Rediscovering the country?

Rural areas today have resorted to a series of functions that they had lost for a time. Up to the middle of the 20th century there was an exodus from the country to the towns where industrial and service industries were based. The only thing that is left of the country is agriculture. The motorways, the increasing means and mobility of households favor a return to the country, accompanied by a development of the service sector there. The economy is more residential: services (for e.g. schools, creches, hairdressers) are getting closer to the country and the country is less and less connected to the agricultural world. The attraction of the countryside depends a lot on the living environment and its green spaces which are cared for by the farmers whose numbers are decreasing steadily.

Among the projects proposed, many are related to public spaces, community gardens, the restoration of pathways, local history, festive events, and play areas for children, community houses or folklore theatres.

Knowing full well that agriculture is what defines the country, citizens rarely, however, associate farmers with their village projects. In the context of “Let’s live my village”, only two projects out of the 300 suggested include farmers. One project, for example, suggests“rediscovering the farms that are characteristic of the four villages of Merbes-le-château from various perspectives (from a historical or children’s viewpoint…) in order to reinforce the feeling of belonging and local identity by developing the rural character of Merbes-le-château”. While it suggests giving information about life on the farm, this project neglects to request the farmer’s point of view.

By way of contrast, collective vegetable gardens are growing. “This phenomenon was typically urban because the communal vegetable gardens aim to suggest a living space to workers that live in the towns, where they can get in touch with nature, meet or eat better food. Today, these communal vegetable gardens are invading the countryside which is quite paradoxical in an environment where the inhabitants normally have land and links with agriculture”, argues Serge Schmitz. These projects demonstrate the development of the countryside and the distancing of the citizens from the land that was once the countryside.

Most of the projects suggested in the context of “Let’s live my village” are far from the archetypal view of the country which was seen as being linked to agriculture. This is also the case for projects that aim to recreate public spaces. In most villages, there were no longer any public spaces. Only the church or the football field enabled the community to meet at certain times but the decline of religion and the diversification of sporting activites have rendered these places obsolete.   Today, people are leaving villages more and more to work outside and the village school does not always exist. All these elements have created a demand for the creation of public meeting places in the village which itself had become a kind of dormitory or was simply dying. Many suggested projects were linked to the creation of meeting places, “to create a village feel”.

The commission responsible for examining the candidacy received a lot of projects for recreation areas, far from the archetype of the countryside. “In the past, children played in the fields. Today, we need to create a safe playing area even though the playing area is already situated in the fields the woods or the surrounding countryside”, notes Serge Schmitz.

Through these different examples one question appears: are we not reinventing the Belgian countryside? Today, having become periurban, the country is acquiring very particular needs linked to the residential economy and a population that is absent all day long. Requirements related to equipment – that were non-existent before – and new dynamics are becoming more and more glaringly obvious.