Conflicts and tensions about land uses in rural and periurban areas[Conflits et tensions autour des usages de l'espace dans les territoires ruraux et périurbains : Le cas de six zones géographiques françaises]

In order to gain a better knowledge and understanding and to analyse the conflicts that commonly occur in rural and periurban areas, we have, for the last four years, worked on a research programme on land-use and neighbourhood conflicts. This programme is conducted in partner ship between different French multi-disciplinary teams from public research institutes. Our research consists in giving conflicts the attention they deserve and in studying them closely without diabolising them. It is deliberately based on an empirico-deductive approach and aims to analyse how conflicts emerge and develop and what modes of conflict resolution are used within the French territory. The research rests on a series of empirical studies conducted in different regions, deemed representative of the national territory. In the paper, we first present our approach, the definition of conflicts, the hypotheses of the research and our methodology (1). We then propose a presentation of the results obtained in the framework of studies conducted in six specific geographical areas (2). Finally, we draw a number of general conclusions about the generic nature of land-use and neighbourhood conflicts in rural and periurban areas (3).