France is divided in two by a vast 'desert'.

France has a population of nearly 68 million people and the world's seventh-largest economy , after the United States, China, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and India. France is known as the "land of the hexagon" due to its six-sided land area.

However, few would guess that nearly one-third of this country's land area is virtually uninhabited. This land is located almost entirely within a central region stretching thousands of kilometers in length and approximately 400 kilometers in width. Nearly one-third of France has an extremely low population density. Statistics show that the population density in this area is 30 people/ ^km² , compared to the national average of 120 people/ ^km² . Meanwhile, Paris has the highest density: 20,386 people/ ^km² . This compares to neighboring Germany, where the average population density is 232 people/ ^km² .

The "empty diagonal" divides France in two.

There are no sand dunes on "Le Diagonal du Vide," or the "empty diagonal," in France, but this area is so deserted that it is often compared to a true desert. The diagonal cuts across France, from the Meuse province, on the Belgian border in the northeast, to the Landes province in the southwest, near the Spanish border.

Paris - the heart of France - is attracting all the talent.

The French countryside began to thin out around the mid-19th century due to industrialization, urbanization, and low birth rates. These phenomena occurred in France earlier than in most other European countries. Why? It all boils down to one word: Paris!

For centuries, this city on the Seine has attracted talent, capital, and people unlike any other European capital, to the detriment of the rest of France.

That was also the main idea of ​​the book Paris et Le Désert Français ( Paris and the French Desert ), published in 1947 – a representative work of the geographer Jean-François Gravier. He sought to answer the question of the allure of the city of Paris. To keep both friends and enemies close together, King Louis XIV was always conscious of attracting ambitious elites from across the country to his luxurious residence at Versailles, west of Paris.

They flocked to Paris like bees to honey. And they continued to come, even after the successful French Revolution of 1789, which liberated the nation from monarchy. As radical supporters of the Enlightenment, the early revolutionaries enjoyed the hustle and bustle of modern Paris. From the time of Napoleon onward, Paris became the center of French power and prestige.

Political centralization led to economic centralization, making Paris one of the world's largest destinations for migrants, although initially primarily from within France itself. In 1920, only 39% of Paris's residents were native to the city. Half were immigrants from rural areas of France, and another 10% came from outside the French borders.

Gravier is not a fan of Paris. He says, "Since 1850, the accumulation of population in Paris has not energized it, but has turned it into a 'monopoly,' consuming the nation's elite." Because the birth rate in the capital is much lower than the national average, Paris is "an urban monster, taking away three times the human capital from France each year due to alcoholism."

Paris has always attracted tourists from all over the world.

The term "empty diagonal" became popular in the 1990s, as a more accurate successor to Gravier's phrase "French desert." While the "empty diagonal" still contains some centers with potential for growth, notably cities like Toulouse or Clermont-Ferrand, the overall trend remains one of declining population. Some areas have more deaths than births, while others have more people leaving than arriving. And there are also regions experiencing both.

Once a bustling industrial hub in northeastern France, the region is now deserted. Factory closures over the past half-century have weakened industry, increased unemployment and poverty, and fueled emigration. And it's not just northern industry that's declining; over the past 40 years, the number of French people working in agriculture has fallen from 1.6 million to just 400,000.

The effect being felt in towns and villages across the "empty diagonal" is exponential population decline. As populations age and shrink, communities lose services such as schools, cafes, bakeries, and shops—which in turn accelerates the rate of decline.

The "Empty Diagonal" is not the only rural area in France experiencing population decline. Other empty areas outside the "diagonal" include locations near the Alps in the southeast and the Pyrenees in the south.

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