91视频

Several years ago I wrote a blog for the 91视频 about the suburbanization of France, and its potential for negative impacts on the quality of life in the country鈥檚 small towns. Recently, in covering the yellow vest protests in France, the New York Times mentioned how the shifts in the economy there over the past few decades have devastated the small towns and rural areas, including how land use policies had exacerbated the impacts.

It was certainly clear four years ago that the towns and villages that we traveled through were not healthy, and it鈥檚 been true for many decades that Europeans, like Americans, have been leaving the countryside for more and better jobs in the cities. But it鈥檚 also now clear that, like the U.S., the land use policies of these provincial areas of France have contributed significantly to the erosion in the quality of community life by catering to auto-dependent businesses and residential patterns rather than reinforcing the existing businesses that historically served these communities. Just as Walmart built stores on the outskirts of small town America and sucked the life out of those downtowns, so too have local governments allowed auto-oriented development to dominate rural France; the hollowed-out cores of these towns and villages are the result.

Now it鈥檚 clear that both here and in Europe rural areas and small towns would have lost jobs regardless, but the interesting thing is they did not also have to lose their 鈥渃ommunities.鈥� Much of the malaise affecting these places could have been ameliorated by a conscious effort to maintain their quality of life, and that at least in part means the historic gathering places and spaces that make a town a real community.