Insee Analyses · March 2021 · n° 63

Dispersed buildings, concentrated buildings, persistent territorial disparities

Buildings are concentrated in towns and villages in the north-eastern quarter of France, whereas they are much more often dispersed in hamlets and localities in the west and south. Thus, in 2005, 91% of buildings in the Grand Est region were concentrated, compared to 62% in Brittany. These geographical specificities persist over time. New buildings tend to reproduce the existing organisation of buildings.

This inertia could reflect the diversity of landscapes more or less favourable to the installation of new buildings outside of already built-up areas. As most buildings have to be connected to the existing road network, the different landscape configurations can contrain the construction of new buildings away from the existing concentrated building stock. The shapes of the cadastral plots differ according to the type of landscape: small and almost square in fenced field landscapes, elongated and straight in open field landscapes. Comparing the images of the cadastral plots with the actual location of new buildings confirms the inertia of the built environment over time: 82% of new buildings are built in continuity with the built environment in open field landscapes, compared with 65% in fenced field landscapes.