Jing Feng, Wang Shifu, Mo Zhejuan

Keywords： Intermediate Cities; Metropolis of Balance; Territorial Configuration; Equality; Territorial Node; Metropolitan Area

Abstract：

The development of French territorial space in the last century had encountered a growing contradiction between the polarization of the metropolis and the desertification of small and medium-sized cities (towns). Along with the globalization and EU integration since the 1980s, the imbalance between them has intensified, and a large number of intermediate cities have lost their pre-established “national backbone” status. Under the decentralization situation that internal and external contradictions are intertwined, the deep-rooted concept of “equality” has led to the full thinking of French society: equality is not average, nor does it mean restraining the strong and supporting the weak, but is to enable cities to have the ability to actively develop and balance their dynamics based on their own traits. In the field of national territorial space, the “counterattack” of the intermediate cites to the metropolis is presented: through the new identity and industrial restructuring, intermediate cites have regained the urban dynamics and the reconstruction of the spatial logic of population mobility, and have re-emerged as an important hinge in the national functional system. Although the counterattacks of the intermediate cities in France are in the beginning and a new stage of exploration, a large number of urban studies in China still focus on the “urban and rural” polarization. In the academic and realistic context of the collective “aphasia” of small and medium-sized cities and towns, the French experience and the new concept of the “intermediate” territorial level can be used as a good reference for the development and exploration of China’s national land planning.

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