Regional Planning Policy and the Location of Employment in the Ile-De-France

Abstract

Ongoing debate in North America concerns the effectiveness and efficiency of planning policy at the metropolitan level. Current quantitative research on the deployment of employment across metropolitan areas tends to assume that it is governed by market forces (as expressed through a variety of location factors). However,there are also calls for a form of metropolitan regionalism, for a consistent metropolitan policy framework to guide development and avoid sprawl. In the context of these methodological,interpretative,and policy debates,the authors examine whether the deployment of jobs across the Paris region,which has had a clear and consistent regional planning framework over the past 30 years,has been influenced by this policy. They conclude that over the 1978 to 1994 period,the suburbanization of jobs has been effectively channeled by the policy framework put in place in 1965. Hence, policy matters.