Amenities in rural areas; a stake for public policies, a stake for research

Abstract

The French outdated word " aménité " recently appeared in policy debate, at the same time as several other vague concepts such as multifunctionality, sustainability.. An OECD working group has tried to make this concept more consistent, but its conclusions were dominated by economical views and development objectives. The authors show that these dimensions are obviously important but that amenities can support other stakes in rural areas. This notion leads to question the links between people towards a territory, and in particular, the quality of their relationships. Amenities can be one of the key points for a future contract between agriculture, forest and society. In terms of research amenities are arising a number of questions which can also be considered under the umbrella of other problematic such as sustainable development or multifunctionality. Nevertheless, amenities imply a specific viewpoint: the satisfaction of social needs is at start of the problematic which leads to cross spatial and social dimensions. At present, scientific works in this field are at the beginning. One of the main difficulties will be to address the question of ordinary places.