The desert diagonal ( French: diagonale du vide ) is a wide strip of land in the metropolitan area of France , where the population density is significantly lower than in the rest of France. This diagonal extends from the Meuse department in the northeast to the Landa department in the southwest.
Subject of the term
The territories included in the “desert diagonal” are characterized by a population density of less than 45 people / km² (with an average of 104.2 people / km² in France). In most departments of the “diagonal”, the density is 20–25 people / km², while in the department of Loser , the most sparsely populated department of the French metropolis, only 14 people / km² [1] . The diagonal is visually more visible on the map of smaller French administrative units - departments , than larger - regions [2] .
The reason for the appearance of the “desert diagonal” is the massive urbanization that took place in the 19th and early 20th centuries , accompanied by a relocation of the population from agricultural areas to cities. The year in which the rural population of France reached its greatest size was 1846 - since then it has been steadily declining [3] . The massive exodus of the population into cities continued until the middle of the 20th century: according to the census of 1906, 43.8% of the respondents said that they were living off agriculture, in 1951 only 31% remained, and in 2012 - 1.4% [4] . This process was especially pronounced in the mountainous regions of southern France with stony soil difficult to process. So, if the population of the Ardeche department in 1861 was 388,500 people , then by 1962 it had decreased by more than a third, to 245,600 people , both due to migration and due to a lower birth rate than in other departments [5 ] .
The “Desert Diagonal” is part of a longer diagonal, but with the same characteristics, the so-called “continental diagonal”, which is its continuation in Spain and Portugal [6] [7] .
The emergence, use and development of the term
Gresillon, Alexander and Sajaloli in their work write that this phenomenon was first noted by geographer Charles Dupin in his treatise on the production and trading forces of France, published in 1837 [8] . In 1947, the geographer Jean-Francois Gravier described it as the “French desert”. Subsequently, the term was somewhat softened and turned into a “desert diagonal”.
In 1981, the geographer also introduced the term “desert France” [3] .
The term, among other things, was used by the Inter-Ministerial Office for Regional Arrangement and Attractiveness (DATAR), which existed from 1963 to 2014 in France, but nothing is known about the origin of the term in the activities of the department [9] .
Today, many geographers shun the term “desert diagonal”, believing it to be both a peiorative and exaggeration, and instead use descriptive constructions, for example, “diagonal with a low population density” [10] [8] [11] .
Some recent researchers, such as and Emmanuel Todd , even believe that this term is no longer applicable to the 2000s, as in some departments “diagonal” (such as Indre and Jer ) population growth . According to data collected by these two researchers, negative demographic dynamics are observed only in the area from the Central Massif to Lorraine [12] [13] . At the same time, this tendency looks rather fragile, since it is caused not by natural population growth, but by the relocation of pensioners for permanent residence in the countryside [7] .
See also
- Heihe - Tengchun Line
Notes
- ↑ Comparateur de territoires: France (French) . Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques . Date of treatment August 12, 2017. Archived August 27, 2017.
- ↑ Le Massif Central: au coeur de la “diagonale du vide” (French) . avenirural (10 juillet 2012). Date of treatment August 12, 2017. Archived on August 13, 2017.
- ↑ 1 2 Déprise (Fr.) . Géoconfluences (mai 2017). Date of treatment August 12, 2017. Archived on August 13, 2017.
- ↑ La France et ses territoires / Coordination: Luc Brière, Suvani Vugdalic. - Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques, 2015 .-- P. 95. - 172 p.
- ↑ Armand Frémont. La terre // Les Lieux de mémoire / Dir. Pierre Nora. - Quarto Gallimard, 1997 .-- T. tome III. - P. 3050-3051.
- ↑ Céline Rozenblat. Tissu d'un semis de villes Européennes : [ arch. October 12, 2005 ] // Mappemonde. - 1995. - No. 4.
- ↑ 1 2 Yoann Doignon, Sébastien Oliveau, Isabelle Blöss-Widmer. L'Europe méridionale depuis 20 ans: dépeuplement, dépopulation et renouveau démographique : [ arch. April 16, 2016 ] // Espace populations sociétés. Space populations societies. - ISSN 0755-7809 . - DOI : 10.4000 / eps.6171 .
- ↑ 1 2 Étienne Grésillon, Frédéric Alexandre, Bertrand Sajaloli. La France des marges (French) . - Paris: Armand Colin, 2016 .-- P. 19 .-- 446 p.
- ↑ Gilles Fumey. La France en diagonales (PDF). Café-géo.net, Vox Geographica (October 26, 2009). Archived October 24, 2016. .
- ↑ Jean-Benoît Bouron, Pierre-Marie Georges. Les territoires ruraux en France (French) . - Paris: Ellipses, 2015 .-- P. 92-94. - 455 p.
- ↑ Jean-Claude Bontron, Nicole Mathieu. La France des faibles densités, II: Documentation bibliographique, Analyses d'études. - Paris: SEGESA-ACEAR, 1976 .-- 60 p.
- ↑ Hervé Le Bras, Emmanuel Todd. Le Mystère français. - Seuil, 2013 .-- 336 p. - ISBN 9782021102161 .
- ↑ Sébastien Oliveau, Yoann Doignon. La diagonale se vide? Analyse spatiale exploratoire des décroissances démographiques en France métropolitaine depuis 50 ans : [ arch. January 23, 2016 ] // Cybergeo: European Journal of Geography. - ISSN 1278-3366 . - DOI : 10.4000 / cybergeo . 27439 .