Managing and controlling diffuse urbanisation in France: Spatial planning practices in cross-border city-regions

Le Bivic, Camille; Idt, Joël Article Managing and controlling diffuse urbanisation in France: Spatial planning practices in cross-border city-regions Raumforschung und Raumordnung / Spatial Research and Planning Provided in Cooperation with: Leibniz-Forschungsnetzwerk "R – Räumliches Wissen für Gesellschaft und Umwelt | Spatial Knowledge for Society and Environment" Suggested Citation: Le Bivic, Camille; Idt, Joël (2023) : Managing and controlling diffuse urbanisation in France: Spatial planning practices in cross-border city-regions, Raumforschung und Raumordnung / Spatial Research and Planning, ISSN 1869-4179, oekom verlag, München, Vol. 81, Iss. 6, pp. 605-619, https://doi.org/10.14512/rur.1697 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/283293 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ rur.oekom.de https://doi.org/10.14512/rur.1697 BEITRAG ARTICLE OPEN ACCESS Managing and controlling diffuse urbanisation in France: Spatial planning practices in cross-border city-regions Camille Le Bivic, Joël Idt Received: 6 December 2022 Accepted: 28 July 2023 Published online: 21 September 2023 Abstract Managingandcontrolling“landtake”ofagriculturalandnaturallandforurbanisationisthetargetofEuropeanandnational policies. Although this objective seems to be increasingly understoodamongtheactors,theprioritisationofissuesandthe measures taken by governments to achieveit are very heterogeneous. The practices of local public and private actors do not necessarily follow the directions established at national level by the instruments. This paper examines the concrete forms,inFrance,ofcollectiveactioninthefieldofspatialplanning to limit land take, particularly in French cross-border areas that are experiencing strong urban growth. The survey is based on 60 semi-structured interviews with public actors involved in the spatial transformations of the cross-border regions around Geneva, Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai, Luxembourg and Strasbourg-Karlsruhe. The survey shows that collective action in spatialplanning isvery diverse in France,dependingon the regions and municipalities concerned, even if the legal rules are the same. Local public actors play strategically with the rules and adapt them. Moreover, the organisation of collective action to limit land take is marked by interdependencies betweenregions,andinourcasebetweenneighbouringcountries, which are often left unexamined in national planning policies and instruments. Camille Le Bivic, Laboratoire d’Urbanisme, Université Gustave Eiffel, 16 Bd Newton, 77420 Champs-sur-Marne, France [email protected] Joël Idt, Laboratoire d’Urbanisme, Université Gustave Eiffel, 16 Bd Newton, 77420 Champs-sur-Marne, France [email protected] © 2023 by the author(s); licensee oekom. This Open Access article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY). Keywords: Spatial planning practices territorial governance land take land use instrument cross-border areas Management und Kontrolle der diffusen Urbanisierung in Frankreich: Raumplanungspraktiken in grenzüberschreitenden Stadtregionen Zusammenfassung DieReduktionderInanspruchnahmelandwirtschaftlicherund naturbelassener Flächen für die Urbanisierung ist das Ziel europäischer und nationaler Politiken. Obwohl diese Zielvorgabe von den Akteuren anscheinend mehr und mehr verstanden wird, sind die Priorisierung der Themen und die von den Regierungen ergriffenen Maßnahmen zur Erreichung dieses Ziels sehr heterogen. Die Praktiken der lokalen öffentlichen und privaten Akteure folgen nicht unbedingtden auf nationaler Ebene durch die Instrumente vorgegebenen Richtungen. Dieser Beitrag untersucht die konkreten Formen kollektiven Handelns in Frankreich im Bereich der Raumplanung zur BegrenzungdesFlächenverbrauchs,insbesondereindenfranzösischen Grenzgebieten, die ein starkes städtisches Wachstum verzeichnen.DieUntersuchungbasiert auf60halbstrukturier- ten Interviews mit öffentlichen Akteuren, die an den räumlichen Transformationen der grenzüberschreitenden Regionen um Genf, Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai, Luxemburg und Straßburg- Karlsruhe beteiligt sind. Die Untersuchung zeigt, dass das kollektive Handeln in der Raumplanung in Frankreich je nach Region und Gemeinde sehr unterschiedlichist, auch wenn die gesetzlichenVorschriften gleich sind. Die lokalen öffentlichen Akteure spielen strategisch mit den Regeln und passen sie an. Darüber hinaus ist die Organisation des kollektiven Handelns zur Begrenzung der Flächeninanspruchnahme durch Interdependenzen zwischen den Regionen und in unserem Fallzwischen den Nachbarländerngekennzeichnet,die in den Raumforschung und Raumordnung | Spatial Research and Planning (2023) 81/6: 605–619 605 C. Le Bivic, J. Idt nationalen Planungspolitiken und -instrumenten oft unberücksichtigt bleiben. Schlüsselwörter: