Jérôme, an executive who telecommutes in his new garden in the Perche or Camille, an ultra-graduate who converted to market gardening in the south of France, the media loved these stories during the pandemic. But this alleged “urban exodus” that made headlines during Covid did not actually happen.
An interdisciplinary group of researchers, mandated by the State, studied millions of data related to real estate platforms and mail forwarding contracts subscribed to with La Poste. And their conclusions are clear: French cities have not emptied themselves in favor of the countryside in favor of the health crisis of 2020.
There was no massive departures of city dwellers to French rural areas. The data analyzed by this team of geographers, economists and sociologists show this. ” If the health crisis has had an effect, it is rather a reinforcement of trends that already existed, namely peri-urbanization, i.e. a displacement of households further from urban centers towards peri-urban rings. “, explains Julie Le Gallo, economist at AgroSup Dijon.
The attractiveness of the coasts
In other words, to the more remote parts of cities, or just on the edge of cities. Another old phenomenon which has increased with the health crisis: the attractiveness of the coasts which causes difficulties in finding accommodation for local inhabitants, for example in Brittany or on the Basque coast.
” What has been shown is that the price of houses in these areas has risen very sharply, continues the economist, which no longer allows the middle or modest classes who live there to find housing”, due to price increases.
Some city dwellers are off to a good start living green due to Covid, but the phenomenon has remained marginal and their sociology is much more varied than the remote working environment in the shade of the Virginia creeper that the media had portrayed. There are retirees, but also people from the middle classes forced to flee the exorbitant prices of real estate in the city center.