[PhD defence] 5/12/2025 - Thibaut Lecourt: "Five million hectares of communal land ownership: statistical and spatial characterisation of a planning resource on the scale of mainland France (2009-2021)" (UMR ESPACE)

Mr Thibaut LECOURT will publicly defend his thesis entitled: "Five million hectares of communal land ownership: statistical and spatial characterisation of a development resource for mainland France (2009-2021)" directed by Mr Didier JOSSELIN, on Friday 05 December 2025 at 2:00 pm.

Laboratory

UMR 7300 ESPACE - Study of Structures, Adaptation Processes and Changes in Space

Composition of the jury

Mr Didier JOSSELIN	Avignon University - UMR Espace	Thesis supervisor
Ms Anne RUAS	Gustave Eiffel University, COSYS Department - IMSE Laboratory	Rapporteur
Ms Laure CASANOVA ENAULT	Avignon University - UMR Espace	Thesis co-supervisor
Jean-Marie HALLEUX	Université de Liège - Sphères research unit	Rapporteur
Ms Claire ARAGAU	Paris School of Urban Planning (Université Gustave Eiffel / UPEC) - Lab'URBA Laboratory	Examiner
Mr Fabrice ESCAFFRE	Toulouse-Jean Jaurès University - UMR LISST	Examiner
Mr Boris MERICSKAY	University of Rennes 2 - UMR ESO	Examiner

Summary

Local and regional authorities play a fundamental role in France's spatial planning policies. As such, they endeavour to ensure a degree of control over land, which is seen as a strategic territorial resource. In a society where private property is the norm, municipal public property appears to be an ideal tool for implementing development projects in the general interest, such as the production of housing, particularly social housing, the creation of public facilities or the fight against soil artificialisation. The effectiveness of this lever depends on preserving, and even consolidating, municipal land holdings. However, the austerity and neo-liberal context is forcing local authorities to reduce their expenditure and generate new revenue. As a result, they may be encouraged to sell off part of their land holdings in order to meet these financial imperatives, which could limit their ability to control development plans. The aim is to analyse the way in which local authorities in France react to this dilemma. It is based on an in-depth analysis of cadastral data, which records information on land ownership. This data offers an unprecedented opportunity to gain an empirical understanding of local land ownership, but raises a number of methodological challenges in terms of the volume and uncertainty of the information. Significant improvements are needed to the data in order to document rigorously the diversity of communal land ownership, including certain specific forms such as communal land and public land. This thesis therefore takes a three-pronged approach: a theoretical one, aimed at defining what constitutes the 'land bank' that can be mobilised for development projects; a methodological approach to exploiting cadastral data, particularly with a view to a spatio-temporal analysis of the dynamics of land ownership; and a thematic approach, highlighting the place of communal land ownership in the neo-liberalisation of development. The results of this work call into question the hypothesis that communal land ownership is disappearing, and suggest that it is consolidating. There is evidence of privatisation, but this generally corresponds to the mobilisation of land by municipalities to guide development projects, demonstrating their control over the land rather than a loss of control.

Keywords land control, public ownership, privatisation, municipalities, land registry, spatio-temporal