Supporting citizen initiatives as part of a project to revitalise a rural municipality: the example of Volonne

Abstract

This article examines how drawing up and managing sustainable planning projects in a rural context may reconfigure relations between citizens and public stakeholders, looking at the case of Volonne (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence). Picking up on the participatory dynamic initiated when the town centre ÉcoQuartier was created, grounded in measures to promote consultation, dialogue, and co-construction, Volonne saw an active and multifaceted citizenship dynamic emerge, analysed here. We consider rural municipalities’ capacity to support and embed citizen initiatives in such approaches seeking to transform the built environment and to develop a “sense of community” in rural areas. Our research brings out the diversity of citizen initiatives and how they help improve the living environment, as well as underscoring the need to modify traditional frameworks of public action. Getting public actors and citizens to work together requires adjustments and connections—some yet to be devised—to respond to coordination difficulties and the risk that initiatives be scaled back to a small group of participants.

Keywords

• public action
• co-construction
• rural territories
• ecodistrict
• citizen initiatives