Soil of Enterprises. A Critical-Historical Analysis

In France, from the 1960s onwards, a tool for productive territorial planning was put into place: the Zone d’Activité Économique (ZAE). As sites reserved for the establishing of enterprises within a given perimeter, outside inhabited centres, ZAEs have since grown steadily and become one of the major factors responsible for the peri-urbanisation of the French territory. Their impact on soil artificialisation and the fragmentation of agricultural land forces us today to question their ability for a sustainable development of the territory. After introducing the ZAEs, the paper will propose a "territorialist approach", which aims to establish a synergistic relationship between production and local resources. In this perspective, it is necessary to return to local development systems: forms of development rooted in endogenous characteristics and territorial specificities that focus their specificities on the production of sustainable and perennial wealth. What is the role of the soil in these practices? Can the soil be considered the ‘active operator’ of productive processes, a heritage to be maintained and valued within the economic process?