ZAN as zero net land take. Three letters that have not finished giving cold sweats to local elected officials. Because in 2050, we will no longer be able to nibble on agricultural land or natural spaces to build housing or businesses, according to an objective set by the climate and resilience law of August 22, 2021.
Before this deadline, the local authorities will already have to slow down the pace considerably with an artificialization of the soil which will have to be reduced by half by 2031 compared to the previous decade. A hell of a headache in perspective for the mayors, torn between the climate and environmental emergency and the desire to develop their territory and house their fellow citizens. “This is not the end of urbanization but it will now be limited and supervised, sums up Laurence Fortin, vice-president of the Brittany region in charge of the economy and housing. We will have to rebuild the city on already urbanized surfaces. »
In Brittany precisely, the elected officials took out the calculators at the end of June during the session of the regional council. Knowing that 18,000 hectares had been consumed between 2011 and 2021, there are therefore 9,000 hectares left to be distributed among the 1,200 Breton municipalities by 2031. A figure which even drops to 7,900 hectares, knowing that 1,100 hectares will be reserved for development projects. regional interest such as roads. “Nine football pitches disappear every day under the concrete in Brittany where we consume more land than elsewhere, justifies the elected official. There is therefore an emergency and we can no longer do and build as before. »
“We are currently experiencing a logistical housing crisis”
The decor thus planted, the questions remain numerous as for the implementation of the ZAN. “The exercise promises to be difficult and no one is completely ready”, recognizes moreover Frédéric Mellier, director of economic development at Vitré Communauté (Ille-et-Vilaine). Without knowing exactly how many hectares they will have in the future, the mayors will have to decide when issuing building permits by trying to combine land sobriety and economic development.
For their part, players in the economic world are also asking questions, wondering where they will build their businesses in the future. This is particularly the case for the logistics sector, which is very land-intensive with its huge storage warehouses. Even before the ZAN objective, the sector is already faced with a shortage of land, particularly in Brittany and the Pays-de-la-Loire. “We are currently experiencing a logistics housing crisis”, assures Paulo Ferreira, real estate development specialist at Virtuo Industrial Property.
Car parks on company roofs
In this context, everyone is wondering how to build differently to preserve the land. One of the solutions could be to invest in the rehabilitation of industrial wastelands, which are very present in the territory. The government is also pushing in this direction with a fund of 650 million euros released to recycle these old abandoned industrial sites. Projects are already in the pipeline, such as that of La Poste, which is currently building an urban logistics platform on a former postal site in Lezennes, in the Lille metropolitan area. But this is not “a miracle solution”, warns Paulo Ferreira. “There are already no wastelands everywhere and they are not necessarily placed in the right place,” he says.
As with collective housing, verticality is also one of the ways to build without consuming agricultural land. In the region of Vitré, a company has just built a car park on its roof. “We will also have to think about pooling parking and this will involve cooperation between companies to optimize the available land”, emphasizes Frédéric Mellier.
So many ideas on which logistics players will have to work quickly to comply with the law. A forced march, of course, but also with a certain will. “Even if it is a way of the cross today to develop a logistics platform, many of us want to trigger this virtuous dynamic”, assures Paulo Ferreira. “It’s an imperative anyway and we have the tools in hand for that,” adds Diana Diziain, deputy director of Afilog, the association bringing together players in logistics real estate.