Ecologizing planning policies and practices in France: Insights from peri-urban and rural EcoQuartier certified neighborhoods

Abstract

This article explores how the French State and rural and periurban municipalities ecologize their planning policies and practices at the neighborhood scale. It more specifically uses the EcoQuartier rating tool as a means to analyze the ecologization dynamics at play in peri-urban and rural territories, drawing attention to the strategies used by municipalities to develop eco-neighborhoods. First, the article discusses the concept of ecologization in French planning. It then moves on by 1) investigating 285 certified sustainable neighborhoods using quantitative methods, and 2) qualitatively examining 30 peri-urban and rural eco-neighborhoods, in order to establish a typology of ecologization processes. The final section combines these theoretical and empirical approaches to discuss what ecologization entails for peri-urban and rural municipalities in France. While the previous literature on neighborhood sustainability assessment mainly established the distinction between urban and non-urban eco-neighborhoods, this article demonstrates that these "non-urban" developments are in fact not a homogenous group, but the result of rich and diverse ecologization dynamics.