Handout 1: Geography
Paris,Seine
The Alps
Brittany village Chateau
Chambord,Loire Collioure,
Languedoc Etretat, Normandy
Homework
for this topic:
1-View
:-MAP
of regions / Maps , clickable map:http
://www.crwflags.com/FOTW/flags/fr
(.html#map
2-
Power point on the French Regions
3-
Read article below.
4- Choose
one French region :
To
do this you can either, and/or:
-
View one video documentary in Lang lab 403(FH 4th floor)/Waterfield
Media Center
·
Videos: e.g
"Touring France/France beyond Borders / Paris City of Lights…and others.
-
Check: (discovering France) http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/
5.
Questions:
You need to be able to :
1-
Identify on a map
mountains, rivers, main cities, rural/wine areas, touristic areas,
neighbouring countries and seas.
2- Identify the regions and their main
cities
3- Give 3 details about one region (main city, historical fact, other fact)
_________________________________________________________________________
Article- GEOGRAPHY OF FRANCE by Armand Frémont
Armand Frémont, a former Chief
Education Officer, chairs the Scientific
Council of DATAR, France's town and
country planning and regional
development agency. The views
expressed in this article are those of the
author.
France
is the largest country in Western Europe, with a surface area of
551,500 square kilometres. She had 58,416,300 inhabitants at the 1999
census, not including the overseas departments and territories, and
60,081,800 if these are included, which makes her population the
second-largest in the European Union, behind Germany, and
approximately the same size as those of the United Kingdom and Italy.
However, France's surface area is in no way comparable with those of the
giants of the other continents, e.g. the United States, Russia, India and
China.
1- Metropolitan France
2- A European crossroads
3- Diversity, unity and centralism
4- Three faces of France
5- Map of France
1-Metropolitan
France
In French, metropolitan France is sometimes referred to as the
Hexagon because of its six-sided shape. Starting in the Middle
Ages, it took over a thousand years and the stubborn determination
of her kings, and then of the Republic, to unify her. She has three
sea and three land frontiers and her present territorial boundaries
were shaped by the outcomes of the Franco-German wars of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
In
the south, the Pyrenees, rising to the 3,404 metres high Pic Aneto
(in Spain), form the frontier with Spain and, to the east, the Alps
and Jura those with Italy and Switzerland, whilst the middle
reaches of the Rhine separate France from Germany. These are
"natural" frontiers, long impenetrable, and there are still
serious
problems crossing them through passes, bridges, road and rail
tunnels given the increase in European traffic. The Pyrenees, Alps
and Jura give France mountainous areas shared with her
neighbours. The French Alps to the north form the most extensive
ski slopes in Europe and most mountain sports originated there.
Mont Blanc, Europe's highest mountain, rises to 4,807 metres.
In
the north, by contrast, the border with Germany, Luxembourg
and Belgium is much more open. It cuts across the ancient massif
of the Ardennes at fairly low altitudes, and across the great north
European plain. It was for a long time the most threatened border,
that of conflicts, battles and invasions. Now, at many points, it sees
intense cross-border activity between the Lille region and Belgium,
between Lorraine, Luxembourg and the Saar. But, boosted by
European agreements, other transborder regions are taking shape
elsewhere, around the middle reaches of the Rhine between
Alsace and Baden-Württemberg, in the areas around
Basle-Mulhouse and Geneva, in the Nice region, in Catalonia and
the Basque country.
France
has the exceptional privilege of having three seaboards, if
not four. To the south lies the Mediterranean, with a very sunny
coast, sheer cliffs and picturesque shores in Provence and on the
Côte d'Azur, and long sandy beaches in the Languedoc.
South-western France borders the Atlantic, with a more humid but
mild and sunny climate and many sandy beaches rimmed by
marshes and dunes. In the north-west, France faces the Channel
and the North Sea, the world's busiest stretch of water, linking the
Atlantic and the great Belgian, Dutch, British, and German North
Sea ports. France has two port complexes of European standing:
Le Havre/Rouen on the Seine, serving Paris and the surrounding
area, and Marseille on the Mediterranean at the mouth of the
Rhône. She has, however, never been - and this is even more the
case today - the great maritime power she could have been. The
main activity of France's coastal regions is now tourism, which has
developed everywhere, from the North Sea to the Mediterranean.
The quality of her coastline helps make France, with her
mountains, countryside and historic towns, the leading tourist
destination in Europe and indeed the world.
2-A
European crossroads
France
is situated on the rather rounded isthmus which, in Western
Europe, separates the Mediterranean from the Channel and the
Atlantic, and links the Iberian peninsula to the rest of the continent.
