The Myth of Urban Exodus from Paris : Mobility in Times of Health Crisis

This article seeks to cast light on the mobility dynamics of people in France—and in Paris more particularly—between March 2020 and September 2022, in order to decipher the potential geographical impacts brought about by these movements. Our research is based on original data rarely considered in the scientific literature, obtained from the Meta Data for Good database (produced by Facebook), which makes it possible to identify the changing mobilities of millions of individuals worldwide who have the Facebook application installed on their smartphones. In the case of France, this dataset covers the mobilities of around 10% of the population present across the country, logging the locations of Facebook users (aged 18 and over) every eight hours. This makes it possible to measure the presence of these users in a given area, as well as their movements at different geographical scales. [1]

Questioning the fantasy of urban exodus

The Covid‑19 pandemic led most countries to put in place preventive measures, in particular lockdowns and social distancing. In France, the announcement, on March 12, 2020, of restrictions on movement that were due to come into force was perceived to have led to a flurry of one-off journeys among individuals seeking to spend lockdown outside their usual place of residence. [2]

Most research on the links between mobility and the Covid‑19 health crisis has been conducted on international or national scales. And yet the spread of viruses can be more easily tracked at more local geographical scales, such as villages, towns, and cities (Telle), but the lack of data at these levels makes investigative work difficult to conduct. Furthermore, there are very few studies that use mobility data measuring the actual presence of populations in a given area (Shepherd et al. 2021) in order to study the effects of health crises. Rather, most research concentrates on more conventional residential mobility data (Bouba-Olga and Fouqueray 2022). By analyzing people’s daily journeys in France, particularly in Paris and the surrounding Île-de-France region, we wanted to re‑examine the impact of this turbulent period for mobility that shook France in March 2020. To this end, the two types of data provided by the Facebook Data for Good platform are used, of presence and movement of individuals : the number of users per commune (i.e., stocks, at different time steps) and the number of individuals moving from one place to another (i.e., user flows between two places - commune or département - based on the actual location of users during their various movements). [3] These data are analyzed at different periods : a reference period (March 6–10), just before the announcement of the lockdown ; a so‑called pre‑lockdown period, when the lockdown was announced (March 13–17), to study flow data, i.e. user mobilities to prepare for it ; a lockdown period (March 18–25), to analyze user stocks after the mobilities that anticipated it have been carried out ; finally, a summer period (July 29–August 2), which puts the situation associated with the first lockdown into perspective.

A geography of users during the first lockdown : city cores avoided in favor of tourist areas ?

By the end of March 2020, once the lockdown had been declared, Facebook data showed that France’s biggest cities had lost a significant proportion of their population (table 1 and map 1) : between 20 and 35% in Paris, Lyon and Toulouse, with the exception of Marseille, where the population remained stable. On the other hand, the coastal areas (English Channel, Atlantic coast and Mediterranean) saw a sharp increase in the number of people present : destinations traditionally popular with summer holidaymakers, such as Cap Ferret, Tourgéville and Ploulec’h, attracted between 24 and 43% more people than in the reference period. By contrast, very few individuals visited the departments of Saône-et-Loire, Deux-Sèvres and Haute-Vienne, refuting the hypothesis of undifferentiated rural attractiveness (Pistre 2015). In short, localized population increases can be explained by the arrival of individuals in territories that are already attractive in terms of both residential and tourist mobility. On the other hand, population decreases in cities are the result of a multitude of factors, making their interpretation much more complex. The absence of foreign tourists and the sharp drop in commuters from the outskirts to the centers combine with outward mobility to explain the decline in populations in the city centers during the lockdown period.

Table 1. Change in the average number of users by municipality*, for reference periods and lockdown periods

Map 1. Variation in the average number of Facebook users between the reference period (March 6–10) and the lockdown period (March 18–25)

In order to go beyond the fantasy of a city emptying itself to the benefit of the French countryside, and favoring transmission of the virus there, let’s focus on Paris and its mobility dynamics on a national and regional scale. During the reference period, 95% of mobilities from Paris were directed to the rest of the Île-de-France region, and 5% to the rest of France (Table 2). This ratio remained unchanged during the days preceding the lockdown, so there was no massive upheaval in the breakdown of Parisian flows. Moreover, the number of trips from Paris to the rest of France fell by almost 30% during this period compared with the reference period. Inbound flows also declined : mobility from the inner and outer suburbs of the Paris region to Paris fell by 43% during this pre‑lockdown period, corresponding to around 160,000 fewer users bound for Paris.

These results suggest that the importance of Parisian departures should be put into perspective, as the loss in the number of daily users in Paris can also be explained by the sharp reduction in mobility from the outer and inner suburbs of the Paris region to Paris. What’s more, this process of population loss in urban centers, coupled with population growth in suburban municipalities, echoes a major trend in France in terms of residential mobility (Fol and Miot 2021), and is therefore not totally out of the ordinary.

