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This data paper presents the creation of a database bringing together all the French municipalities while giving a specific place to those which have undergone a merger process between 2012 et 2022: "the new municipalities" (communes nouvelles). Potential data gap and consistency issues arise with the creation of these new territorial entities aggregating municipal mergers. Using data from official statistics (INSEE - National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies - and IGN - National Geographic Institute), this paper describes a process of compilation and aggregation of data. The method is detailed here, to allow its reproducibility.

The general consensus is that dense cities are more sustainable. However, high urban density or compact urban form may affect the health of city dwellers, more particularly when compactness is not associated with the provision of mass transit systems. This paper analyses the correlation between urban density indicators and air pollution in Oran (Algeria), a city that suffers a lack of public transport. It assesses the density of green space needed to reduce airborne pollutants in cities. The paper also examines the impacts of exposure to air pollution on respiratory mortality using a quantitative health impact assessment methodology. Findings show that population density and building density strongly correlates with air pollution, due to motorized transport and other human activities (e.g. industries, residential heating or lacking green space). Results indicate that for population density greater than 12100 inhabitants/ha with associated values exceeding 100 for building density and green space density, air pollution levels become higher than 40µg/m3 , exceeding the recommended limit at international level by WHO. In addition, 588 annual premature deaths (95% CI: 529-643), i.e. 0,2% of the total population of the eighteen districts and 3,7% of the total number of deaths, were directly or indirectly related to NOx concentration. This paper concludes that despite the conventional wisdom that more dense cities are more sustainable and healthier, higher density urban areas tend to be associated with poor air quality when there are no mass transit systems.

This paper is about the relevance of proposing geovisualization methods to visually integrate, co-visualize and interact with urban and meteorological data into a 3D environment, in order to support the visual analysis of the urban climate. Meteorological experts and researchers already face meteorological data and climate models analysis issues, at larger scales into the city: yet even if they have existing practices and tools to address these issues, they could take benefit from the knowledge and the methods from the Geovisualization domain, to complement these analyses by a visuospatial reasoning approach.In this paper, based on the knowledge of the expectations of the meteorological experts we are working with, we brought climate analysis into the city and visuospatial reasoning closer, on both heterogeneous urban and air temperature data(1). We reviewed the existing works regarding geovisualization of spatio-temporal phenomena and visualization of meteorological data (2). We then presented the different approaches we fulfilled to provide a 3D geovisualization environment and graphic representations, visually integrating both meteorological and spatial data. One provides style and interaction capacities on those data, enabling the interactive 3D exploration of their spatial and value distributions, throughout the city. Another geovisualization-design experiment is presented as a co-visualization of meteorological data and morphological indicators on 2.5D maps (3). These complementary approaches are presented and discussed with the meteorological experts, based on their relevance to tackle climate analysis at a larger scale and on the refinements required to extend their exploration capacities (4).

Since the reunification of Germany in 1990, several demographic trends have shaped the local population development. The complex and constantly changing interplay of the factors described at the national scale accelerate unevenly on the local level as characteristictrends. However, the fine-grained detection of variations in spatial patterns of local population development, and the combined and varying effect of local trends on these spatial patterns for German municipalities has not been traced for a 30-year period since the German reunification. Against this background, this paper seeks to present a synthesis of trends of population development and illuminate how their spatial patterns have shifted over time and in intensity.The paper reveals that the magnitude of international and internal migration, combined with birth rates below the reproduction level and death surpluses, are leading to very different population developments at the municipal level, which are reflected in four trends: small-scale differentiation, urban boom, differentiation of suburban areas, and consolidation of demographic processes. The present article underlines that demographic trends need to be understood as nested processes of far more complex developments including implications for economic development, retirement provision or political attitudes.

This paper aims at proposing a new delimitation of the morphological agglomeration of Valencia (Spain) using a method based on fractal geometry (MorphoLim) and comparing the obtained results with standard delineations. The urban agglomeration of Valencia is located on the Mediterranean coast and is experiencing a strong urban growth by spatial dispersion and by multiplication of building floors. The originality of this paper lies in the application of a method capable of taking into account the diffusion for several heights of buildings, which allows to take into account the specificities of Valencia. The introduction of the third dimension offers a new perspective in the morphological analysis of urban spaces.