Raumplanungspraktiken  Territoriale Governance Flächenverbrauch  FlächennutzungsinstrumenteGrenzüberschreitende Gebiete 1Overview This paper examines the implementation of no-net-land- take objectives in France, more particularly in French border areas subject to urban growth. Since 2011, managing the “land take” of agricultural and natural land for urban and other artificial land development has been the target of European and national policies (European Commission 2011; European Commission 2021). The conversion of natural or agricultural land for urbanisation purposes, such as urban infrastructure, construction, recreational facilities and soil compaction, is a concern for policymakers at European and national levels as it contributes to the weakening of ecosystems, climate change, deterioration of food production conditions and the flooding of inhabited areas. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as land take. The current urgency of reducing land take phenomena leads to the development of land policies and instruments designed to modify land rights and thereby to reduce the number of urban development areas or increase urban density. These ongoing national changes raise societal questions of regional relevance and local implementation. Although the principle seems to be a matter of consensus among actors, the priorities are defined differently depending on each country (Bovet/Marquard/Schröter-Schlaack 2019: 6–14; Cotella/Evers/Janin Rivolin et al. 2020: 36–55). Moreover, the resulting spatial planning activities take various forms, both in terms of definitions and calculations of land take and in terms of the instruments used and their implementation. In some countries, targets have already been quantified, while in others they are still under debate or have yet to be defined at sub-national levels. For example, the German government defines the limit on land take for housing and transport infrastructures at 30 hectares per day in 2020, and at 30 hectares minus x per day in 20301(Bundesregierung 2002: 99; Bundesregierung 2016: 38). However, the “Monitor of Settlement and Open Space Development” of the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development 1Some German Länder have defined targets, such as Bavaria with 5 ha/day by 2030, or Baden-Württemberg with 3 ha/day by 2020. shows that by 2020, land take amounted to 57.9 ha/day.2 Concurrently, the Luxembourg government is drawing up its “Master Programme for Spatial Planning” (PDAT), which also discusses limitations on land take. The current limit stands at 1 hectare per day (Gouvernement du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg 2010: 35) and is planned to be reduced to 0.25 hectares per day by 2035, reaching the goal of no net land take in 2050 (Gouvernement du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg 2022: 45). In Switzerland, urban sprawl is all the more the subject of political debate because land is a very limited resource, with only a third of the land available for agriculture or urbanisation (Bovet/Marquard/Schröter- Schlaack 2019: 9). By contrast, the methods for limiting land take encourage urban densification. For the past twenty years, the Swiss Federal Council has limited the amount of artificial land to 400 m2per inhabitant (Swiss Federal Council 2002: 27). This threshold has not changed over time, but has been reinforced by other levers designed to increase the occupation of existing buildings and reduce the need for construction, such as the limit of 20% on the number of secondary residences per municipality3(Art. 75b BV4). In Belgium, the floods of July 2021 and their consequences have particularly contributed to the increase and acceleration of measures to limit land take. The Walloon government has reinforced the objectives defined (Gouvernement de Wallonie 2019: 70–72) by the circular on the constructability of flood zones5(2021). In 2019, Wallonia sets the limit for land take at 6 km2per year in 2030 (1.6 ha per day), dropping down to zero (in net value) in 2050. However, the text has not entered into force, the Government is currently defining loacal trajectories (Gouvernement de Wallonie 2022:5). The Flemish government, on the other hand, appears more ambitious, setting a limit of 3 hectares of net land take per day in 2025 and advancing the European objective of no net land take to 2040 (Vlaamse Regering 2018; Vlaamse Regering 2022). The French case, which is the subject of this paper, illus- 2https://www.ioer-monitor.de/en/results/analysis-results/landtake/ (13.07.2023). 3Share calculated in relation to the number of dwellings and the gross floorarea. 4Bundesverfassung der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft vom 18. April 1999 (Stand am 13. Februar 2022); see also Bundesgesetz über Zweitwohnungen (Zweitwohnungsgesetz, ZWG) vom 20. März 2015 (Stand am 1. Januar 2016). 