La mise en place des découpages intercommunaux (1992-2007) : témoin de la fragmentation de l’aire métropolitaine azuréenne

Abstract

The French Riviera metropolitan area, with about 1,1 million inhabitants, is a polynucleated territory which suffers from political fragmention. It has several inter-municipal cooperations, whose formation was sources of geopolitical tensions. The article focuses on two examples of those tensions. The first was linked to the creation of the central inter-municipal cooperation around Nice, with an opposition between the inner city and the richer suburbs. The second example of tensions was due to the competition between different metropolitan actors for the taking over of the main economic territories of the metropolitan area, which provides huge financial resources. In conclusion, a geopolitical approach of inter-municipal cooperation in France is justified and the local scale is an interesting scale to do geopolitical research.

Keywords

• French Riviera
• inter-municipal cooperation
• metropolitan area
• political fragmentation
• political geography.
• fragmentation