Ile -de -France economy: What if Laurent Davezies Cauchemardait?

We have read “ Paris falls asleep »…, We were woke up !

The Parisian mandate, on the right track of being renewed, ended with such a review of changes and opening, after decades of immobility, fortunately forgotten, that one could have only remedied a provocation for period of municipal elections. But let’s leave the controversy, soon behind us, for other arenas. Attentive readers of the work of Laurent Davezies, let’s take it rather to the word: let us discuss, with and after others, fundamentals of the Ile-de-France metropolitan economy subjected more often than in turn to the declining nightmare.

Note from the outset that Laurent Davezies’ work provides three key elements in understanding the Ile -de -France system:

– The development of this world metropolis is a decisive national issue: its international influence, its capacity for innovation, its training effects and of course the redistributive mechanisms it feeds are structuring for France, including for the network of regional metropolises ;

– this attractiveness and this radiation are not (more) self ; They suppose a real commitment from private and public actors, even more a true membership of the State ; in this regard “ Ile -de -France disqualifications “(That is to say, the various national policies of rebalancing historically defended in the name of” province ») Seem to make a return in force, and this until for so-called competitive policies: competitiveness poles yesterday, world university campus maybe tomorrow !

– the benefit of “ agglomeration »(Threshold effect, networking of skills and production activities, crossed fertilizations, visibility, etc.) can be canceled by the fractionation or disorganization of a labor and innovation market whose force is due to its unit as well as its connection.

We can therefore see better the questions and challenges posed to public policies but also to all the stakeholders of the Ile -de -France dynamics. The different actors are far from being inert and responses are implemented, very far from distrust of the economic activity to which Laurent Davezies seems to summarize them. In -depth work with researchers on the collective responses to be developed undoubtedly deserves to be engaged. The enlightened practitioners that we seek to be very interested, but provided that we also return to certain methodological and dead end shortcuts which seem fragile or even questionable in this macro-economic observation.

Let’s start with the dead angle of the demonstration.

Seeking to identify the indicators of a Ile -de -France breakdown, with regard to the progress of the major international metropolises, Laurent Davezies uses almost exclusively comparisons with … the other French regions, the “ province »» ! Is this the best way to understand the specificities, and the risks, of a metropolitan economy ? One can doubt it, whether in terms of GDP or demography to use two indicators advanced by Laurent Davezies.

Passing on the always delicate question of a regionalized approach to GDPwe will notice that Laurent Davezies illustrates the “ fall ” of GDP Ile-de-France, by opposing the growth of Languedoc-Roussillon. A very surprising comparison: Laurent Davezies is well placed, having brilliantly explored, to know the Languedocian specificities, “ fuel »In the public economy and transfers income, a radically distinct configuration of Ile -de -France mechanisms ;

Another advanced indicator in support of the failure: the demography, a field in which François Ascher is also lost. Is the comparison supported in the light of the age pyramid of London or Milan ? No. It is the Paris-Province migration sales that are again invoked. However, all international metropolises tend to function as spinners (reception of assets, rejection of families). And, on this yardstick, Ile-de-France remains the youngest metropolitan region in Europe. Everyone will agree that the reception of families is a question that unfortunately no longer arises in New York when in Ile-de-France it is always a decisive issue to which public policies seek to respond. As for the attraction of assets, contrary to what Laurent Davezies says, this remains a strong characteristic of Ile-de-France. Their presence could also be strengthened given a decisive historical change: Ile-de-France residents born in Ile-de-France are now the majority, have their ties and could choose to age there.

After having undoubtedly contributed in the 1990s to change the old gravierist reading of “ Paris and the French desert », Laurent Davezies gives him, with such indicators, a new youth, she was overthrown ! And this, out of step with the new approaches to the regional urban economy.

After the indicators, let’s come to the explanatory factors put forward by Laurent Davezies, and especially that of the disorganization of the labor market under the effect of a geographic dispersion of the jobs that the transport system could not compensate. The question is all the more central since there is a real room for maneuver of political intervention.

From the drop in jobs in Paris intra muros During the 1990-1999 decade, Laurent Davezies concluded-quickly-with a collapse of the heart and a spread of employment in large crown, with the problems of accessibility and therefore of induced labor market.