5“Theissueiscrucialinordernottoreinforcethelandtakeofplateaus and urban sprawl and to ensure, where possible, construction or reconstruction capable of coping with the risk of flooding while guaranteeing the safety ofpeople.”(translated from the “Circulairerelativeàlaconstructibilitéenzoneinondable”;Ministerof Regional Planning, issued on 23 December 2021). 606 Raumforschung und Raumordnung | Spatial Research and Planning (2023) 81/6: 605–619 Managing and controlling diffuse urbanisation in France: Spatial planning practices in cross-border city-regions trates these dynamics. The measures are popularised under the term “Zéro Artificialisation Nette” (ZAN). The intermediate objective ahead of 2050 is to halve the rate of land take between 2021 and 2031 compared to the rate observed between 2011 and 2021.6One of the particularities of France is that this objective is applied differently in each region (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics 2 in the European Union). Regions must formulate their trajectory by February 2023, through their “Regional Plan for Planning, Sustainable Development and Territorial Equality” (SRADDET).7Up until now, the role of French regions in spatial planning has been relatively weak. Acquiring the prerogative to define the trajectory of land consumption through the regional instrument represents a significant change that is currently under debate. In several European countries, laws are being passed and instruments put in place to address this issue. However, their concrete effects on collective action in the field of land development and spatial planning are far from being mechanical and uniform. The practices of local actors in this field do not necessarily follow the general frameworks defined at national level. Indeed, spatial planning rules never operate in a mechanical way. They are constantly subject to interpretation and to changes in position on the part of the actors involved, while also representing a framework that sets constraints and provides resources for actors to steer urban development (Bourdin/Lefeuvre/Melé 2006; Buitelaar/ Sorel 2010: 986–988). In this sense, Faludi and Korthals Altes (1994: 407) invite us to consider spatial planning as a process designed to improve the justification of decisions rather than to ensure compliance between a document and 6Loi no. 2021-1104du 22août 2021portant lutte contre le dérèglement climatique et renforcement de la résilience face à ses effets, Article 191. 7In France, the local plan is a major spatial planning instrument insofar as it is legally binding for the landowners and land developers. The local plan (Plan local d’urbanisme – PLU) is decided on by municipal or intermunicipal elected officials, depending on the level designated as competent by the municipal elected officials. There are two strategic urban plans: the intermunicipal plan (Schéma de cohérence territorial – SCoT) provides the framework for defining sectoral policies, and the regional plan (Schéma régional d’aménagement, de développement durable et d’égalité des territoires – SRADDET) provides the framework for distributing land development rights within the region. Moreover, the Decentralised State Services in charge of spatial planning (Direction départementale des territoires – DDT) give an opinion on local and intermunicipal spatial planning documents. In case of an unfavourable opinion from Decentralised State Services, the document may be cancelled through an appeal by a third party. In this respect, Frenchlocal spatial planning depends ondiscussions between the municipalities,intermunicipalitiesand Decentralised State Services. the actions that would result from it. Various research studies on planning practices in Europe and North America highlight the difficulties faced by public actors in controlling and steering urbanisation (see for example Pagliarin 2018: 3660–3661; Leffers/Wekerle 2020: 329). Other research also shows how public and private actors play around with instruments, combining, modifying, adapting or even bypassing them. For example, the timely and targeted acquisition of land plots, leasing or the annual revision of landuse plans are sometimes ways for local authorities to control the prices and uses of plots (Gerber/Nahrath/Hartmann 2017: 1695–1697) and to densify (Meijer/Jonkman 2020: 249), despite the lack of flexibility of property rights and the lack of public carrying capacity for operations. In France, private urban developers often negotiate with elected officials of small municipalities to increase building areas or to accelerate the urban development schedule during the drafting phase of land-use plans (Le Bivic/Melot 2020: 10–13). Sometimes, farmers themselves claim and negotiate building rights in order to develop, diversify or simply maintain their activities (Madeline 2006: 47; Kerselaers/Rogge/Vanempten et al. 2013: 200–201). In Belgium, the demands of the inhabitants and government measures in favour of a less