Key discipline in the Vidalian geography in the times of farm modernization, rural geography has had to renew its scientific framework in the light of the urbanization of the countryside. The concept of territorial resource opens the way to thinking of possible linkages between cities, countryside and agriculture. The challenge has become one of scrutinizing the signs of what is a second “rural renaissance.” The trends involve substitution by farmers and agriculture, as territory-based actors, of a proactive dynamics of construction of town-country relations in place of various forms of acculturation. These developments are brought out in the five papers of this issue "Town and agriculture". This introduction points out the methodological approaches they bring to these studies (phenomenology, networks, inversion of perspectives) and themes (publicization, food supply). The continual adaptation of farming to urban expectations is shifting from a context of domination towards the construction of transactions, raising the question of its irreducibility in the face of the urban world. Agriculture and the countryside seem more than ever to be renewing the ways in which they fit into overall society.