As part of a broader multidisciplinary research project dealing with the association between health and green/blue environments, this paper aims at exploring the spatial variation of medication reimbursements within Belgium. These data were potentially and a priori considered as a proxy for health. This paper is purely exploratory: statistical maps, correlations, PCAs and cluster analyses corroborate the results. Five groups of medications prescribed for health disorders associated with the environment have been selected. We show that – at the level of the municipalities – the spatial distributions of the five medication groups are positively correlated to each other (medication consumption co-vary positively in space, whatever their type), but are independent of the environmental and socio-economic conditions measured. Against our expectation, they prove to be negatively correlated to air pollution and green spaces. Strikingly, the spatial distribution of medication prescriptions follows the linguistic border between Flanders and Wallonia. This implies that the observed differences are mainly due to administrative/political regional differences in terms of health policies, medical schools, pharmaceutical commercial activities, etc. that are hard to quantify (no data, diversity of actors) but should be taken into account in any further explanatory model. Medication reimbursements data correspond to a new type of data, and despite their potential attractiveness for health analyses, extreme care has to be taken when interpreting their spatial variation and their link to health.

Within the field of urban studies, quantitative research on the assessment of social and urban segregation mainly focuses on the Paris case. Research is also characterised by little historical depth, due in particular to the methodological difficulties corresponding to such an approach. This paper presents a diachronic analysis of the social segregation of the Nantes metropolitan area over forty years (1975-2015). It adopts a quantitative approach combining tools and processes that are often addressed separately. The first part of the paper uses segregation and dissimilarity indexes to measure the evolution of segregation between social groups; it demonstrates the decline in these indexes since the 1970s. The second part uses a combination of multivariate statistical methods (Principal component analysis, Hierarchical classification analysis, Sequence analysis) in order to provide a spatial typology of the successive patterns of urban segregation. These analyses bring evidence of the gentrification dynamics, which concern some central areas in the Nantes metropolitan area. Besides, they highlight the social mix configurations that prevail in most neighbourhoods and municipalities of the metropolitan area. While the urban spatial fragmentations are often mentioned without being empirically grounded, this paper brings a series of quantitative evidences concerning current crucial French political issues and debates.

This article proposes a research framework for analyzing the role of ideas and ethical norms in the construction of the spatiality of societies. After recalling the existence of three possible uses of the term ‘geoethics’ within the academic sphere (professional, prescriptive and analytical), the paper presents five possible epistemological approaches of geoethical analysis (the naturalistic, idealistic, rational choice, holistic and constructivist approaches). In doing so, it highlights the heuristic value of a constructivist and multifactorial approach to geoethical norms in the regulation of the spatiality of societies. Consequently, the paper presents the conditions for the conceptual and methodological implementation of a constructivist analysis of geoethical norms, regimes and controversies. It concludes by suggesting a typology aimed at highlighting the role of geoethical norms in the construction of some major currents of thought constitutive of political modernity.

This paper presents the SCAUP model (Multi-Agents Simulation from Urban sensors data for traffic Air Pollution). SCAUP aims at simulating a road traffic based on a data-driven approach in order to be close to observation on a wide set of theoretical road network. The data used in SCAUP are based on automatic traffic counting measurements done by electromagnetic loop sensors. The purpose of the proposed agent-based model is to simulate road traffic at the scale of a theoretical and controlled road network. In this paper, we present an overview of the sets of parameters, the overall simulation process and its analysis tests, in order to evaluate the SCAUP capacities to simulate a traffic flow pattern with two main input data: road network and traffic counting data.

This paper examines the impact of the political and economic events of the 1990s on the demographic dynamics of Central-Eastern European cities, according to a harmonized definition of the city over time in Europe. The goal is to identify the exceptional changes that certain cities have undergone since 1961, particularly with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which signaled a paradigm shift in urban development in Central and Eastern Europe.The paper highlights a dual dynamic of cities located on the western and eastern fronts of Central-Eastern Europe. It seems that the degree of urban development of these cities is related not so much to their size as to their proximity to more advanced countries, such as Germany, Austria and Italy. These observations are in line with the theory of diffusion of innovations within complex systems and underline the importance of geographical proximity, rather than city size, in terms of urban dynamics.

