Contemporary endogenous and exogenous dynamics of “rural renaissance”: A regional typology essay of France, Spain and Italy
If the rural renaissance, made prominent by the French geographer Bernard Kayser, is today largely generalized in the countryside of Mediterranean countries, it is still inscribed differently in space and time. While various national studies analyze this recomposition of rural space essentially through residential logics, they conceal a reality that is now much more complex. This article proposes to renew, even to reinterpret, the reading of the rural recomposition, in its most varied forms, through a comparative typological analysis of three countries located in Mediterranean Europe: France, Spain and Italy. More generally, it proposes to measure the role of endogenous factors in explaining the contemporary rural demographic recomposition by presenting multivariate statistical mapping work, on the scale of rural departments or provinces. This should highlight the complexity and the spatial differentiation of socio-economic integration in rural areas.