Consequently, throughout history, the Paris basin has played - and
still plays - a critically important role because of the ease of
communications and its size, high- quality agricultural land and
two great rivers, the Seine and the Loire. Here is the cradle of the
French nation, the domain of the kings, the nucleus to which the
other provinces were added, the Republic's foremost region. It is
dominated by Paris, one of the greatest cities and most important
urban regions of Europe and the world: 2,116,000 people live in
Paris and 10,925,000 in the Ile de France region. There are also a
whole host of towns on the basin's periphery including Caen,
Rouen, Le Havre, Amiens, Rheims, Orléans and Tours. National
traffic between all these towns, dominated by Paris, is increased by
the heavy European traffic travelling through the region between
the United Kingdom, Benelux, Germany and, further south, Italy
and the Iberian peninsula.
Moreover,
France has two major trade routes which make her one
of the most important crossroads in Western Europe, at all events
the most extensive one and the least easy for international traffic to
bypass. To the east, lie the cities of Metz, Nancy, Strasbourg, Lyon,
Grenoble, Saint-Etienne and Marseille, and the great north-south
axis formed by the valleys of the Rhine and Moselle, and Saône
and Rhône - all now well connected by motorways and high-speed
trains (TGV) railway lines. Similarly, to the south, the
Mediterranean coast, together with the Garonne valley and
Aquitaine basin, link such cities as Nice, Marseille, Montpellier,
Toulouse and Bordeaux. It is now in these towns and metropolises,
and the Paris region, that the bulk of the population and industry
and tertiary activities are concentrated, rather than in the former
industrial basins founded on coal, steel and textiles, such as
Lorraine and Nord-Pas de Calais. Three great conurbations each
have around a million inhabitants: Lille-Roubaix-Tourcoing, within
reach of Belgium and Britain; Lyon, the most important
communications crossroads and economic centre after Paris, close
to Switzerland and Italy; and Aix-Marseille, the gate to the
Mediterranean.
To
the west of the country, on the Armorican massif and its fringes,
and above all in central France, in the Massif Central and the area
immediately surrounding it, there is greater isolation and there are
fewer large towns: Rennes, Brest, Poitiers, Nantes, Limoges and
Clermont-Ferrand. Here the rural influence is strongest and the
area is dotted with small and medium-sized towns.
3-Diversity,
unity and centralism
All
in all, therefore, France is a country of an astonishing diversity
and the French make the most of it. Others take pleasure in making
fun of them, but they are envied for the variety of their cheeses,
wines and culinary customs.... They also remain very attached to
their communes [smallest administrative subdivision in France]
which, with the departments and regions, form the three tiers of the
Republic's local government system. France's 36,000 communes are
unique in Europe and the world because of their number and often
very small size. Although of a more reasonable one, the 22 regions
and 100 departments of metropolitan France are nevertheless
generally smaller than their foreign equivalents.
France,
at the crossroads of history and geography, enjoys almost
unparalleled variety in so many other spheres too: her climates,
ranging from Mediterranean to oceanic, and from maritime to
continental; her topography, ranging from the great plains of the
centre of the Paris basin to the Alpine and Pyrenean peaks, and
from the high rolling hills of the Massif Central and the Vosges to
the great valleys of the Rhône and the Loire; the territories brought
under French jurisdiction, starting with the Île de France, the heart
of the country since the first Capetian kings, and including Savoie,
the earldom of Nice, and Alsace and Lorraine, fought over until the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries; native tongues, dialects and
customs; towns, most of them with very ancient histories; and
regions. This geographical mosaic symbolizes what France long
was: rural, agricultural, rooted in centuries-old traditions, with rich
(or poor) farmers still concentrating primarily on cereal production -
particularly high yields in the Paris basin - an enduring tradition of
stock farming in the West and Massif Central, and a
Mediterranean-type agriculture based on wine-growing, fruit and
vegetables. Hence the diversity and beauty of the countryside:
plains, pasture lands, forests, scrubland, hillside vineyards and
irrigated areas. Hence a leading European agricultural country,
especially for cereals, beef, dairy products, wine, fruit and
vegetables. For good measure, the islands of the Caribbean, Indian
Ocean and Pacific add a tropical touch.
