One change is seldom spoken of openly: up to 20 percent of this town’s residents are ethnic Arabs, many of them young, under-educated, unemployed and isolated. Yet the transformation of Châteaurenard - buffeted by international pressures - suggests that more of France’s regions will not escape the same kind of upheaval. Much of the French countryside remains resplendent, of course, with rich farmland and impeccable towns. “We are losing our confidence that life will somehow get better, losing our roots, our rural identity.” “Our farms are becoming the monuments of the dead, our town is a bedroom community that services others,” said Bernard Reynès, the center-right mayor of Châteaurenard. The farmers are retiring and abandoning their unprofitable fields, and half the working residents here now travel to jobs somewhere else. ![]() Rather, Châteaurenard, a town of 13,500 - like dozens of other farming towns that were once the bedrock of rural France - seems to have lost its soul. This is not the romantic Provence of the author Peter Mayle, where the villagers are quaint, the views picturesque and the farmers happy. In their place is a landscape of prefabricated warehouses, auto parts dealers, a chicken-processing plant and fields overrun with scrub. CHÂTEAURENARD, France - The neat rows of apple trees and grape vines that lined the road heading into this once archetypical French farming town disappeared long ago.
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