Tackling environmental and social mobility stakes in rural areas: New solutions for new actors?

Abstract

While rural mobilities are facing socio, economical and environmental challenges in France and in Europe, the French government passes a law to cover its whole territory of authorities responsible for organising mobilities so local authorities could address some responses to those diderent challenges. This reorganisation of mobility competences in France is leading to the arrival of new actors in those territories, namely some inter-municipal authorities. These actors are part of a complex and multiscalar system influenced by directives from the top and needs from the bottom. At the same time, the „repertoire of available solutions” appears to be evolving in rural areas. Indeed, rural territories are seeing the emergence of amenities previously absent around the road network: small multimodal hubs. What mobility projects can be observed now in rural areas? To what extent can we talk about changes in the repertoire of available solutions? Are those projects really new? In more general terms: what dynamics exist in the repertoire of available solutions for stakeholders in rural mobility? To answer, a literature review is completed by a multi-criteria analysis of the discourses of local authorities working on mobility in low-density areas. A sample of discourses is selected with the purpose of collecting data before and after stakeholders restructuring.

We argue in this article that this law reinforces the local role of inter-municipal authorithies in local action through mobility. Nevertheless, those areas which where not lacking actors and inter-muncicipal authorithies should now find its place in a pre-existent system. Besides, the state keeps an important role behind the scene and pulls the strings of those local public policies. Our analysis will first allow us to understand the introduction of inter-municipal authorities as new players in the local mobility stakeholder system. Second, this work will give us a greater comprehension of restructuring and its impacts on public action at the local scale. Finally, we’ll see the state's role remaining in local policies.