Artificialization of soils: mayors denounce rules that are too complex

The association chaired by the mayor (LR) of Cannes David Lisnard, who has been fighting for a long time against ZAN rules considered too complex to implement, indicates that it has received 4.754 responses to its survey on the ZAN, launched in the spring.

Established in 2021 by the Climate and Resilience Law, the ZAN objective aims to halve, every ten years, the rate of urbanization of natural spaces, to achieve zero net artificialization in 2050.

It was significantly relaxed in 2023, with the granting of a “rural guarantee” authorizing each municipality to urbanize at least one hectare.

Nearly 35% of respondents felt they were not sufficiently informed about the application of this system, compared to 65% responding in the affirmative.

But few (25,5%) indicated that they had started the task of inventorying natural areas, which should allow monitoring of artificialization; and barely 5% will have written their first artificialization monitoring report on time.

The blocking points most regularly identified by mayors and presidents of intermunicipalities relate to past efforts at land sobriety, or to the methods of counting and pooling urbanizable spaces.

Compliance with the first reduction threshold, set in 2031, is also cited as a sticking point by 58% of respondents.

Municipalities and intermunicipalities must coordinate their town planning documents with regional master plans, which themselves must be discussed with the State, a complexity regularly denounced by the AMF.

The association's office "requests an end to the obligations arising from the system which cannot be respected within the set deadlines, as well as the redefinition of a method making the system more coherent in terms of the objectives pursued and closer to the dynamics and local needs.

The erosion of agricultural and forest land by cities has deleterious effects on the environment and biodiversity, and increases the vulnerability of cities to climatic hazards.

Illustrative image of the article via Depositphotos.com.