Table 2. Flows of Facebook users from Paris to other départements during reference and pre‑lockdown periods

The absent urban exodus : putting mobilities into perspective

In line with observations made in the POPSU Territoires program’s study of residential migration (Milet et al. 2022), mobility from (large) cities to these attractive regions corresponds in fact to a sum of small flows. Measured in this research using flows observed at eight-hour time steps, this robust finding greatly qualifies hasty assertions of a massive urban exodus from the biggest cities, and in particular from Paris or the Île-de-France (Galiana et al. 2020). The results also point to the continuation of pre-existing trends, such as the attractiveness of coastal areas and small and medium-sized towns in already attractive regions.

Observing mobilities during a period of intense travel, those of the 2022 summer vacations, allows us to appreciate more precisely the logics of rupture and continuity. Focusing once again on the mobilities of Parisians, at the end of July/beginning of August 2022, we can observe, not without a touch of provocation, that if there is an urban exodus of Parisians, it played out above all during this vacation period (Table 3). With populations 10 to 50 times higher than in the reference period, certain départements—from the banks of the Loire to the Pyrenees, and from coast to coast in Brittany—were the preferred destinations for Parisian holidaymakers.

Table 3. Sum of user flows from Paris to other départements in the pre‑lockdown period and during summer 2022

The coastal towns with the highest growth in Facebook users are mainly located on the Brittany and Aquitaine coasts : Groix and La Couarde-sur-Mer saw their Facebook user populations multiply by a factor of 40, while Quiberon, Saint-Denis-d’Oléron, La Tranche-sur-Mer and Souillac all saw their populations increase by 30%. The enduring appeal of the Atlantic and Breton coasts, which were highly popular during the pre‑lockdown period, is part of a long-term trend observed prior to the pandemic.

Map 2. Change in the presence of Facebook users between a lockdown period (March 18–25, 2020) and a summer vacation period (July 29–August 2, 2022)

Several recent studies have called into question the reality of a long-term urban exodus. This research confirms that such an exodus did not take place on the occasion of the first—and most spectacular—lockdown. It shows that the decline in population in urban centers is certainly due to departures from these centers, but also to the reduction, or even cessation, of mobility from peripheral areas to urban centers. In addition, a comparison of the outward mobility observed during the first lockdown with a more traditional period of high mobility further qualifies any potential exodus linked to lockdown. Generally speaking, the mobility dynamics observed in France before, at the start of and during the pandemic do not point to a radical change in urban societies (Couclelis 2020). In the longer term, while it may be premature to draw conclusions about the future of cities, in a context of multiple crises (climate, energy, etc.), the sustainability of new mobility regimes needs to be questioned, and further research using the type of data mobilized in this study could help identify potential bifurcations.

Bibliographie

• Bouba-Olga, O. and Fouqueray, E. 2022. “La pandémie a-t-elle déclenché un « exode métropolitain » ?”, Alternatives économiques, 1 March.
• Couclelis, H. 2020. “There will be no Post-COVID city”, Environment and Planning B, vol. 47, no. 7, pp. 1121–1123.
• Fol, S. and Miot, Y. 2021. “Des villes condamnées à la décroissance ? Mise à l’agenda de la décroissance urbaine et stratégies locales dans cinq villes de Champagne-Ardenne”, in V. Béal, N. Cauchi-Duval and M. Rousseau (eds.), Déclin urbain. La France dans une perspective internationale, Vulaines-sur-Seine : Éditions du Croquant, pp. 97–127.
• Galiana, L., Suarez Castillo, M., Sémécurbe, F., Coudin E. and de Bellefon, M.‑P. 2020. “Retour partiel des mouvements de population avec le déconfinement”, Insee Analyses, no. 54.
• Milet, H., Meyfroidt, A. and Simon E., 2022. “Exode urbain ? Petits flux, grands effets. Les mobilités résidentielles à l’ère (post-)Covid”, PUCA, PopSu Territoires.
• Pistre, P. 2015. “Potentiels démographiques pour des alternatives dans les campagnes françaises”, Mouvements, no. 84, pp. 48–55.
• Shepherd, H., Atherden, F., Chan, H., Loveridge, A. and Tatem A. 2021. “Domestic and international mobility trends in the United Kingdom during the COVID‑19 pandemic : An analysis of Facebook data”, International Journal of Health Geographics, no. 20, art. 46. DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12942-021-00299-5.
• Telle, O. 2015. “Géographie d’une maladie émergente en milieu urbain endémique, le cas de la dengue à Delhi, Inde”, Cybergeo, no. 718.

Further reading

• Adrjan, P., Ciminelli, G., Judes, A., Koelle, M., Schwellnus, C. and Sinclair, T. 2021. “Will it stay or will it go ? Analysing developments in telework during COVID-19 using online job postings data”, OECD Productivity Working Papers, no. 30, December, Paris : OECD Publications.
• Graham, H. 2004. “Social determinants and their unequal distribution : Clarifying policy understandings”, Milbank Quaterly, vol. 82, no. 1, pp. 101–124.
• Lussault, M. 2022. “Ce que l’imagination de l’exode urbain veut dire”, AOC, 22 March.
• Nathan, M. and Overman, H. 2020. “Will coronavirus cause a big city exodus ?”, Environment and Planning B, vol. 47, no. 9, pp. 1537–1542.