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This article concerns the international trends of public management reforms and focuses on their effects on public services and territories in different countries. It is based on a literature review about the links between reforms, transformation of public services and territories. Public management reforms have been conducted in several countries of Europe, North America and Australasia since the 1960s.The content of these reforms varies amongst countries, but, because they appeared in a specific economic context where State spending was considered as too costly, several similarities appear. The New Public Management (NPM) doctrine has, in particular, widely influenced the content of reforms adopted in these regions. New injunctions like the increase of performance, the reduction of public expenses, or the introduction of market-type mechanisms in States have become more and more important. In France, the reforms adopted since the 1990s have followed these international trends regarding public management reforms. The principles of equity and equality in access to public services seem to enter into an increasingly frontal conflict with economic viability or competitiveness. These tensions have important territorial consequences, that are analysed in the second part of the article : the balanced spatial distribution of public services progressively decreases in favour of a concentration. Rural areas and smaller cities are particularly affected by public service closures, or by changes in the forms of public services (e.g. digitalization). At the local scale, several studies suggest that public service closures could have negative effects on their frequentation, their accessibility, the local economy or on the well-being of inhabitants.

In the current context of international socio-ecological transition, the aim of this article is to investigate the relationship between humans and other living beings and natural things in the last areas of vast naturalness : the polar zones, northern and southern. It is through the notion of value of existence that this relationship analysed. More particularly, it is the nature of the link between this principle of assigning this value to non-human living and other natural things and the different forms taken by this value that is studied. In this perspective, fieldwork has been conducted in one Subarctic and one Subantarctic area : Nunavik (northern Quebec, Canada) and the Kerguelen Islands (French Southern and Antarctic lands). Our investigations show that what predominates is the fact that natural elements are given a value of existence according to something common to all, either a spiritual feeling or a carnal envelope of "being alive". According to these principles, the ways followed for the attribution of the existence value of change : the humans conceiving themselves either as part of a set in the same way as the other living and natural things having a mind or conscience, or as masters and protectors of other living and natural things, having a dominant function within "living beings". In this perspective, the territory plays a specific role favouring the very existence of this value beyond its current regulatory functions.

With the arrival of foreign investors, a certain urban dynamism, along with economic and social developments, has been experienced in Moroccan historic city centres. The medina (old town) of Fez is an example, since the beginning of the 2000s. Charmed by the environment and the ‘Riad lifestyle', most European investors have decided to renovate, rehabilitate and potentially transform old traditional medina houses in view of tailoring them to touristic needs, consequently turning them into rather valuable assets. From these initiatives, numerous types of official or informal economic and social networks have emerged. Working on the specific case of French people investing in tourist facilities in the medina of Fez, this article intends to understand how their economic activity impacts on the local society, focusing on different dimensions (involvement, differentiation, distancing). The Authors analyse hese aspects, considering the owners'establishment and tourism development strategies, set up to ensure a sustainable economic activity.

The focus of this article is on the socio-ecological issues raised by various methods of stream management such as those illustrated by the Santa Cruz River in Southern Arizona. Dried up since the 1940s owing to excessive exploitation of the groundwater table and abandoned by the inhabitants as well as the local authorities, multiple efforts are now being made to revive it, specifically with the release of reclaimed water. Using this example, the goal is to study the uses of and importance given to a waterway in a semi-arid region that is heavily urbanized and is feeling more and more pressure regarding its water resources. Renewed interest in the Santa Cruz River fits in with the changes in paradigms concerning water management that are increasingly seeking alternative solutions for securing water supply. It also shows a mindset of revitalizing Tucson's image as an oasis, and as a more sustainable city. On the environmental front, even if the ecological restoration of the river is impossible to achieve, reviving a river landscape is thought of as a tool that provides the experience that can reconnect the inhabitants to their environment and restores the society-nature relationship.

Heirs of the German Naturphilosophie, Élisée Reclus (1830-1905) and George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882), who exchanged letters and cited each other's publications. In the mid XIXth Century they denounced the destruction of nature caused by human activities. However, their conceptions about the relationship between nature and society soon diverged. Their correspondence (1868-1871) stopped. An incompatibility emerged between the anarchist Reclus and the ambassador Marsh, Whig and Calvinist puritan. The metaphysical vision of nature held by Marsh, developing steadily in the successive editions of his Man and Nature after 1864, did not fit in with the secular ethics and practical aesthetic of Reclus.Both men shared a common utilitarian concept of nature (to use nature for its resources and for contemplation). But the anthropocentrism of Marsh does not go beyond the superiority accorded to God. Within his social anarchism, that promoted a sharing of the benefits coming from progress towards all people, Reclus combined protection of landscape, respect for animal or plant species, and rationalized management of space and environments.Marsh, supporter of the State, which is the transcendental political form corresponding to monotheist religion symbolized by Calvinist puritanism, can be praised by present green parties, but not Reclus who is atheist, non-statist and supporter of social revolution.