Periurban agriculture... an urban space for rural amenities?

Abstract

The results presented below intend to show how, over the last decades, changes have occurred in how to take into consideration agricultural space when it comes to plan the urban development of periurban areas of the big French urban centres. The article demonstrates how such changes are part of a complex relation to space itself. Through the relation to agricultural space, what is at stake is a questioning of the functions of agriculture, which is conveyed by a contradictory demand for amenities. Such contradiction derives both from the confusion between the management of a lived-in space (landscape) and that of an ontological space (land use). It is expected that analysing this contradiction will improve the debate over how to make use of space around the big urban centres.