any rate. How does the reality match up against

this stereotype? In fact, there are massive

differences, on all the dimensions along which

my study of infrastructure planning in Europe1

analyses each country – substantive policy,

processes, and important contextual features.

France can surprise us.

France is probably the country that most British

people think of when they muse about other ways

of doing things. Most planners know little about the

French planning system, but are aware that the

French think big, and seem to have a knack of

getting things done in the infrastructure field –

roads, high-speed rail and nuclear power stations, at

infrastructure planningin france –

context is criticalIn the second of a short series of articles examining theapproach to infrastructure planning taken by selected mainlandEuropean countries, Tim Marshall looks at the French system

Above

In France, much central and EU action is ‘territorialised’ through the regions

Town & Country Planning November 2009 487

Languedoc-Roussillon

Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur

Nord Pas-de-Calais

Haute-Normandie

Basse-Normandie

Bretagne

Pays de laLoire

PoitouCharentes

Aquitaine

Midi-Pyrénées

Limousin

CentreBourgogne

Lorraine

Alsace

Auvergne

Île-de-France

Picardie

Rhône-Alpes

Champagne-Ardenne

Franche-Comté

‘The message fromFrance is thatagencies like DIACT,and the much wider territorialarticulation systemin which it isembedded, help to manage central-regional-localrelations, andsomething similarneeds to beinvented in the UK, and especiallyin England’

National planning?France is thought of as the Jacobin state, run

from Paris with a Gaullian image of the national

future. But things are not what they were. The

system of national economic plans was ended in

1991, and the Commissariat Général du Plan was

wound up in 2005. Efforts to replace economic

planning with national spatial planning, in laws of

1995 introduced under a Gaullist Minister, Charles

Pasqua, and in 1999, under a Green, Dominique

Voynet, have not prospered under subsequent

governments of the political right. The Schemas de

Services Collectifs, covering infrastructure and other

investment sectors, were completed in 2002, but

only just before the left lost power.

But some elements of national planning or co-

ordination remain. One is a small agency of central

government, DIACT (previously DATAR), which

works to connect all public bodies concerned with‘aménagement du territoire’ within central ministries

and down through regions and localities. It has a

staff of less than 200, but has extra force through

guiding both the preparation of the state-region

contracts system and the EU funding regime

(running on the same timescale, 2007-13). This is not

spatial planning or infrastructure planning, but it is a

sort of residual regional development programme

which ‘territorialises’ much of central and EU action,

within the new French decentralised polity.

Monthly DIACT meetings with regional prefects

and governments oil the wheels of decisions across

the whole range of public policy and budgeting.

Somehow or other the French have invented a

system to articulate its evolving territorial

constitution, a task which was achieved for the

devolved administrations in the UK in 1999, but has

still escaped England. The message from France is

that agencies like DIACT, and the much wider

territorial articulation system in which it is

embedded, help to manage central-regional-local

relations, and something similar needs to be

invented in the UK, and especially in England. This

would then play across to decision-making on big

infrastructure, which has such large regional

implications.

Do big projects have to fit in with some overall

national idea, even if there is no national spatial

strategy? If this occurs, it will be for three reasons.

First is the hangover of many years of national

planning, which leaves an afterglow of an idea of the

national territory. In infrastructure matters this is quite

long-lasting. Secondly, the continual up and down of

national and regional negotiating may work out some

very rough and ready territorial balance, given that all

national politicians are also regional or local ones, and

fight hard for their areas. Thirdly, public investment

levers do still exist to some extent, so the

government, even without an explicit strategy, can

distribute investment with some geographical care.

None of this is like an explicit plan, of course.

And, as in the Netherlands,2 some matters are

always too big to fit within such a plan, and are

decided as one-offs – the Paris airports, the Le

Havre and Marseille port expansions, new nuclear

power stations, new TGV lines. All of these may

gesture to the national picture, but not necessarily

anything more. An exception to this may be in the

work under way to make an overall national

transport scheme, referred to below.

A more general point is that there is a

longstanding grasp that infrastructure can be used

by the state to structure the country. This was part

of the Gaullian and DATAR philosophy of the 1960s

to 1980s. Peter Hall has referred in these pages3 to

the question of how this works – what building new

high-speed rail links does to a country’s geography.

This was much debated in French academia, with

unsurprising and very modulated conclusions – no

general rules; it depends on what else you do too;

and so on. Spanish academics are conducting the

same debate now, on the impact of their new rail

system. Sceptics did emerge in France, saying you

cannot just depend on transport investment to solve

development problems. But we always knew that, if

we just thought a bit – so this, in my view, does

nothing to invalidate the general point that

infrastructure can be a powerful force to steer big

spatial planning projects. We actually know

infrastructure should be a vital part of planning’s

instruments, but governments don’t want to grasp

this in our marketised world.

