Empty diagonal

The empty diagonal (French: diagonale du vide) is a long band of French territory, stretching from Meuse to Landes, in which the population density is very low in comparison with the rest of France.

Description

This low population density (less than 30 inhabitants per square kilometer) is largely due to rural exodus and urbanization during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Some commentators^[1] prefer to speak of a "low-density diagonal" (diagonale des faibles densités), and regard the term "empty diagonal" as both pejorative and exaggerated. Nevertheless the latter remains the more common term, and was taken up by DATAR.^[2]

The pattern is more readily apparent at the departmental level than at the regional level.^[3][4] It is part of a broader pattern of low population density which extends into Spain and Portugal, and which is known as the continental diagonal.^[5][6]

History and evolution

Before the emergence of the empty diagonal, an earlier demographic feature was the Saint-Malo-Geneva line, which divided the industrial northeast from the agrarian southwest. It was identified by Charles Dupin in his 1837 treatise Forces productives et commerciales de la France.

In 1947 the geographer Jean-François Gravier wrote of a "French desert", which corresponds more or less to the modern notion of the empty diagonal.

Hervé Le Bras and Emmanuel Todd argue that the concept is no longer valid in the 21st century, given the growth observed in some departments such as Indre and Gers.^[7] According to their analysis, the zone of negligible or negative population growth extends no further than from the Massif Central to Lorraine. However, an analysis at the level of cantons and communes indicates that the zone of decline extends beyond the Massif-Lorraine axis,^[8] and that the growth observed by Le Bras and Todd is fragile and driven by a temporary influx of retirees.

Literature

La diagonale du vide is the title of a 2009 novel by Pierre Péju,^[9] in which an urban businessman seeks solitude in a cottage in Ardèche.

From 2015 to 2016 the author and blogger Matthieu Mouillet spent 18 months exploring the empty diagonal and meeting its inhabitants. He presented this "exotic voyage" in notes and photographs on his blog.^[10]

Gallery

• 
  Map of population density by department, showing the empty diagonal in blue.
• 
  Detailed map of population density, with the least populated areas in white.
• 
  A map showing population density by department. The solid line is the Le Havre-Marseilles line, to the east of which lives 60% of the French population. The broken lines mark the approximate boundaries of the empty diagonal.

References

1. ↑ Jean-Claude Bontron (1976). La France des faibles densités, II : Documentation bibliographique, Analyses d'études. SEGESA-ACEAR. 
2. ↑ Gilles Fumey (2009-10-26). "La France en diagonales" (PDF). Retrieved 18 July 2016. .
3. ↑ "Le Massif Central: au coeur de la diagonale du vide". 
4. ↑ "La France : des territoires en mutation". 
5. ↑ Rozenblat, C. "Tissu d'un semi de villes européennes" (PDF). 
6. ↑ Yoann Doignon, Sébastien Oliveau, Isabelle Blöss-Widmer. "L’Europe méridionale depuis 20 ans : dépeuplement, dépopulation et renouveau démographique". CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)
7. ↑ Hervé Le Bras, Emmanuel Todd, Le Mystère français, seuil, 2013
8. ↑ Yoann Doignon, Sébastien Oliveau (20 January 2016). "La diagonale se vide ? Analyse spatiale exploratoire des décroissances démographiques en France métropolitaine depuis 50 ans". 
9. ↑ La diagonale du vide, ISBN 9782070781034, Éditions Gallimard, Collection Blanche
10. ↑ "La diagonale du vide".