Farmland governance in the rural-urban interface : between urban planning and development projects

Nowadays, land use planning must balance urbanization and sustainable development. Projects have gained importance over regulatory approaches. This article examines how these changes affect the status of farmland in development projects of pen-urban municipalities. For this, we combine two approaches: we study urban planning and the local agricultural projects. The trajectories of three pen-urban municipalities close to Montpellier, France, are tracked since 1980. This enables us to identify three modes of governance according to the place of farmers and to the importance of participation. Besides the tools imposed by the State, the rise of freely adopted tools minors the weight of planning: consultations and projects can change local planning strategies, considering agricultural land no longer as a support but as the subject of a pen-urbanagricultural development project.