densely built environment encourage urban sprawl, both in Flanders (Buitelaar/Leinfelder 2020: 51–54) and in Wallonia (Halleux 2012: 8–11). Regional and local public actors can also help drive land take, notably by pushing for a review of the distribution of urban development rights between municipalities (Jehling/Schorcht/Hartmann 2020: 234). These practices, which are often touted as improving the living environment, contribute to the urbanisation of agricultural land and natural land in the medium and long term. Finally, research in urban planning emphasises the importance of local actors’ strategies to steer urbanisation and in particular to limit land take, which invites a closer analysis (Evers/van Schie/van den Broek et al. 2020: 45–47). This paper addresses the current French law “Climate and Resilience” and the debates, both societal and scientific, concerning the objectives of no net land take, also called “Zéro Artificialisation Nette” (ZAN). It seeks to examine how these objectives are actually implemented in collective action in spatial planning at the local level (municipal and intermunicipal). How do spatial planning actors play with the instruments set up to limit the urbanisation of agricultural and natural land? How are the practices of actors and collective action in spatial planning being transformed amid efforts to strengthen ZAN objectives and measures? The paper is structured in three parts. First, I describe the qualitative methods and the study areas (Section 2). Next, I present two results, one on the heterogeneity of land-use practices in the French regions studied and the other on the Raumforschung und Raumordnung | Spatial Research and Planning (2023) 81/6: 605–619 607 C. Le Bivic, J. Idt dependence of collective action systems on border space practices (Section 3). Finally, I conclude by discussing three outputs (Section 4). 2Methods To explore these questions, we observed several border areas of France that are experiencing strong urban growth. We hypothesise that these areas are useful analysers of the practices and difficulties of limiting land take. First, metropolitan areas located near French borders are strongly affected by urban sprawl phenomena (Vizzari/Hilal/Sigura et al. 2018: 23–26). Together with metropolitan areas and coastal areas near large cities, they concentrate most of the country’s real-estate activity in terms of new housing (Coulondre/Lefebvre 2018: 18–19). Secondly, while spatial planning policies and arrangements stop at the border, functional areas are cross-border (Nadin/Fernandez Maldonando/Zonneveld et al. 2018: 67). The European Commission indeed requires member countries to specify national objectives and steps to limit land take (European Commission 2021), but urbanisation processes take place on a crossborder scale. Although the European Union supports the strengthening of ‘functional areas’ and cross-border governance (European Commission 2021), the instruments (In- Figure 1 Location of study areas terreg programmes, Euroregion structures or the legal and administrative support of the “b-solutions initiatives” platform) mainly focus on cooperation policies and spatial development strategies rather than operational urban planning issues (Hamez 2022). This particular situation makes it possible to isolate and study the side effects on neighbouring areas (in the neighbouring countries) of the measures and instruments used to limit land take. In other words, the study of cross-bor- der areas makes it possible to show the differences between instruments and actual practices, which are also present in non-border contexts but are less easily identified. To carry out this work, I conducted a qualitative survey based on 60 semi-structured interviews (with an average of 15 interviews per area). The areas studied are located in the cross-border regions around Geneva, Lille-Kortrijk- Tournai, Luxembourg and Strasbourg-Karlsruhe (see Figure 1). The perimeters of the study areas around these cities were not defined in advance. The interviews allowed observation of urban growth management practices, linked to the border situation, beyond the functional urban areas and the catchment areas of foreign cities as defined by the French statistics institute.8As a result, French areas about 50 kilometres from the border, such as the intermunicipalities of Grand Chambéry and Val de Briey, were also studied. I identified the public actors managing and steering local urbanisation (regional and local spatial planning officers, local elected officials, directors of public land institutions, etc.) as well as the public actors working on crossborder cooperation (Euroregions, Eurodistricts). The semistructured interviews were conducted in three stages: identification of new urbanisation phenomena, clarification of the actors’ practices in the face of these phenomena, and analysis of cross-border interdependencies related to spatial