The Grenelle de l’environnementThe second element of a sort of national planning

is quite different. One of the most fascinating political

phenomena of the Sarkozy era since 2007 has been

the big public debate and policy process called the

Grenelle (indicating a public discussion). This was an

election campaign commitment, under Green

pressure, to carry out a process of consultation on

what to do about climate change (and to an extent

other environmental issues) and then to act on the

results. A sort of corporatist college guides the

process from five sectors (government, regional and

local government, NGOs, employees, business), and

the commitments put together in 2007 were then

488 Town & Country Planning November 2009

‘We actually knowinfrastructure should be a vitalpart of planning’s instruments,but governments don’t want to grasp this in our marketised world’

logic. Within the now regionalised French state, this

cannot be a national spatial plan: it will have to be

‘territorialised’ in discussion with regional and local

governments, like all French public policy. But it may

have to take decisions of a spatially prioritising

nature in some areas.

Incidentally, the other big change of the Sarkozy

regime has been a major reshuffling of ministries. In

order to bring more matters in the sustainable

development zone together, a mega-ministry of

transport, environment, energy and urbanism/

housing was formed. Sceptics say one motive was

to cut costs, as the merging process is seeing only

one of every two civil servants that retire being

replaced. But I would judge that this should allow a

better focus (I was always a fan of the UK

Department of Environment, Transport and the

Regions big ministry, of 1997-2001, which brought

things together more than they have been since).

promised full government support. Since then a

wide range of measures are being progressed,

many critical for big infrastructure, especially the

actions on transport and energy.

Much of the emphasis is naturally on not building

infrastructure, and on conservation and on more

intelligent ways of managing demand, especially in

the built environment. Green budget laws have

followed. A national transport scheme is being

drawn up for agreement by the end of 2009 – with

an expectation that this will stress demand

management; set new priorities for maintenance

rather than construction, but continuing the rail

investment programmes on to the 2020s; and place

major emphasis on shifting freight to rail and water

– the latter already beginning to happen on the

Seine and the Rhône.

So this shows the return, to an extent, to national

planning, now centred around the climate change

Town & Country Planning November 2009 489

Réseau F

erré

de F

rance

Above

Major projects on the French rail network

Substantive infrastructure policySubstantively, some of the standard picture of the

French system remains true. The nuclear power

stations built mainly in the 1980s and early 1990s

do supply most electricity, and a new one is being

built at Flamanville, with a second one announced

by presidential decree in 2007, based on the view

that, as the present set will start being retired in the

2020s, a new stream will be needed, to more

advanced specifications. And after decades of

search, a site has been found for a nuclear waste

store, although nothing looks due to happen at all

quickly (this uses the classic French encouragement

for a poorer area, supplying lots of public

investment alongside the project).

But there is far more to French energy policy than

this, with a massive programme of gas investments

to link in France to global networks, and a big offshore

wind programme led by the state. Targets are set

for wind production in a multi-annual programme to

2020, and if schemes do not come forward the

state simply contracts to get things built. Each of

the 22 regions must draw up a climate, air and

energy scheme, whose implementation is then

negotiated with central government.

For the railways, the TGV story is certainly all true,

being delivered in a persistent programme since

around 1980. But even so, delivery has been more

piecemeal and stuttering than most of us realise.

Funding for every kilometre of every new link has to

be negotiated, with local and regional governments

paying most of the bill on the less financially viable

lines now under construction. Broadly, since the

first national rail strategy of 1991, governments

have committed themselves to ‘2,000 kilometres by

so many years’ time’, and then hoped that money

and drive will emerge to achieve this.

The links in to the conventional rail system have

been highly criticised, with much of that system

languishing in massive under-investment. And

station choices too have been highly controversial,

with some stations stranded out in the strangest

spots. But the French dynamic of decentralisation

has supported the drive, with each region pressing

for becoming connected so that it is only one, two

or three hours from Paris. The privatisation push

now arriving from the EU threatens the future of the

railways, as in all states; but luckily France will have

completed a good part of its network before this

becomes critical.

For motorways, the machine has been

frighteningly impressive, probably the most

unstoppable part of the French state, with the same

logic as the TGV – territorial equity, with every town

and area to be no more than a set distance

(famously, 50 kilometres or 45 minutes’ drive in the

1995 planning law) from a motorway junction or a

highway or high-speed rail network. At last this may

be slowing, with the Grenelle programme promising

new roads only for safety, congestion or ‘problems

of local interest’ reasons (big get-out clauses, but a

sign that policy is shifting).

Key contextual elementsOne thing France teaches us is that context is

critical – not the planning itself, but the features of

the political economy in which it sits. Two factors

are overwhelming here: regionalisation and

marketisation. The first is far more advanced in

France than in England, the second far less

advanced. These shape decisions on infrastructure.

The ongoing drive of handing powers to regions,

as well as to lower levels (departments and

communal groupings), means that more and more

parts of infrastructure systems are no longer the

direct responsibility of the central state – this

applies to all regional airports, to all but seven major

ports, to all but a designated 10,000 kilometre

motorway network, to regional train services, and to

much work on energy, waste and water systems.

So on all these matters action has to be negotiated

through a complex geometry of deals, both political

and financial. No Jacobin state here any longer.

