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Confinement: for city dwellers "in exile", happiness is in the meadow?

2020-04-25T05:13:19.545Z


More than a million Ile-de-France residents left to confine themselves to green. If this exodus sometimes provoked conflicts, the prolonged experience of a


On March 17 at noon, France was confined to fight the Covid-19 epidemic. And hundreds of thousands of French people have deserted the big cities to retire "to the green". According to geolocation data collected by Orange, 1.2 million Ile-de-France residents set sail between March 13 and 20.

Given the demographic weight of the Paris region, it is mainly "Parigots" who went into exile in the countryside, but they were not the only ones. Many Bordeaux residents have found refuge in the Arcachon basin, and many Lyonnais have populated the shores of Lake Annecy. Initially, the critics were virulent against these "fugitives", likely to bring the Covid-19 to regions hitherto spared.

In tourist destinations, such as the islands of Ré, Aix or Oléron, in Charente-Maritime, the inhabitants were particularly afraid of being submerged. In Brittany, hostility towards its invaders has sometimes given rise to incidents. In Saint-Gervais (Haute-Savoie), the municipality of Mont-Blanc, the mayor Jean-Marc Peillex relativizes: "Those who confined themselves in their second home with us the first day are within their rights. It's the irresponsible people who come and go on weekends that worry me. That said, the risk is the overload of our hospitals. We know how to manage the surplus of broken arms in season, but resuscitation is another story! "

Urban people have transmitted the virus little

Behind the few tensions identified or moral judgments, it is also a feeling of injustice aroused by the "privileged" who have a second home and a shelter where to bask. "However, not all second home owners are wealthy," explains Jean-Didier Urbain, sociologist and author of "Green paradises: countryside desires and residential passions" (2002, Ed. Payot).

“In France, 60% of second homes are in rural areas. This also explains why the Yonne, the Eure and the Orne have welcomed many of these Parisian confined people, he recalls. Half of the owners of these country houses are employees, workers or modest pensioners. This is not the case on the coast or in the mountains. Among those who have left the big cities, there are also many students from the major university centers who lived alone in narrow housing and took refuge with their parents.

More than a month after this "urban exodus", the spread of the coronavirus by Parisians, so much feared, does not seem to have taken place and cohabitation is going better than some hate messages on social networks suggested. "Urban residents have not contaminated their neighbors so much because, in their second home, they do not meet locals," analyzes sociologist Jean Viard, director of CNRS research at Cevipof, the Center for Political Research at Sciences. -po.

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The Covid-19 pandemic, like the attacks before, showed that the city is fragile and that happiness may be found in the meadow. "Those who have thus left the big cities can be a vanguard of a movement outside the cities," predicts Jean Viard. Paris loses inhabitants every year. A whole section of the population, "Internet workers", was already thinking of putting up their boxes in the countryside, for children, to be closer to nature. "This crisis demonstrated to them that it was possible," insists the researcher.

Source: leparis

All life articles on 2020-04-25

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