Métropolisation transfrontalière et spécialisation sociale à Luxembourg.

Border Region

France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Greater Region

Language(s)

Français

Type

Note on a scientific paper, a conference paper, etc.

Main Category

Regional Development – Sustainability

Employment – Education – Economy

Introduction

This article proposes to map and qualify the concentrations of the wealthiest active populations based in Luxembourg and in its close functional region.

Summary

Due to its attractiveness, since the end of the 20th century, Luxembourg has seen strong growth. This development has occurred more or less coherently at a functional level, but is very fragmented at the social level. In fact, many highly qualified workers now live in this cross-border metropolitan area. This article analyses this phenomenon based on spatial data with the aim of understanding how this young territory is structured according to the transport networks and the borders.

Content

The metropolitan development of Luxembourg, which goes back several decades has been facilitated by the territory's specialisation in a few high value-added economic sectors and by relatively good accessibility towards the other metropolitan centres of Western Europe. This development attracts new affluent, highly qualified populations who now live in this cross-border region. The arrival of this type of population generally produces a strong social polarisation, a common characteristic of metropolitan urban dynamics, and this article proposes to understand the case of Luxembourg.

The study attempts to validate the common hypothesis which explains the residential developments in metropolitan areas. To do so, it relies on an exploratory analysis of spatial data and global and local autocorrelation indices. These tools have been used to map the concentrations of affluent workers for three key dates: 1994, 1998 and 2008.

The article relies on the phenomenon of social specialisation in a metropolitan context and adapts it to the context of the Greater Region. Here, this specialisation has produced territorial competition at cross-border level, a scarcity of available land, a reduction in home ownership, among other things: consequences that accentuate the territorial imbalance between the centres connected to the capital and the rest of the territory.

These imbalances are accentuated by the presence of the borders. On the Luxembourg side, the border polarises the concentrations of affluent workers around the capital. In the bordering countries the closest population centres attract those who are seeking a better balance between availability of property and access to main employment centres.

The article also offers a detailed description of this metropolitan professional elite: their socio-economic profiles, their places of residence, how they are spread across the 4 Greater Region countries, with data for 1998 and 2008.

Conclusions

The concentration of a professional elite population is confirmed in the metropolitan conurbation of Luxembourg with, on the one hand, an employment centre concentrated in and around Luxembourg and, on the other hand, residential dynamics that are diluted in the cross-border metropolitan ring, and mainly along the main transport access routes.

In Luxembourg, this residential concentration of affluent workers concerns mainly the city centre and the inner suburbs. The resulting densification is relatively fortunate as it has preserved the north of the country, less well-served with roads, from urbanisation. Elsewhere, on the other, there is a strong disparity between the concentration of working populations in the most accessible - and therefore the most popular - urban centres and the rest of the cross-border region.

The study also raises the hypothesis of substantial social imbalances in the places where the concentrations of affluent workers are greatest. This hypothesis would need to be confirmed by more localised studies focusing on the identification of the different social categories in these centres and how they have changed recently.

Key Messages

Luxembourg's recent metropolitan development has attracted many affluent workers who now reside in this territory. These new, highly qualified workers are also inhabitants either of Luxembourg or the bordering countries. Their places of residence are concentrated either around Luxembourg City, or in the peripheral centres in the cross-border territory with the best transport links.

These inhabitants are concentrated in certain parts of the cross-border territory and this has produced a series of imbalances manifested in the urbanisation of these areas but also at a social level, accentuating the fragmentation of what is at first sight a homogeneous territory.

Lead

Lanciné Diop

Author of the entry

Sylvain

MARBEHANT

Links

https://www.cairn.info/revue-espace-geographique-2011-4-page-289.htm

Keywords

employment

Métropolisation

metropolitan professional elite

territorial attractiveness