The
paradox - or is it a complementarity? - is that this mosaic gave
birth to Europe's most centralized State, and one of the most
centralized in the world. The State affirms the unity of the Republic
through its representatives (préfets) at department and commune
level, through the public services and particularly the education
system. France's industrial expansion of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, transport network, universities and higher
education facilities, which had initially focused heavily on Paris,
together with the establishment of an often State-sponsored
capitalism and the large national companies all helped fashion a
highly centralized country in which Paris stood apart from the
provinces, which included both very dynamic regions such as
Rhône-Alpes and other much less favoured ones, such as Auvergne
and Limousin. This situation was reflected in the transport network
in which the star shape of the main nineteenth-century rail routes
corresponded to that of the old royal roads, and now the air and
TGV routes correspond to those of the old railways. Everything
goes to Paris. Everything comes from Paris. Certainly, since the
Second World War a very determined proactive town and country
planning policy has counteracted this trend, as did the 1982
decentralization legislation. France remains, however, highly
centralized, not - as before - in the spheres of industrial production
and the major services, but Paris is still the place where some of
the most important decisions are made and the capital of fashion,
art, and culture.
4-Three
faces of France
France's
average population density of 100 inhabitants per square
kilometre - considerably lower than that of any of her neighbours -
conceals wide disparities according to the areas concerned.
Indeed, since the economic crisis which hit the agricultural and
industrial regions hard, France may be divided into three.
Paris
and Île de France are a still unique genus. They form an
ever-growing vast urban region spilling over the bounds of Île de
France and which in Europe is comparable only to Greater London.
Over 10 million people live and work there. It is still - and by far -
the leading French region in practically every respect. Despite
government efforts to counteract this, the most substantial public
investments still have to go to Paris. A prestigious capital, Paris is a
city with worldwide influence in every sphere, but this, admittedly,
is greater on the political front and for tourism, the arts and culture
than in the economic sphere. The population of Paris and Île de
France has almost stopped growing, but the outskirts of Paris now
extend into the neighbouring regions. Paris and its suburbs are
France's largest "melting pot" with an immigrant population of
some 1,300,000.
It
is France's urban areas, found in almost region, which are
currently seeing the greatest population growth, commensurate
with their economic dynamism.
Some
regions are still very scarred by the industrial crisis of the
1970s and 1980s, such as Lorraine, Nord-Pas de Calais, and
Haute-Normandie. Old industrial centres like Saint-Etienne, Le
Havre and Montbéliard have declining populations. These tend to
be the exceptions. Almost everywhere, the expansion of services
and some industrial successes are bringing urban growth. New
developments are appearing on the outskirts of towns and adjacent
country areas are being revitalized. Almost every region of France
is being affected by this urban sprawl, both in the vicinity of
conurbations of 200,000 inhabitants in the west such as Caen, Le
Mans and Angers, and in that of the larger metropolises of eastern
and southern France, such as Grenoble, Montpellier or Bordeaux.
The sharpest increases are seen where metropolises are buoyed by
the greatest economic successes, for example the economic hub
formed by Nantes and Saint-Nazaire on the Loire estuary
(approximately 680,000 inhabitants), western France's principal
industrial and services metropolis, and Toulouse, the European
aerospace capital (760,000 inhabitants).
In
between these urban areas, a purely rural France survives,
animated only by small, often charming towns. Agriculture, in
family farms with low yields, is increasingly giving way to waste
land, set-aside and reforestation. The population is shrinking both
because of the fall in the birth rate and of emigration, with almost
all of those willing to leave having done so. Population densities
are down to below 20 inhabitants per square kilometre. Following
deindustrialization and the large number of farmers who have
given up farming, the public services hang in the balance. Tourism,
weekend or summer season, is becoming the main economic
activity. To some extent, all France's regions are suffering from this
flight from the countryside, but it is those in the centre, from
southern Lorraine to the Pyrenees, including the Auvergne and
Limousin, which are particularly affected. This is the "empty"
swathe of France, but also an inestimable treasure-trove of history,
nature and culture, a living and still captivating heritage, a place of
remembrance and of silence.
The
extreme diversity of France's regions reflects that of Europe,
but is even more marked. "An old country", as General de Gaulle
wrote, with its millennium-long history, layers of customs and
traditions, and an ageing population. Nevertheless, France's
population is not ageing as fast as that of the rest of Europe.
Likewise, the reduction of the excess of births over deaths is not so
marked. France is also a land of welcome, as she has been
throughout her history, absorbing successive waves of great
invasions and immigration from southern and eastern Europe, and
now from the Maghreb, Africa and tropical islands. Today, France
has some 3,263,000 immigrants, but relatively few have come over
the past decade. The France of the great metropolises has now
replaced the France of old rural areas and small towns. Over three
quarters of her population now live in towns and even more in
their suburbs and outskirts - it is here that the new France profonde
(broad mass of French people) is to be found. Today France can be
summed up as a firmly united nation, with a highly disparate
population living in a country with a wealth of different landscapes.
5- Source
: Images de la France (SIG) Embassy of France in US - 12 June 2001
