French Planning System Paradox

摘要

French planning system have been deeply renewed since the planning act of 2000 usually called loi SRU (loi sur la solidarite et le renouvellement urbains) and some very interesting innovations have been set. Years after years, this renewall has been enriched, especially by the Grenelle de l'Environnement which has been one of the master law of Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency. Lots of new topics are now compulsary at each level of planning: climate change, energy, carbon emissions, urban sprawl and so on. So today, the french planning system aiming to political and technical perfection has became hawfully complex, dangerously unstable and disconnected of land market and building business realities. The reason why such a perfect system does not work as well as planned comes from three unvariant principles which have been edicted by the first french planning act of 1967. (1) planning system supposed to manage land use ignores land market and building market rules; (2) planning system supposed to be organized from top (regional and city planning) to bottom (local plans and urban design) is in fact only dedicated to individual building licences; (3) planning system supposed to organize framing major public decisions concerning cities and communities future has to take, day after day, into consideration such decisions which are taken independantly. After a short description of the french planning system, this paper proposes to describe and illustrate system dysfunctions. The conclusion aims to open the debate about stakes of integration and synchronisation of regional and urban planning in a sustainable urban development context.