   Conversely, the two leading sectors of activity are business services (24.4%) and finance and real estate activities (23.4%).

 

Table II.4

Basic socio-economic data:Ile-de-Franceand France

 

	Île-de-france	France
GDP/inhabitant (€)	45,900	30,100
GDP/active population	96,300	74,200
Household gross income / head	21,900	18,100
% HH owning their own homes	48.4%	57.2%
% HH relying on social housing	22.9%	15.7%
Time spent in transport per day	Around 85 mn	Around 60 mn
Relative price IdF / France	113	100
Relative cost of housing	147	100

 

Île-de-France is well-positioned for the training of human capital and preparation for the knowledge economy.Students and public and private research are overrepresented in this area, with 27% of France’s student population, 35% of public research employment and 40% of private research employment.

 

Île-de-France is also one of France’s leading regions in terms of openness to the world.It is the area with the highest proportion of foreigners. Its airports connect Paris to 547 cities in 135 countries and handle 86 million air passengers. The high-speed train network serves France’s principal cities and extends to Europe. It is a preferred destination for direct foreign investment. It is one of the world’s leading destinations for trade tourism, with 600,000 sqm of exhibition space, and this tourism generates 40% of hotel occupation. In all, the Paris region accounts for 45 million tourist visits a year (60% of them from abroad) and 33 million hotel stays. It is also the French region where anti-European sentiment is lowest.

 

Ile-de-France’s very favourable economic situation is only partially reflected in the living standards of its population.True, average gross earnings reflect this structural effect. They stood at €38,100 in 2006, compared with €30,100 in the rest of France. However, the earnings difference in terms of job type and qualification levels between Île-de-France and the rest of the country is on average much lower (9%), excluding senior managers (21%). Again except for senior managers, these differences are not sufficient to offset disparities in the cost of living (in particular housing costs) and in living conditions (smaller dwellings, difficulty getting on the housing ladder, fewer detached houses and more apartments, commuting times almost 50% longer than outside the region). These reasons partly explain why, since the early 1980s, Île-de-France, the country’s most productive region, has experienced a negative net migration balance with the rest of the country.

 

Within Île-de-France, the earnings gap between a manager and a manual worker is some 2.9 (€65,900 compared with €23,500).The gap between the revenues of the 10% of the wealthiest households and the 10% of the poorest households is around 4, higher than in the rest of the country. These differences may seem modest compared with other cities around the world. They are made more visible by the residential strategies of the better-off, who settle in a small number of high-status communities, often to the west of Paris. Conversely, the poorest and most vulnerable section of the population, often of foreign origin, usually live in the 1950s and 1960s social housing districts (high-rise estates) in the north and east of Paris. They tend to feel a sense of exclusion which periodically expresses itself in bursts of rioting. A minority of this population develops a lifestyle that is marginal, or even illegal (drug-trafficking), or that is politically unacceptable to the rest of the population (religious fundamentalism). Beyond these visible and highly reported phenomena, most of the Île-de-France population lives in diverse communities.

 

5. The perception of quality of life in Ile-de-France today

The major historical distinction between “modern Parisians” and “backward provincials”, still clearly present during the “trente glorieuses”, has become much less marked with the all-round development, including in culture, of the other big cities. They have become all the more appealing in that they combine high-level cultural services with better quality of life (e.g. better housing conditions, better access to the sea or the mountains). Residents of Île-de-France no longer have the sense that their region is constantly pulling the country into the modern world. By way of example, their region was not in the forefront of innovation in transport: the tram was reintroduced into Grenoble and Nantes well before it emerged, timidly, in the Paris suburbs, eventually becoming the alpha and omega of transport policies.Self-service bicycle networks were introduced in Rennes and Lyon before Velib in Paris. The cult objects of today's image politics are imported from the provinces into Paris. In a way, Paris is becoming provincial.  

The social division of space is becoming increasingly marked in Île-de-France. Paris, where numerous districts, in the East and North, were still primarily working class in the 1960s, has “gentrified” in all its districts, and only the existence of a significant social housing stock maintains a degree of diversity. This phenomenon is gradually extending to the nearby towns, especially those served by the metro. By contrast, the big social housing estates in the inner and middle suburbs are increasingly becoming “specialised” in housing “difficult populations”, in particular first and second generation immigrants. More and more, “middle-class” households are being excluded from private housing in the centres and excluding themselves from undesirable social housing. Instead, they choose areas remote from the heart of Paris, either in still accessible parts of the inner suburbs (with very poor public transport and ageing housing stock), or in the outer suburbs, or else in neighbouring regions.  

In more sociological terms, the aspirations of residents of Île-de-France are heavily focused on improving the quality of life in their region. People living in the centre and increasingly in the inner suburbs, want to see less car traffic near their homes and aspire to a more locally based lifestyle. In the wider suburbs, those whose residents continue to work in Paris (a minority) want to see a big improvement in transport into the centre, in particular because of the poor quality of service and reliability of the railway systems. On the wider, regional scale, the difficulties experienced in housing and transport are prompting a growing number of Île-de-France residents, particularly families, to think about eventually moving to a provincial town.