France has its very own version of flyover states, those continental American states that are only passed over by coast to coast flights.
Only it is called ‘diagonale du vide’, literally 'empty diagonal,' to characterise areas most often crossed at 130 kilometres per hour.
Diagonale du vide defines a corridor starting along the Belgian border - around Meuse and Ardennes departments - going continuously in a diagonal direction down to the Spanish border through territories populated by less than 30 people per square kilometre.
A population density map - the broken lines mark the approximate boundaries of the ‘empty diagonal’Wikimedia Creative Commons
The corridor is not a perfect straight line, however.
It goes south of Paris toward Central France, curves southward by venturing into the Drôme before going southwest again, avoiding heavily populated cities Montpellier and Toulouse to finish in Basque lands and the Pyrenees.
The 'emptiness' here not only refers to the low concentration of people but also wide areas with almost no accessibility to public commodities of urban life.
It certainly felt empty to Mathieu Mouillet, a blogger and author of ‘La diagonale du vide : Un voyage exotique en France’ (Les Editions du Mat, 2019, not translated), a colourful book of his 18 months of walking and cycling it.
“Movement does not have the same flavour when you slow down from 130 to four or 15 km/h. You hear the bees, you see the deer, you speak with locals and understand things better. You are in search of beauty rather than utility. You get to experience what looks like abstract nature from your car,” he said.
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The origin of the term diagonale du vide is unclear. But its reasons have been widely studied and explained.
It was first caused by the extensive drive toward industrialisation around 1850 with the introduction of combine harvesters in fields, then with factories which forced people to leave the countryside and gather in bigger towns looking for employment.
The mass production of cars and the development of roads and high-speed railways consolidated the trend and continued the depopulation of many villages.
Living in the 'emptiness'
The diagonale du vide covers 42% of France’s continental territory but counts only 6.5% of its total population in a country where 81.51% of French people live in urban areas, according to data-gathering online platform Statista.
Some of the empty villages have been repopulated by British newcomers to France and readers of The Connexion but they remain extremely marginal. Mr Mouillet said he only came across one British couple in the north of Creuse.
The diagonale du vide also marks out where many of where the Gilets Jaunes protesters came from, according to geographer and historian Hervé Le Bras.
“I came across populations that felt they had been left behind by the State. But they were involved in many associations and kept on doing things. I realised at the outset that the countryside could be seen as a laboratory for innovation,” said Mr Mouillet.