planning practices. The analysis of the interview transcripts was undertaken manually, with a systematic comparison of the comments of the various interviewees. The analysis of the interviews was supplemented by an analysis of the grey literature, such as reports, produced by these actors. The aim of the semi-structured interviews was to identify the phenomena of diffuse urbanisation, their reasons and the way actors contributed to them or tried to influence them. Because my objective is to grasp how people intervene in the regulation of places of urbanisation, the method can be defined as “comprehensive” (Pinson/Sala Pala 2007: 583–595). Thus, the questions structuring the interview did not relate to the French objectives of no net land take, but to the concrete management of urbanisation in cross-border 8https://www.insee.fr/fr/information/4803954 (17.07.2023). 608 Raumforschung und Raumordnung | Spatial Research and Planning (2023) 81/6: 605–619 Managing and controlling diffuse urbanisation in France: Spatial planning practices in cross-border city-regions contexts.9The actors’ accounts highlighted the connection between the evolution of urbanisation processes and practices and the rise of the topic since the 2010s and more recently, in anticipation of changes in the national action frameworks (measures, governance, instruments, agendas) that are still unclear. In the following, I first show the heterogeneous effects of laws and decrees on collective action in spatial planning at the local level, depending on the configurations of collective action and on the way local actors play with ZAN rules. Secondly, I highlight the concrete systems of collective action and how they go beyond the geographical boundaries of the ZAN instruments. The instruments generate side effects within the cross-border city-regions that go beyond their areas of application. Moreover, the objectives of ZAN lead to new forms of original action on a cross-border scale, on the fringes of generic national and regional land development and spatial planning instruments. Finally, we conclude by looking back at the configurations of local collective action in spatial planning amid the development of no-net-land- take policies and instruments. 3Results 3.1 Managing land-take limitation: the heterogeneity of the effects of national laws on collective action in spatial planning The laws and implementing decrees which follow from the objective of “Zéro Artificialisation Nette” (ZAN) apply to the whole of France, even if they take into account certain regional particularities. However, their concrete application varies from case to case, not only because local configurations of collective action are very heterogeneous, but also because of the way in which local actors interpret these rules, play with them and transform them. 3.1.1 Diverse configurations of collective action behind acommonnationalgoalofZAN In France, depending on the territories and the problems they face, the national objective of ZAN is not perceived in the same way everywhere, and does not have the same effects on collective action in terms of spatial planning. This section shows that some local elected officials and administrators (municipal and intermunicipal levels) shift away 9This piece of research is part ofthe ANR (Agence Nationale de la Récherche) research project “Cross-border management and regulation of diffuse urbanisation – GeRTrUD”. from the national objectives in their actions and practices, in order to carry out their territorial projects, while others comply with the objectives but for different reasons than those set out in the law. The implementation of the “Climate and Resilience” law implies substantial changes in the way urbanisation is managed by regional and local (municipal and intermunicipal) spatial planning documents. More specifically, the French implementing decree n°2022-76210 gives the regional planning document11 (the “Schéma régional d’aménagement, de développement durable et d’égalité des territoires”; SRADDET), the capacity to break down the objectives into ten-year increments at the local level and to distribute the areas that can be consumed across the regional area.12 However, the implementation of the law formalised by the implementing decree has sparked mixed reactions on the part of local elected representatives, as in some cases it runs counter to the interests they defend. In June 2022, the Association of French Mayors and Presidents of Inter-Municipalities (AMF) and the National Association of Coastal Elected Officials (ANEL) lodged an appeal against the decree before the Council of State. In March 2023, a draft law to facilitate the implementation of nonet-land-take objectives at the regional level was passed by the Senate. It provides for the right to urbanise 1 ha per municipality, thereby offering a more permissive urban development framework for small municipalities. The principle of subsidiarity