The french territorial system in 2012. Click for a larger view

Today’s reading proposition is not a book, but a magazine that is based on an ongoing French territorial prospective project. The Délégation interministérielle à l’aménagement du territoire et à l’attractivité régionale (DATAR) is the french government’s agency that since 1963 has dealt with the state policies concerning wide area spatial planning, not limited to infrastructure provision as their work also includes the future location of land uses that will use these infrastructures and the issue of territorial balance between regions, in a country whose geographers have been obsessed for decades with the issues raised by Paris overwhelming dominance of the national dynamics.

Territoires 2040 aims to prepare through the state action the conditions for a stronger, more equitative and more coherent France. To that end a 16 months project has involved 300 experts of many disciplines.

The debate is organized taking into account seven spatial systems:

• The French metropolitan urban system in the global scene
• The integrated metropolitan systems
• French gates to the territorial flows systems
• The industrial dynamic spaces
• Mid-sized cities and their influence areas
• Residential and tourism led spaces
• Low density spaces

28 scenarios have been imagined as a debate tool, 4 for each of the spatial systems.

There is no final conclusion or closed mode in the magazine’s issues that are online, but it is a powerful instrument to think about territories and their future.

The French metropolitan urban system in the global scene. 4 scenarios