While the rural mayors of France publish exclusively on France Bleu a study on medical deserts, the mayor of Montbard and president of the association of small towns in France, Laurence Porte tells us about solutions to strengthen the attractiveness of small towns .
There is a shortage of more than 6,000 general practitioners in the French countryside. This is the result of a study conducted by the rural mayors of France and published exclusively on France Bleu. The mayor of Montbard and vice-president of the association of small towns, Laurence Porte takes stock of the attractiveness of municipalities with less than 20,000 inhabitants.
Is the TGV which passes through Montbard one of the keys to attractiveness?
It’s absolutely fundamental, because in small towns, one of the problems is still their accessibility. And when they are in rural areas, accessibility should not be an obstacle. The question of mobility is really crucial. And of course, when you have a TGV station, it simplifies things. Montbard, of course, is a city that has very good service, whether by rail but also by road and digital.
I think there is one thing that must be said, it is that living without your car is not possible. In the countryside today, it is not possible. Carpooling needs to develop, there are bus lines too, but the individual car cannot be banned.
The “Small towns of tomorrow” program makes it possible to strengthen the attractiveness of small towns. By what means ?
I think it’s important to remember that 26 million French people live in what we call a small town. A small town is between 3,000 and 20,000 inhabitants. Today there are approximately 1,600 towns in France that have entered into this system, a good hundred in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté and fourteen in Côte d’Or. And this program is an aid to engineering, that is to say, having a project manager who is there to support elected officials, to help orchestrate a device that wants to be “hand-sewn”. You cannot compare towns that are peri-urban like Is-sur-Tille or Genlis and small towns that are in rural areas like Saulieu or Châtillon-sur-Seine. We’re not here to say you have to do this or that. In fact, it is necessary to construct a program of actions. And in this action program, the issue of housing is really at the heart of the system.