and the flexibility given to municipalities on matters of urbanisation management are key concerns which the elected officials wish to defend. The objective of no net land take, which is framed in the same terms across the national territory, is sometimes seen by local elected officials as an injunction to limit development, or even as an attack on the living environment in less densely urbanised areas. Many local elected officials and administrators consider that simply maintaining the population necessarily requires the construction of housing in previously undeveloped areas, in order to take into account the splitting of households and to offer the inhabitants housing that meets their needs. In fact, the practices of local representatives and administrators stand in stark contrast to the national objectives of 10 Decree no. 2022-762 of 29 April 2022 relating to the objectives andgeneralrulesontheeconomicalmanagementofspaceandthe fight against soil sealing set out by the regional plan for planning, sustainable development and territorial equality. 11 In this paper, we mainly refer to three French spatial planning documents: the regional plan (SRADDET) and the intermunicipal plan (SCoT) arecomprehensive plans, the municipalland-use plan (PLU) is a legally binding plan. 12 Code général des collectivités territoriales, Article R 4251-8-1. Raumforschung und Raumordnung | Spatial Research and Planning (2023) 81/6: 605–619 609 C. Le Bivic, J. Idt Figure 2 A new neighbourhood, built on agricultural land, in a small French commune bordering Luxembourg ZAN. One reason for this is that elected officials tend to prioritise the preservation of the living environment and/or urban services. For example, in an intermunicipal area bordering the Lille metropolitan area “Métropole Européenne de Lille”, where 70% of the working population works outside of the intermunicipal area, elected officials are absolutely determined to welcome new inhabitants in order to keep the local school open. The school is considered to be a key site of sociability and the driving force behind community networks. In Lorraine, the small size of Zoufftgen (a municipality with a population of 1,200; population doubled from 600 to 1,200 inhabitants between 2006 and 2016) has not stopped local elected officials from mobilising a range of land-control instruments. Elected officials wanted to attract young households at all costs. To this end, they bought land before it was declared buildable, carried out the servicing work themselves and welcomed people interested in buying a plot in order to select those who wanted to put down roots in the municipality and invest locally. The mayor justified the irregularity of this last step by arguing that a small town faces a looming decline if its inhabitants do not use local services and facilities or do not invest in local associations. This new ten-hectare district eventually saw a twofold increase of its population (see Figure 2). Urbanisation by development zones, on agricultural or natural land, generally appears easier to implement. The rehabilitation of old buildings requires both money and time spent on decontaminating, rebuilding or adapting the buildings to various needs (functional, sanitary and thermal). In small municipalities of 500 and 2,500 inhabitants13,the densification of rural or periurban town centres can greatly increase the population of the municipality and hence lead 13 Francefeatures a large number of municipalities(about 35,000), over half of which number less than 1,000 inhabitants. 610 Raumforschung und Raumordnung | Spatial Research and Planning (2023) 81/6: 605–619 Managing and controlling diffuse urbanisation in France: Spatial planning practices in cross-border city-regions to construction work to resize the infrastructures (e.g. for the road system, the sewage networks or the water treatment plant). Moreover, unlike the densification of private plots in existing urban fabric, comprehensive development in urban extensions provides the municipality with guarantees concerning the capture of land value, within a better known and shorter timeframe, in order to develop the necessary facilities. Thus, from an economic point of view, it is often more interesting for a municipality to urbanise new development areas (Colsaet/Laurans/Levrel 2018: 345). Nevertheless, some small municipalities make choices that seem to be aimed at reducing land take, for example by increasing the density of housing planned in their development zones. But the priority, for these actors, is often addressing the lack of affordable housing and the low solvency of households, rather than meeting national objectives of land preservation. In the Chambéry intermunicipality, a study on household solvency highlighted local housing difficulties and the need to offer smaller homes and building plots in the early 2010s. Elsewhere, municipalities have not waited for legislation