2023-12-20 13:00:00
Saccording to an INSEE study, around 300,000 hectares of natural, agricultural and forest areas were transformed into urbanized areas between 2009 and 2021; 67.5% were for the development of housing and 25.5% for that of economic activity. This area represents 0.5% of the national territory. From 2009 to 2011, the annual rate of reconversion stood at 20,000 hectares before decreasing until 2015.
Since then, the surface area of natural spaces transformed into urbanized spaces has been around 15,000 hectares per year, which corresponds to “one and a half times the surface area of the city of Paris”, notes INSEE. The climate and resilience law plans to reduce the pace by half over the next decade compared to the previous decade.
Increase in vacant housing
The construction of main residences is by far the primary determinant of the use of natural spaces for housing and alone explains two thirds (66.3%). It itself finds its origin – in equal parts – in two factors. On the one hand, the increase in population (+ 4.2% over the last decade), which implies the construction of additional housing; on the other, the decrease in the average size of households (2.19 people per household in 2019, compared to 2.28 in 2009), which requires increasing the number of main residences to accommodate the same number of people.
READ ALSO Renters age faster than ownersThe transformation of natural spaces into residential places is also indirectly linked, to the tune of 19.4%, according to INSEE, to the increase in the number of vacant housing units (+31% in ten years), these old housing units which do not meet “more to the expectations of the population, either because of their location, or because of their characteristics such as their level of comfort”. The factor of vacant housing even explains more than 35% of the reconversion of natural spaces into housing in the Centre-Val de Loire, Burgundy-Franche-Comté and the west of the Grand Est region.
Finally, the development of second homes (+13% between 2009 and 2019) also contributes to reducing the surface area of natural, agricultural and forest areas. “However, notes INSEE, this influence is less (11.4% of space consumption linked to housing) than that of the increase in the number of vacant housing units. »
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