On the other hand, marketisation, although

advancing, is not what it is in the UK. Some core

elements remain within reach of the state, even

when most of the companies supplying services are

formally private. The state still has shares in or

some sort of control in some core areas – the Paris

airports, the seven big ports (where it invests

massively, above all at Le Havre and Marseille),

electricity and gas. EDF and Gaz de France/Suez are

part-private, but the transmission and transport

companies are in effect guided by the state. National

rail operator SNCF and the rail track body RFF are

public still, although within a liberalising system. The

ensemble of the French state, central, regional and

local, effectively steers priorities for rail investment.

All this means that strong instruments exist to

implement strategies, in a way which is harder in the

UK, where more complex regulatory means could in

principle be used to do much, but for which political

will is normally absent. Of course the UK is the UK,

and France is France, but the message to me is

clear: better judged infrastructure outcomes require

less marketisation, with more responsibility carried

490 Town & Country Planning November 2009

‘Better judged infrastructureoutcomes require lessmarketisation, with moreresponsibility carried bygovernments in steering thepublic interest’

Town & Country Planning November 2009 491

by governments in steering the public interest. And

a better conjugating of national, regional and local,

away from the to-a-degree Jacobin English state,

would also be a key facilitating condition.

Le débat publicProbably the most impressive part of the new

French approach to infrastructure is the creation of a

new way to think about big projects. This contrasts

strongly with the new English and Scottish

approaches. In the early 1990s the big developers (for

roads, the TGV, power lines, etc.) found it increasingly

difficult to get their schemes approved, as citizen

activism used all available means to challenge the

impacts of the proposals. First, ‘normal’ reforms

were made to the public inquiry system, but this did

not work, and finally in 1995 resort was made to a

system developed in Quebec for holding public

debates well in advance of a proposal.

This is now institutionalised as Le débat public,

and forms a core part of any project in all the

infrastructure sectors, above certain thresholds

(similar to those used under the Infrastructure

Planning Commission). There are two critical features.

One is that there is no decision, only a report

summing up the outcome of the four-month event

that the public debate commission (Commission

Nationale du Débat Public) has organised. In the light

of this report the developer decides within three

months whether to go ahead with the development

of the scheme (with all the usual public inquiry steps,

Environmental Impact Assessment, etc.), or whether

to drop the idea. In about one third of the 50 cases,

schemes have been dropped (twice) or, more usually,

big changes have been made – for example in the

case of the Roissy express, a rail line to Charles de

Gaulle Airport, the Parisian transport operator RATP

simply adopted the opponents’ proposal.

The second feature is that there is a genuinely fair

resourcing for participants, with a real independence

very clearly visible on the part of the Commission

Nationale du Débat Public. All actors are given the

same support to draw up and publish their arguments

and to participate fully in discussions (within the four-

month limit). The president of each project commission

also monitors promises made by developers, a key

factor in maintaining trust and legitimacy. This seems

to be democratic public deliberation taken to its

highest level so far, clearly born under the signs of the

joint French appetites for conflict and for democratic

collaboration. British planners and governors could

surely learn from this inspiring system.4

Lessons?Some may say that France is too different to learn

anything from. Certainly it is large, and that matters;

and the state form is different, as is the political

economy. I have left out a mass of factors here,

some painting the French system in by no means a

rosy hue.5 But we can still be inspired to think

afresh by French successes, and think more long

term about why the UK – and above all England –

has thrown away what planning mentality and

instruments it once had, and how we can innovate

to construct these anew.

Bringing in wide societal debate (Grenelle, débat

public), structuring for the long term by investment

to transform geographies (energy, transport), getting

contexts right (regionalisation, less marketisation),

strategising to cut down the need for any new

investment (Grenelle again, plus room for local and

regional innovation) – all these are worth thinking

about.

l Tim Marshall is with the Department of Planning, Oxford

Brookes University. The views expressed here are personal.

Notes

1 This is the third of a series of articles drawing on work

funded by an ESRC Fellowship on Infrastructure and

Spatial Planning (grant number RES-063-27-0157). This

is allowing the author to examine practice in relation to

planning big infrastructure in other EU states, as well

as study changes in England. Further details, in the

shape of a working paper on the French experience,

can be found at www.brookes.ac.uk/schools/be/about/

planning/projects/tmarshall.html

For the earlier articles in the series by the author, see

‘Infrastructure and spatial planning – legitimacy under

challenge’. Town & Country Planning, 2009, Vol. 78,

Sept., 386-8; and ‘Infrastructure planning in the

Netherlands – not paradise but valuable directions’.

Town & Country Planning, 2009, Vol. 78, Oct., 429-32

2 T. Marshall: ‘Infrastructure planning in the Netherlands

– not paradise but valuable directions’ (see note 1)

3 P. Hall: ‘Investment – spatially targeted or spatially

blind?’. Town & Country Planning, 2009, Vol. 78,

Jul./Aug., 298-300

4 See the webpages of the CNDP, at

www.debatpublic.fr/index.html

5 See the working paper on the French experience (see

note 1) at www.brookes.ac.uk/schools/be/about/

planning/projects/tmarshall.html

Above

Le débat public –‘democratic public deliberation taken to

its highest level so far’

Com

mis

sio

n N

ationale

du D

ébat

Public