to be passed to force real estate developers to build small dwellings to match the budgets of their residents. For example, municipalities to the east of Lille, in the Pévèle Carembault intermunicipality, use the legally binding tools set out by the local land-use plan (the “Orientations d’Aménagement et de Programmation”; OAP) to ensure that individual houses are built on smaller plots of land of 400m2and in terraced areas. Urban growth can also pose problems for local authorities, particularly when municipalities lack the financial and human resources to develop their services and facilities accordingly, or when they struggle to respond to the demands of residents opposed to the urban densification of their neighbourhood. As a result, some municipalities that first experienced urban growth in the 2010s now clearly wish to reorient their development trajectories. In the Paysde-Briey, for example, close to Luxembourg, several municipalities (e.g. Cosnes-et-Romain, Lexy) are lowering their urban development ambitions after experiencing large and uncontrolled urban growth a few years earlier, which had led to a significant and rapid increase in the municipal population. The actors are therefore very firmly in favour of measures aimed at limiting land take. Finally, our case studies show that most local elected officials prefer to retain control over their spatial planning prerogatives, through the drafting of land-use plans and the approval of building permits. However, for some of them, the new frameworks encouraging the limitation of land take have provided a timely opportunity to transfer this responsibility to other actors. Indeed, reducing the amount of land available for urbanisation generally implies making changes to the allocation of landowners’ building rights by reducing the areas that were to be developed. However, the loss of value (downzoning does not entail an obligation to compensation in France) can lead to situations of conflict that local elected officials prefer to avoid and pass on to others. In these situations, municipal elected officials are more inclined to transfer spatial planning competences to the intermunicipal level (which has been encouraged by the “ALUR” law since March 2014)14, or to blame regional governments for these unpopular measures (in the context of the new role of the regions in limiting land take as a result of the “Climate and Resilience” law in August 2021). 3.1.2 Local strategies with no-net-land-take rules In their day-to-day work, local actors play with the ZAN’s mechanisms and rules. They interpret them, they use them in negotiations, and in so doing they adapt or transform them. What are the different ways actors manoeuver the rules? Actors can first use the frameworks provided by the law to negotiate the application of measures. Indeed, the law requires each French region to review its regional plan (SRADDET) within one year of the law’s enactment.15 The aim is to set out their trajectories for reducing land take by drawing on the regional plan, expected to come into force by February 2023. Intermunicipal (SCoT, PLUi) and municipal land-use plans (PLU, carte communale) must be brought into compliance with regional plans by August 2026 and August 2027 respectively. To begin this process and thus organise the differentiated management of land take limitation at the level of each region, the law introduced a new mechanism, the “Conference of Intermunicipal Plans – ScoT”16, which was required to take place by February 2022. In the Grand Est region, several elected officials and technicians in charge of SCoTs are counting on the SCoT conference to submit proposals to the region on how to halve the amount of development zones. One official explained that if the SCoT groups fail to coordinate municipal positions, measures will be decided at the regional level, potentially to the detriment of intraregional specificities. Another stressed concerns about the law being applied too uniformly, and insisted that local actors should be able to organise with rep- 14 Loi no. 2014-366 du 24 mars 2014 pour l’accès au logement et un urbanisme rénové (ALUR). 15 Loino.2021-1104du22août2021portantluttecontreledérègle- ment climatique et renforcement de la résilience face à ses effets, Article 194. 