Clearly, one can only agree with the observation of a profound change in the economic morphology of the Paris agglomeration, with temporalities, however more complex than the decennial slices imposed by the censuses. But is it the nightmare announced ?

Provided not to confine yourself to departmental statistics which mask the real forms of this mutation and by distinguishing metropolitan jobs and service jobs, which we decrypt: a phenomenon of loosening and repolarization. By recalling that the Paris agglomeration is much more compact for example than its London counterpart, there is a double phenomenon very different from the generalized sprawl, old anxiety again there !

On the one hand, a relative dissemination of service jobs that followed the urbanization of the agglomeration in the sense INSEE (as in all French agglomerations, on a smaller scale). We will also emphasize that this is a key production resource for wealth and urban quality for Ile-de-France whose “ interior market Is a major asset (which Laurent Davezies rightly deplores the phenomena of sub-consumption).

On the other hand, a geographic recomposition of the most qualified and exposed to the international economy. And this, at the same time, in a metropolitan heart which is no longer confined to Paris intra muros Thirty glorious but which is nonetheless located in a very concentrated way in small as … in large crown. But beware, behind the term “ large crown », It is Roissy, Saclay or Marne-la-Vallée who really weigh in statistical terms. As for the heart, you only have to follow the development of constructions along the ring road to see at work, not a “ fall »From Paris but an overflow.

As for traveling, employees joining Daily Cergy from Melun remain an exception, and a decisive share of automotive circulation is done within a… same municipality. The regional network constitutes a completely able to serve the large job centers, now on a network, of the agglomeration. Provided for colossal investments but this is still another matter … remains the social dimension of the Metropolitan Ile -de -France operation. By recalling that the Ile-de-France social mosaic cannot be reduced to a simple center-periphery opposition as it is composite and local, it will be emphasized that it is today much more the housing market (long piloted exclusively by the State and now deregulated both by the disengagement of it and the unprecedented fractionation of public policies) than that of the transport which contributes to it. And this, whatever the metropolitan morphology considered (concentration, sprawl or loosening).

Fragile methodologically, Laurent Davezies’ demonstration actually leads us to two unknowns.

First of all, what are the factors of cyclical variations in the Ile -de -France economy ? Should we not take into account the specificities of a metropolis in fact “ semi-globale (According to the expression of Pierre Veltz) ? Or an agglomeration partly determined by the international situation, its exchanges “ in archipelago »With other world entry points, etc. But, in part, “ we shore In that it irrigates the whole national territory of its income (as Laurent Davezies shows well) and also depends in return on the health of the national economy. Ensuring most of the services to businesses, Ile-de-France has perhaps been mainly affected in recent years by the loss of global competitiveness of the French economy. Is it not starting from such a problem that we could finally objectify the throbbing fantasy of the delay of Ile-de-France in the face of its European and global competitors ? And, further, question the existence of a standard model of international metropolis, by exploring the specificities of the Paris region and its integration into the globalized economy.

Then how to understand the hypothesis developed by Laurent Davezies of a “ growth without development »» ? Is this the characteristic of metropolitan economies, an intrinsic feature of Ile-de-France or an effect of our statistical accounts (what about the integration of the underground economy, limits of the calculation of the calculation of GDP regionalized, etc., when the passage of GDP to the human development index proposed by the UNDPetc.) ? And, further, how to analyze – to better prepare it – long -term growth and attractiveness, in an economy preparing to do “ Limit experience », Much beyond the mere measure of short-term monetary flows, integrating environmental and energy risks and costs ?

In the end, we are all the more takers of an overall debate, multidisciplinary and updated since Ile-de-France seems to us to have a particular responsibility. Faced with the forces pushing to “ output Helded by Richard Baldwin, she must recreate bond and share capital, to enhance him in an open and competitive world. There is no contradiction. This is an issue for its inhabitants, but far beyond: it can be both SAS, creator and mediator of globalization and technological revolution for the whole of French society. The project is ambitious: “ of the metropolitan city as a common world Could we say by diverting the title of the very beautiful book by Bernard Perret.