Productive soil. Beyond the “zone”, towards strategies for reterritorialising activity sites

For 70 years, planning tools for sites dedicated to productive activities have produced zones that are disconnected from the specific physical and social characteristics of the area and have contributed to reducing the land to a mere production medium subject primarily to market logic. Today, one can see that these tools are no longer in line with their goal: the development of the territory. This thesis aims to consider an alternative approach, one that would enable us to envision planning tools capable of establishing a relationship that maintains and enhances territorial resources. Faced with the inadequacy of the planning of productive activities for a sustainable development of the territory, the thesis proposes to trace the genealogy of the 'territorialist' strategy that aims to establish a synergistic relationship between production and territorial resources. The hypothesis is that, by taking into account the inseparable link between social and environmental challenges, this 'Eutopic' approach of a return to the territory allows, on the one hand, to establish once again a relationship with natural resources and respect their ecological cycles and rhythms, and, on the other, to identify paths to respond to the social crisis. Following a critical introduction on the relationship that productive activities establish with the territory, the reasoning develops in four parts: The first three parts follow a genealogical approach and show how the concepts of this approach have evolved and been transformed by adapting to different contexts, and answer the question of how and why these theoretical transfers came about. Finally, the fourth part of the thesis traces the influence and original development of this approach in France today, looking forward: the aim of this last part is to open up strategies for envisioning a productive system capable of developing the territory in the long run.