Facing up to regional disparities

It is nothing new to say that local authorities are facing a series of complex societal challenges against a backdrop of ‘ongoing crises’ (climate, economic, social). All this is taking place in the context of a structural and constant decline in budgetary resources. While the succession of heatwaves (or indeed the feeling that it was a single, unbroken episode lasting two months) in the summer of 2026 reminded us that the crisis will spare no region, some of them seem to be facing particularly serious obstacles to tackling the challenges ahead: declining demographic trends, an aging population, a lack of local investment in adaptation, a shortage of engineering expertise, and a concentration of social vulnerabilities…

From then, we began to consider what appears to constitute an implicit territorial contract: how do the more successful trajectories of the best-resourced territories interact with, influence or challenge local authorities in rural-urban centres, inter-municipal areas and small-scale municipalities? What interdependencies and mutual reinforcements are needed to ensure territorial balances that are more protective and guarantee a form of reciprocity? How can we move beyond overly simplistic frameworks and binary oppositions between city and countryside, metropolis and medium-sized town, urban centre and rural areas?

Through our programmes, the profile of our members, or our international inspirations, we have fewer opportunities to see how the transformation of local authorities is taking place, particularly outside the big cities. For the past few months, we have been actively monitoring research by academics and local authorities, combining numerous resources on the subject of ‘territorial inequalities’. Our initial starting point was the mechanisms of inter-territorial solidarity and reciprocity (metropolitan areas and local authorities, central cities and their hinterlands or catchment areas)… Read on to find out where all this has led us!

In our quest to find an administrative framework from which to begin our exploration, we took a more detailed look at reciprocity agreements. In short, these agreements stem from a 2015 interministerial committee on rural affairs, one of whose measures was to trial urban-rural reciprocity. Barely ten local authorities have taken this up since then (seven metropolitan areas in 2019), including the Clermont-Ferrand Metropolitan Area, with whom we have tried to gain a better understanding of the document’s aims. And while the synergies are clear on paper (food, tourism, mobility, attractiveness), implementation is more complicated, as the agreement is not accompanied by a dedicated budget. Although these agreements were initiated by the State, local authorities have found themselves left to manage their monitoring and evaluation on their own… Whilst there have been some notable successes with certain contracts, the necessary conditions were clearly not in place to turn them into mechanisms for establishing sustainable cooperation. Today, given the trend for metropolitan areas to focus inwards, inter-territorial cooperation (between the metropolitan area and its hinterland) is less a priority – indeed, it has almost disappeared.

Beyond these attempts to formalise interdependencies, our exploratory discussions with the research community have also led us to highlight a need for cooperation between different levels of local government, which could help break down silos and even synchronise certain public policies: building management and use, vocational training, housing, education, early childhood, mobility… How can regions, departments and local authorities better coordinate their respective responsibilities to ensure they ‘work as a system’ within a given area, and thereby uncover any potentially counterproductive side effects that sector-based economic management approaches both obscure and exacerbate at the same time?

What we have come to realise – and which goes against a territorial narrative based on opposition – is that categorising by type of territory (medium-sized towns, rural areas, peri-urban areas) does not really make sense, as it actually masks a high degree of heterogeneity in the situations. Some territories fare better than others, sometimes for economic reasons, sometimes due to their attractiveness, geographical location or cultural identity, the presence of long-established industries, the quality of a team of elected representatives or civil servants, or civic engagement… Even within these success stories or more challenging trajectories, this assessment can vary significantly depending on a range of factors—which are rarely all at a satisfactory level simultaneously—such as attractiveness, housing, tourism, the environment, education, health, mobility, social inequalities, and safety. These are all variables that introduce complexity and make objective measurement difficult. These nuances can therefore enable us to paint a picture that is closer to reality, whilst recognising and distinguishing between areas that are more 'under pressure’ or 'overburdened' (in terms of resources, population density, housing, transport, pollution, safety, etc.) and others that are 'in decline' (due to the impoverishment of town centers, an elderly population, demographic decline, the weakening of economic models, etc.).

In these areas where national strategies seem less well suited, how can we better address these territorial disparities and tackle the demographic challenge head-on? What new economic models are there for these local authorities? How can we develop a way of sustaining public services and looking after what is 'already there'—both residents and infrastructure? What practical alternatives are there to the promise of regional attractiveness, which traps regions in conflicting demands?

The responses that public authorities can provide to the environmental, social and democratic challenges facing local areas will depend on their ability to transform themselves and to renew their relationships with citizens and other organisations. We assume, in fact, that the difficulties faced by local areas are not only linked to the nature of these challenges, but also to the growing gap between the complexity of these challenges, the capacities available to address them, and the usual frameworks we employ to analyse them.

Given the complex challenges that the public sector alone cannot therefore tackle, several local authorities are turning to local public-private-civic partnerships. This is what we set out to explore in our programmes on the commons, by looking at what might facilitate this cooperation (in terms of the legal framework, the economic model, letting go of control, and a shared culture amongst stakeholders who are not often accustomed to collaborate) . In the municipality of Joigny (Yonne), the local authority is seeking to identify the current state of cooperation within the area, which will serve as a basis for defining tools to ensure that these public-private-citizen partnerships are effective and sustainable. It is also working on a partnership with several other public inter-municipal cooperation bodies (EPCI) in the region through the Territorial Objectives Contract (COT), outlining more collective strategies on issues such as waste management, soft mobility and more sustainable events.

These topics not only reflect recent thinking on issues of habitability and care – moving away from the logic of attractiveness to prioritise the challenges facing the ‘ordinary city’ – but also intersect with our work on new economic models, issues of environmental justice, new capacities for public action, and the ways in which different stakeholders cooperate.As it is difficult (if not impossible) to tackle all these areas of work simultaneously, a first step would be to set up a group of local authorities willing to open up their areas to forms of research that would clearly identify the issues encountered, as well as the successes and failures, in areas such as:

• inter-territorial reciprocity
• local public-private-citizen partnerships
• the interplay between public policies and their unintended consequences
• the territorial narrative currently promoted
  
  

These themes could be taken up by different groups of local authorities, which would choose a theme based on the priority needs of their areas while participating in a cross-territorial effort that is essential for tackling the issue of territorial disparities.

For us, this is an opportunity to address these issues by expanding the usual scope of our community of local authorities and to create opportunities for cooperation between them, taking an objective look at the challenges as well as the potential and strengths on offer. Does this inspire you? Please do get in touch!

This article was translated with the help of Deepl.