Picardie

¹ French Land Register data, which exclude lakes, ponds, and glaciers larger than 1 km² (0.386 sq. mi. or 247 acres) as well as the estuaries of rivers

This article is about the modern French region of Picardie. For the historical French province and cultural area of Picardy, see Picardy. For the musical theory interval, see Picardy third.

Picardie (English: Picardy) is one of the 26 regions of France. It is located in the northern part of France.

The modern region of Picardie is larger than the historical province of Picardy. The south of the Aisne department and most of the Oise department were historically part of the province of Île-de-France, while the Somme department and the north of the Aisne department were the province of Picardy proper.

As the historical Picardy was deemed too small to become a region, the French government decided to join it with the north of Île-de-France (specifically, the pays of Beauvaisis, Valois, Noyonnais, Laonnois, Soissonnais, Omois, to name only the most prominent). The name of the historical province of Picardy was given to this new region.

Thus, the Picardie region is somewhat an artificial region, with the south of the Oise department lying inside the metropolitan area of Paris. People in the south of Oise commute to Île-de-France for work, and hardly feel Picard ("Picardy inhabitant" and traditionally Picard-speakers) unlike those coming from the north of this new artificial region for whom the term is very meaningful.

Although Picardie is somewhat a stagnating region, with the industrial area of Saint-Quentin in the north of Picardie hard hit by economic crisis, the south of the region, at the border with Île-de-France, is booming due to the increasing inflow of Parisians relocating to the distant and greener towns of the Oise department, in short thanks to what the French call rurbanisation.

Between the 1990 and 1999 French censuses, the population of Oise increased at the brisk pace of 0.61% per year (almost twice faster than France as a whole), while the Aisne departmentlost inhabitants, and the Somme barely grew, at a laggard 0.16% per year. Today, 41.3% of the population of Picardie live inside the Oise department, which historically was not part of Picardy.

Geographically, the artificial character of the region is also apparent. Although Picardy proper is a vast flat plain of open fields, famed for the gruesome Battle of the Somme, the south of Picardie (historically part of Île-de-France) is a very scenic hilly area with large forests.