This contribution analyses the relative impact of local agri-environmental policies on the evolution of rural landscapes and on the promotion of their multifunctionality in a context of local development. In rural areas close to urban fringe, landscape evolves following the demand for residential areas (with their associated employment and service areas), with the demand for agricultural products or with the demand for preservation or restoration of natural areas and resources. These demands come from different actors, who often have no way to coordinate themselves. Moreover, their different demands occur at different scales: the demand for agricultural products, including aspects like quantity, quality and food security, is expressed at a regional scale but more often at national or international scales. The demand for residential areas is relatively localized, at least on a mean term, even if neighbour cities can compete to attract new inhabitants. A high quality environment is a public good, which scales from local (protection of an endangered specie, management of cynegetic resources) to world scale (climatic stability, management of migrating birds). The development of multifunctional agriculture is one of the possible means to fit this diversity of demands. The concept of multifunctional agriculture arose during the Rio Summit (1992) from the following observation: beyond the production of fibres and food (= commodities), agriculture provides important social, environmental and economic functions to society. These functions manifest themselves in products that are up to now non marketable (= non-commodities). The institutional recognition of the multifunctional agriculture concept allows the remuneration of these external functions. The notion of multifunctional agriculture is included in the root for the previous farming orientation law adopted in France in 1999, and is also included in the preliminary assessments of the last orientation law adopted late in 2005. This concept is cited in the CAP orientations defined during the Berlin Summit (1999). It is also currently debated at the international scale, in OECD and WTO meetings, to eventually legitimate some subsidies towards farming activities (green box). The diversity of the demands, the diversity of scales at which they are expressed, and the multiplicity of decision levels result in difficulties to assess the potential impact of local policies. Existing literature often starts from a case study and focus on specific topics such as the description of the debates and potential conflicts between the different stakeholders (Houghton, 2005), or the respective roles of local and regional policies on the adoption of systems that jointly supply public goods, or they try to describe how the farers' behaviour can influence the policy makers' one (Vandermeulen et al.). The local competition for resource allocation between economic development and natural resource restoration is the last topic analysed in the literature (Jonas et Gibbs, 2003). Very few literature directly considers the ways a local policy can modify the evolution of landscapes and their different functions. To analyse in which sense local policies can promote the multifunctionality of rural areas, we choose a two-scales modelling framework: a regional scale at which the demand for agricultural products is expressed, and a local scale that combines 1) the modelling of factors that drive land use and landscape organisation and 2) the design of prospective scenarios (Kelly et al., 2004) including local policies. These local policies refer to two types of action levels: a urban regulation and agri-environmental measures. The functions at work with urban area regulation are the reception facilities for new inhabitants (including new activities and new demands), the capacity to maintain farming activities, and different environmental conditions linked to urban area vegetalisation, fragmentation and organisation of agricultural landscapes (Carsjens et W. van der Knaap, 2002) or road traffic evolution (Pauwels et Gulinck, 2002). Policies based on agri-environmental development refer mostly to the management of natural resources and especially to the densification and networking of vegetable covers that provide favourable habitats to flora and fauna and that facilitate their movements (Burel et Baudry, 1999). All these functions are integrated in the landscape and participate to the multifunctionality of rural territories. Our approach is inductive and allows the description of the potential location of land use changes, but does not examine yet the reasons why they change (Irwin et Geoghegan, 2001; Serneels et Lambin, 2001). The competition between the different land uses is analysed through the synergies and antagonisms between the different functions in a territory. Against Rounsevell et al. who use a simple criterion to rank the preferences for each land use type, we show that the local agri-environmental policies can lead to a modification of the competition parameters of the different land use types and thus to the landscape evolution.