16 Loino.2021-1104du22août2021portantluttecontreledérègle- ment climatique et renforcement de la résilience face à ses effets, Article 194-V. Raumforschung und Raumordnung | Spatial Research and Planning (2023) 81/6: 605–619 611 C. Le Bivic, J. Idt resentatives of the state and the region in order to defend their positions. Another strategy used by local elected and administrative officials to achieve their objectives consists of getting started on the development zones before the precise terms of the implementation of the law are defined, at both national and regional levels: in this case, they play with time. In an Alsatian intermunicipality, for example, the total area of development zones for housing will probably be reduced by two-thirds once the regional plan is established. But until then, urbanisation projects are maintained, as one of our interlocutors explained: “For the moment, we have to understand the law and the decrees, make assumptions, it is too early to really move forward. We clearly have the law in our sights. But for now, we are not stopping, we are pushing forward. We are moving along, obviously taking into account the new features of the law, but we are not stopping because otherwise we’ll never get there. [...] Today, the message that most elected officials are expressing is that we are not speeding up, we are not slowing down” (December 2021, translated from the French by the author). Some elected officials even anticipate future restrictions on consumption and develop areas initially set to be developed in a more distant future. These practices are sometimes facilitated by the dynamics of demographic growth and land pressure, which speed up the pace at which local elected officials and urban developers are able to market land and housing. Near the Luxembourg border, the mayor of a municipality with fewer than 1,500 inhabitants did not initially want the municipal population to increase, but nevertheless prefers to develop land today for fear that development possibilities will be too limited in ten to twenty years’ time. However, local actors do not necessarily follow supralocal directives once they have been set out, and may even oppose them outright in order to carry out their projects. In particular, they play on the discrepancies between the rules of the various planning documents, discrepancies which are consubstantial with the very process of drafting the plans. These situations are best exemplified by cases featuring an incompatibility between the intermunicipal plans and the former, more permissive land-use plans. In an intermunicipality of the Bas-Rhin, a majority of land-use plans are still not compatible with the intermunicipal plan (SCoT) approved in 2013 because elected officials consider it too restrictive when it comes to increasing density and reducing development zones. Furthermore, the prefect ordered the revision of the intermunicipal plan in 2019 in order to integrate a new municipality within its perimeter. The revision has been passed by the elected officials, but no technician was yet working on the preparation of the plan at the time of the interview (2021). These discrepancies between local urban projects and state directives to limit urban sprawl often lead state representatives at sub-regional levels to lodge appeals against urban planning documents. However, the time taken by the administrative court to process such cases is relatively long (at least two years) and the cancellation or a declaration of illegality of the landuse plan renders the immediately preceding plan applicable, with the earlier plan often being more permissive on matters of urbanisation.17 When a document is more permissive than others on the subject of taking agricultural or natural land, it can constitute an important resource for actors who still wish to urbanise development zones. For example, an intermunicipal plan in Lorraine authorises the development of too many commercial activity zones according to the future objectives set out by ZAN. In the municipality of Lexy, a shopping centre was built on 20 hectares of former agricultural land, near an already heavily trafficked road and close to another commercial area in decline in Longwy, the neighbouring municipality. However, the fact that a commercial development project was included in the intermunicipal plan made it possible for the mayor and the urban developer to support the application to expand the commercial area. The validity of the development permit in relation to the ScoT was then an important argument in favour of the project when the prefect lodged an appeal. The implementation of ZAN also depends on local political games. Deviations from the rule sometimes reflect conflicting views between local elected officials about which urbanisation trajectories should be followed; these conflicts prevent agreement on coercive instruments (e.g. adapted rules in local land-use plans) designed to limit land take. In a Lorraine intermunicipality, the elected officials of the peripheral municipalities supported urban development projects even though they exceeded the areas prescribed by the intermunicipal document (ScoT). They hence blocked the development of an intermunicipal land-use plan (the “Plan Local d’Urbanisme Intercommunal” – PLUi) to avoid the legally binding inclusion of ScoT18 prescriptions. In other cases, changes in local representatives in the wake of elections can slow down the preparation of land-use plans and increase the time required to make the documents compatible. 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