Executives are investing more than before in the outskirts of cities, according to a study

In an analytical note, the authors attempt to materialize the "residential segregation" of the population between 1968 and 2019, based on the scale of the "catchment area" of the 50 largest cities in metropolitan France .

This segregation refers to “the unequal distribution in space of different categories of population”, they recall.

Rather than the traditional opposition between center and periphery, the authors based themselves on a triptych of "commune-center", suburbs and periphery, to better take into account peri-urban municipalities.

This segregation can result from individual choices, "motivated by the search for community", or from "relegation phenomena", linked in particular to the price of housing.

A previous report from the same organization studied in 2020 the distribution of populations between 1990 and 2015 at the scale of urban areas and neighborhoods. He concluded that there was “stability” or even a “slight decline” in residential segregation.

“We had very stable indices which could hide an increase in segregation when we zoom out and look at things from a longer distance. We had missed things,” Pierre-Yves Cusset, co-author of the note, commented on Wednesday. .

For fifty years, the demographic growth of large cities has been mainly driven by peri-urban areas.

Intermediate professions and executives have moved to the periphery, where their presence was "weak", which reflects "a homogenization of their distribution" between center, suburbs and periphery, observes France Stratégie.

Conversely, the "distribution of workers and employees, homogeneous at the end of the 1960s, is less so today" since "their demographic weight has generally decreased in the central municipalities and increased in the surrounding areas".

But “the socio-professional category does not explain everything,” noted Pierre-Yves Cusset. “Very different things happen depending on whether the person is an immigrant or not” within the same class.

Among the working classes in the provinces, immigrants are more present in the center and in the inner suburbs, observe the authors for example. This also applies “to immigrants from more privileged social categories”, notes France Stratégie.

The Paris agglomeration, which stands out from all the others, records a "strong under-representation in the central municipality of working-class categories, including immigrants".

Illustrative image of the article via Depositphotos.com.