For Parisians, Green Acres Is the Place to Be

Last month, the people of this city opened their newspapers to discover a full-page ad that announced: “You have 15 days to leave Paris.”

The mysterious message was neither a warning nor a threat. It was the launch of a clever advertising campaign by the government of Lot-et-Garonne, a verdant and sunny district of the Aquitaine region in southwest France that is seeking an infusion of entrepreneurial energy and young families.

Lot-et-Garonne offered an intriguing deal to Parisians interested in starting or buying a business. If they abandoned the big city for the sticks, they would get a comprehensive package of help with their projects and assistance finding jobs, homes and schools for their families. The catch: The offer was good for only two weeks.

The response was remarkable. More than 2,000 calls and 400 e-mails inundated the hotline and Web site set up at the Maison de l’Aquitaine, the office that represents the region here in the capital. Even a transplanted Parisian living in Taiwan sent an e-mail expressing interest.

The program, which began Nov. 18 and has been extended because of the demand, clearly struck a nerve. And it exposed a demographic phenomenon -- and an urban malaise -- that might surprise the millions of tourists who flock to the French capital each year: A lot of Parisians are leaving. And a lot more would like nothing better than to see the Eiffel Tower in their rear-view mirrors.

The reasons are varied. Applicants to the relocation program recite a litany of complaints: gray weather, sky-high housing prices, pollution, traffic, crowds, crime, isolation and stress.

“In Paris, people are always working, always tense, stressed and frantic,” said Philippe Ginoux, who runs a management consulting firm in the capital and signed up to explore possibilities in the southwest. “In the country, people work as much as in Paris but are less stressed.

“I know that in Lot-et-Garonne, it will take 15 minutes to drive 15 kilometers -- and not an hour. I also know that, after work when you come home in Paris, you are stuck in your apartment, whereas in the Lot-et-Garonne you can live in a house and have a drink in your garden.”

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Dream of Rural Bliss

A good number of city-dwellers around the world dream at one time or another about escaping to rural bliss. But factors unique to France contribute to the pent-up angst here, especially among city dwellers with an entrepreneurial bent.

For centuries, a tradition of centralization established by monarchs and preserved by the Republic has made Paris the center of the French universe in everything from government to finance to the arts. The government of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who has lauded the Lot-et-Garonne initiative, is pushing reforms intended to decentralize power, realizing that France lags behind economically dynamic neighbors such as Spain and Britain in this area.

Especially for ambitious young people, Paris today is competitive, expensive and bureaucratic. Although they live in a veritable outdoor museum of urban beauty and style, Parisians admit that they can be morose and less than friendly.

This summer’s killer heat wave became a symbol of the perceived breakdown of solidarity and decency when thousands of elderly Parisians died alone in their apartments because no one checked on them or helped them. Others died in hospitals and rest homes but were nonetheless buried without funerals because their families failed to cut short their vacations.

Such callousness is unheard of down south, asserts Beatrice Ouin, communications manager for Lot-et-Garonne, which is comparable to a county.

“There is no loneliness in our small towns,” Ouin said. “During this summer’s heat, we didn’t have the problem that big towns like Paris had of corpses not being claimed by families.”

The ad campaign had impeccable timing. Parisians spend considerable energy either planning their next vacation or pining for their last one, so November is a good window during which to entice them with the idea of a permanent move, Ouin said.

“We didn’t do it in February or springtime because people start planning their next holidays,” she said. “In November, they still have the nostalgia for the time spent in the countryside.”

And it was a typical Paris November: Rain snarled traffic and gleamed on leaf-strewn cobblestones. Dawn seemed to slide directly into dusk. Pedestrians hunched their shoulders against the wind blowing off the Seine River, whose fabled surrounding landscape turned the colors of steel and stone: beautiful, but cold and melancholy.

In contrast, Lot-et-Garonne promotes climate, geography and good cheer. Its green hills and vineyards are near the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Pyrenees Mountains.

“The Southwest is trendy,” said Jean Francois-Poncet, president of Lot-et-Garonne’s administrative council. “We have an ideal situation between two large cities [Bordeaux and Toulouse], various and attractive landscapes, nice weather -- anything they search for when they dream of leaving Paris.”

One of the area’s biggest towns, Agen, offers a Gothic cathedral, an active cultural life and a specialty dish of dried prunes dunked in liqueur or jam. It also at some point acquired the unofficial title of “the happiest town in France,” though the provenance of that distinction is murky.

But Frederic Gourdon buys it. He’s a pioneer of the Paris exodus, having moved to Agen six months ago. Gourdon, a theater manager, lived with his wife and two children in a high-rise in the concrete complex of La Defense, a modern business district on the northwest edge of Paris.

He can pinpoint the moment he decided to get the heck out of Dodge: the night a traffic jam trapped him for three hours on his way to the opera.

“I had enough!” Gourdon, 37, said in a telephone interview. “I couldn’t take it anymore. So when I saw an article about Agen being the happiest town in France and then a work proposition that suited me, I decided to jump on it.”

Gourdon got a job managing the local cultural affairs office. He found a house with a garden, where his family will soon join him. “I don’t miss Paris,” he said. “I am 100% satisfied. People are warmer, more cheerful, nicer than in Paris. They take the time to live.”

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Population Shift

Ile de France, the region encompassing the Paris metropolitan area, lost nearly half a million people in the 1990s, according to a 1999 census that established the total population at almost 11 million.

A study by the European Union found that “there are significant net migration flows ... in France from north to south,” according to the EU’s 2001 Statistical Yearbook. Aquitaine and other regions in southwestern France have become the leading magnets in the country, according to other studies.

The population shift to the south is driven by economics as well as weather and quality-of-life concerns, and is similar to the movement from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt in the United States.

The new arrivals rejuvenate graying rural districts.

“Twenty-eight percent of our population is over 60 and in 10 years we expect it to be 31%,” Francois-Poncet, the head of Lot-et-Garonne’s council, said. “Basically, that results in business owners being 60 or 65 who can’t organize” the sale or hand-over of their businesses.

Ginoux, the Parisian who’s considering flight, thinks this would be a nice time to start afresh. He’s 51. His children are grown. He likes Paris, but he’d also like a bigger, nicer home.

In a society that does not always embrace change, the audacious and practical approach of the relocation program stirred his sense of initiative.

“I thought the campaign was great,” Ginoux said. “For once, we talk about action. When I saw the ad, I immediately visited their Web site and called to get an appointment with one of the counselors. Then I went [to] the Maison de l’Aquitaine and met him.”

Some officials at Paris City Hall have expressed discontent about the ad, saying that the capital also needs creative risk-takers who dream of a business of their own.

But at the Maison de l’Aquitaine, the upstart competition does not intend to back down. “What we want above all is to create a flow toward the Lot-et-Garonne and show people it’s not only a holiday place but also a place where it’s nice to live and work,” Francois-Poncet said. “If we make that possible, public money will have been spent wisely.”

Gourdon, the Parisian exile, agreed.

“I can ski and swim in the ocean the same day if I want,” he said. “I can be in the country in five minutes. And my kids will see something else than buildings after school. I don’t think I’d go back to Paris, even for vacation.”