ABSTRACT
Although residential population pressures in southern France are not as high as in some other Mediterranean coastal regions, the area is famous for its attractiveness as the Riviera for vacations, and thus vacation-related development. Coastal legislation in France differs considerably from that in the other countries in this book in the concepts and criteria it proposes for preventing and regulating development directly along the coast. In France, like in Spain (but in a different legal and policy mode), overly ambitious national regulation has not been implemented to enable realistic decision constraints on the municipal levels. Even French coastal management – which we regard as one of the “better good practices” in the Mediterranean – exhibits difficulties in enforcement against some illegal development.
