What can be the meaning of the word nature for people living in cities and whose jobs and interests are not connected with rurality? By Marie-Aimie Latournerie

Intro: What perception of nature can one have while living in the city?

The question deserves to be explored since, according to a recent UN study made public, by 2050 68% of the world population will live in urban areas compared to 55% today.

   To lay down some milestones and hypotheses to start a debate, we will start from the concrete case of metropolitan France.

     The assessment on January 1, 2020 by the INSEE of the population living in the French metropolitan territory is 64,897,954 inhabitants and the share of the urban population in this total is estimated at 80%, i.e., in round figures, 52 million people.

  It should be noted that, according to INSEE, an urban unit is a municipality or a group of municipalities with a continuous built area (no cut of more than 200 meters between two buildings) with at least 2,000 inhabitants.

  It is obvious that the perception of nature by the inhabitants of Chateau-Chinon, whose population numbered 2,071 inhabitants in 2015, will not be identical to that of the inhabitants of Metz which then had 117,492, a fortiori to that of the inhabitants of Paris which then had some more than 2 million. The immediate reason is that the rural space, in which the idea of ​​nature is more immediately appreciated, is closer to an urban resident of Chateau-Chinon than to an urban resident of Metz or Paris.

   However, the analysis needs to be taken further. According to an INSEE study published in August 2011, as of 2010 cities occupied 21.8% of the metropolitan area, an increase of 19% in 10 years. This growth of urban territory has been observed especially in the less dense part of the urban space, that is to say from small urban units of less than 10,000 inhabitants, while only 16% of the urban population lives there. In other words, we have witnessed a phenomenon of urban sprawl in the form of multi-communal urban units made up of residential neighborhoods.

   However, the family whose home on the outskirts of the city has a few dozen square meters, which belong to it and are intended for the normal garden, will necessarily have a more instinctive relationship with the land and the seasons than the one who lives in an apartment building in the city center, even if this apartment has a balcony or a terrace.

    The type of housing of an urbanite – which in fact itself depends largely on their income and therefore on their professional activity – is therefore undoubtedly a fundamental factor of differentiation in their attention to nature and in their representation of it. Periodically buying a few flowers for your apartment or balcony or growing a few salads under the three chestnut trees in your pavilion and collecting their dead leaves every year does not teach you the same things or give you the same type of satisfaction.

     Another factor intervening in the perception of nature by French urbanites is undoubtedly their family background. Concretely, experience shows that if at least one of your grandparents was a rural person and, consciously or not, passed on to you at least part of their way of life and their culture of rural life, your approach to the idea of ​​nature is imbued with it, even if the center of your professional and family life is in a city.

  However, it must be noted that, given the current distribution of the population in the metropolitan territory, the generations under 20 years old in 2020 are less and less likely to have had a grandparent who can pass on a personal experience of elements of nature, in its mineral, plant and animal forms. During a “green class” offered in a municipality in the Paris region, a country teacher observed that children who were asked to draw a fish drew the rectangle of the fried fish of the Findus brand they were familiar with in their canteen.

     Of course, we should not darken the current situation. Through environmental education, provided in schools or at the initiative of numerous associations, many young people are in good faith motivated by themes such as the fight against global warming, the maintenance of biodiversity, the protection of animal welfare. Still, they shouldn’t risk being superficially recruited.

    Having discussed with a few “urban Parisians” who have not yet reached their fifties, one can – with caution and not without hesitation – maintain that, for this category of the population, the most sincere and profound approach of conscience and respect for nature tends to be achieved through personal dietary practice, which is a positive element regarding its possible consequences on health and economic plans.

    But we must recognize the clear decline, over a period of centuries, of common knowledge about the mineral, plant and animal world and, no doubt even, of curiosity for this world which is struggling to compete with the theoretical and practical attraction for new technologies.

     We can no doubt know the case of a Parisian banking executive who has successfully converted himself over a period of two years into an organic grocer in Paris, or of a professional globetrotter photographer who has just embarked on perma-culture experiment in a village in the Landes. We also hear about real estate agencies in predominantly rural departments who are rubbing their hands in front of the enthusiasm of city dwellers, following the confinement, for the transplantation of their main family residence by moving from an apartment in an apartment building in a city, whether large or medium, to a detached house surrounded by land in a rural area. However, will there be lasting family roots in this area with at least partial self-sufficiency, through the cultivation of vegetables and the breeding of a few hens and rabbits, or will it be, in an anecdotal and ephemeral way, only of the manifestation of the illusory dream of “towns in the countryside?”

    To put it more abstractly, there is a question of whether a country like France where today more than 75% of the working population works in the tertiary sector and less than 3% in agriculture, will perhaps more likely find a place for large-scale agriculture than allowing for human food more respectful of current natural conditions. Such agriculture will require both more knowledge and more hands.

   Moreover, obviously this question does not arise only in France.