The statute of suburban land in spatial planning: the influence of intermunicipal cooperation

This paper analyses, in the case of France, the diversity of strategic spatial planning documents when they deal with business parks and land consumption. In four large city-regions (Aix-Marseille, Nantes Saint-Nazaire, Rennes, Tours), we studied the content of such plans and conducted interviews with technicians. Section 2 recalls the legislator's intentions since the early 2000s, regarding spatial planning and inter-municipal cooperation. Section 3 presents the framework for research, the city regions chosen as case studies and the methodological device that was used. Section 4 presents our results and Section 5 puts them in perspective. We conclude that, the contents of a land-use plan is linked to the degree of inter-municipal cooperation.