Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Over the past few decades, rural depopulation has become a common phenomenon that occurs in many places across the globe. In some cases the depopulation can evolve that far that certain rural villages, especially remote rural villages located far from regional cities, become completely or almost completely abandoned. This depopulation has many consequences leading to a reduced quality of life for the remaining people. The greatest impacts are a lack of employment (or long commuting distance), social exclusion, low-quality education and the disappearing of services in those rural villages such as schools, mini markets and bakeries, and also services like recreational activities and public transport. This research provides an in-depth analysis of population evolutions in rural areas on the basis of a case -study. The selected case is the Marne department in France. For the research, large amounts of data were gathered and analyzed. During several weeks of field work, data regarding the characteristics of the population and the characteristics of the villages were gathered. When it comes to the characteristics of rural villages, the main triggering factors (push factors) for young and middle-aged people to migrate are mainly the employment potential and to a lesser extent the service level of the villages. For elderly retired people, the services level in a village becomes the most important triggering factor for migration. The main factors explaining the attractiveness of rural villages (pull factors) once people have decided to migrate are the employment potential, the service level of a village and the distance to the nearest supermarket from the village and the HP in a rural village. Some feedback mechanisms are clearly present in rural population dynamics: in depopulating villages, many services start closing once the population falls below a threshold of around 2500 to 300 people, which causes a positive feedback on the depopulation, the services closing makes the villages less attractive, which accelerates depopulation. Housing Prices are a decelerating factor: they are low in villages that are depopulating and where services tend to close. But this has a decelerating effect on depopulating, seeing as poor people who cannot afford to buy a house in more attractive areas, are in some cases forced to turn their eye towards houses in depopulating rural villages. Related to the characteristics of the population, there is found a relationship between age and education and the residential mobility. A second part of the study takes a closer look at whether it is possible to simulate rural population dynamics with an agent-based model. The model performs significantly superior compared to other more simple models. The agent-based model predicts that rural depopulation in the Marne department will get worse, with the majority of rural villages experiencing moderate to strong depopulation by 2040. In some areas, examples show that it is possible to turn back the process of rural depopulation. Sometimes through spontaneous repopulation, but more often through controlled repopulation. Converting a fraction of the rural villages into either an attractive destination for tourists or into ‘ecovillages’ can be successful. However, there should be debate whether it remains sustainable to invest equally in all rural villages or if it may be preferable to let some rural villages collapse under controlled circumstances.