Around Ile-de-France: In the Grips of * a Digital Divide or Merely Lagging?

17 Around Ile-de-France: In the Grips of * a Digital Divide or Merely Lagging?

The growth of any network – be it in the fi elds of transport, power supply or ICTs – is spatially inconsistent: somewhere along the line, some areas and places are always going to be better equipped than others. But there are two ways in which the ICTs in particular are in a league of their own.

On the one hand, the pace of innovation and its corollary, obsolescence, is much faster: the commercial Internet in France has been up and running for barely a decade; and even though mobile telephony is still more recent, third generation (3G) cellphones are already set to make second generation (2G) phones a thing of the past. On the other hand, ICT network deployment occurs across a vast geographic

scale, with international infrastructures providing for (very) long- distance communications. It is therefore quite hard to determine how well equipped a geographic unit is exactly in ICTs because some of them belong to a far larger scale (Dupuy, 2002; Dupuy, 2004). Google, for instance, provides its much appreciated services to Internet users in the Loir-et-Cher department, but it would be a waste of time trying to spot traces of the global scale to which it owes its qualities as a search engine in the cantons of Mondoubleau or Romorantin.

Hence, ICT service supply must be studied over a long enough period to smooth out the eff ects of technological innovation, and over vast enough areas to avoid any strictly localized eff ects. Surveys carried out on these issues in various countries around the globe have come up with broadly similar fi ndings. The indicators may diff er depending on whether the focus is on hardware (computers, telephones, and so on), Internet connectivity or the number of websites, but researchers all recognize that the same processes are at work. ICT development begins in the rich-country megalopolises before gradually spreading out, according to the usual laws of geography, in line with the human settlement systems and the urban hierarchy. At any given moment, large, economically powerful, urban areas enjoy high standards of service supply while remote rural or mountainous areas with low population densities and sparse economic activities will remain ‘ digital deserts’.

A number of French metaphors spring to mind when considering the likelihood of a digital, among others, divide in France: Paris et le désert français or ‘Paris and the French desert’ (Gravier, 1947), a phrase illustrating the huge inequalities separating the capital from the rest of the country; la diagonale du vide or ‘the barren oblique’, a sparsely populated, economically weak stretch of land extending more or less diagonally from the north-east to the south-west of the country; la France profonde or ‘deepest France” refl ecting the profoundly French cultural identity of towns and villages.

This Chapter sets out to show that those images do not tally with the nature of the digital divide in France from the geographical point of view, and seeks to fi nd out why.

* Previously published as « Autour de l’Île-de-France: Fossé ou Fracture Numérique? ». In: Dupuy G. & I. Géneau de Lamarlière (eds), 2007, Nouvelles Échelles des Firmes et des Réseaux. Un Défi pour l’Aménagement. Paris : L’Harmattan, pp. 131-150. Included with permission.

Chapter 17: Around Ile-de-France: In the Grips of a Digital Divide or Merely Lagging?

Drawing on measures taken at the European level within the framework of the European Spatial Planning Observatory Network ( ESPON), it will show how France is characterized by levels of ICT development that are acceptable in the Ile-de-France region. Yet it is clearly below par in its surrounding regions – the so-called circumfrancilian belt (CFB) – whereas even very rural areas further from Paris have demonstrated a great deal of drive and vitality in this fi eld. Why is it that the CFB regions are lagging behind? After highlighting the conventional variables aff ecting ICT diff usion, and how they have put those regions at a disadvantage, the Chapter goes on to show why the action taken so far has failed to close the gap, concluding with a look at how the situation is aff ecting national and regional development, and a round-up of best practices.