Previous studies have highlighted the importance of having long term data for the study of cities, but such sources are relatively scarce. This is especially the case for data about relations between cities, which is a crucial aspect of urban dynamics. Over the last two decades, many efforts have been made to digitalize texts, including books and newspapers, which are primary sources on most of our societies. Researchers have shown that these massive digital archives can be used to identify macroscopic trends related to historical and cultural changes. The wealth of geographic information in such digital archives has not been used much, while they are very valuable for the study of cities. In this paper, we present DIGGER, a newly developed dataset that we built on Delpher, the digital archive of historical newspapers of the National Library of the Netherlands, by extracting geographical information from a selection of 102 million of news items. This dataset allowed us to study the spatial diffusion of information on and between the Dutch cities from a corpus of 81 newspapers published in 29 different cities between 1869 and 1994. This paper presents the method developed to build the dataset as well as the validation steps for the accuracy of the place name recognition. This dataset can be used to study the evolution of the Dutch urban system as well as aspects related to the spatial diffusion of information and geographical bias in media coverage.

This paper aims to analyse an experience of participatory mapping and digital innovation launched in 2018 in a slum in Cotonou (economic capital-city of the Benin Republic). Carried out with a Beninese FabLab and the OpenStreetMap Benin community, the Map & Jerry project made it possible to map a precarious neighbourhood that had hitherto been missing from the official map of the city. The paper focuses on the production of this map, its legitimacy and its impacts, primarily social and political, on inhabitants and local authorities unfamiliar with cartographic tools. Moreover, it sheds light on the digital innovation process, and its implementation in a city located in the Global South. Finally, it offers a critical reflection on the sustainability aspects of the project and the potential empowerment of urban poor and their recognition for the right to the city.cartography, citizen participation, digital innovation, digital divide, Subsaharian Africa

This paper addresses the institutional practices of communal governance in the village of Capulálpam de Méndez, located in the State of Oaxaca in Mexico. Based upon a communal system inherited from the agrarian reform implemented by the Mexican Revolution and upon ancestral practices, this village was vitalized by several community-based modes of governance and various collective economic initiatives. The way the system of collective responsibilities (the "cargo" system) in the village operates and the way development has been articulated has enabled Capulálpam to resist the neoliberal reforms implemented or promoted by the Mexican government since the 1980s.- This paper shows how a normative and cognitive framework and mechanisms of social reproduction have favoured use value and quality of life by subjecting development to social priorities and citizen interests. In this context, the territory, both in its physical or symbolic dimension, promotes social cohesion and allows the predominance of the ordinary.

This paper aims to analyse an experience of participatory mapping and digital innovation launched in 2018 in a slum in Cotonou (economic capital-city of the Benin Republic). Carried out with a Beninese FabLab and the OpenStreetMap Benin community, the Map & Jerry project made it possible to map a precarious neighbourhood that had hitherto been missing from the official map of the city. The paper focuses on the production of this map, its legitimacy and its impacts, especially social and political, on inhabitants and local authorities unfamiliar with cartographic tools. Moreover, it sheds light on the digital innovation process, and its implementation in a city located in the Global South. Finally, it offers a critical reflection on the sustainability aspects of the project and the potential empowerment of urban poor and their recognition for the right to the city.

For over 150 years, humans have tried to limit the geomorphic activity of mountain watercourses, and the related damage, using torrent control works. Check dams are likely the most emblematic civil engineering structures used in mountain system soil conservation programs. Modern mountain societies have inherited thousands of these structures built in upland gullies and streams. The expected qualitative effect of check dams on river systems is referred to their function. Check dam function must be clearly understood to help define their effectiveness and decisions concerning their maintenance or new project designs. The next steps concern quantitative assessments of each function on the flood features and propagation of all effects through the sediment cascade. The present understanding of these sometimes old structures’ functions can be complicated because the societal and environmental contexts in which the original structures were built may have changed. To bridge this gap, this paper traces the purposes for which check dams were built, through a detailed analysis of French archives. We first analyze chronologically how each function was theorized and applied in the field. In the nineteenth century, engineers developed a thorough empirical and conceptual knowledge of mountain soil erosion, torrential geomorphology, and sediment transport processes as well as check dam interactions with these natural processes. The second part of this paper synthesizes conceptual descriptions of the check dams’ functions, in the light of more than 150 years of experience. The French experience is compared to other countries’ pioneering works. Finally, the next steps and remaining research challenges toward a comprehensive analysis of check dams’ efficiency in torrent hazard mitigation are presented. This analysis is proposed to remind how, conceptually, check dams may influence geomorphic systems, bearing in mind the knowledge represented in pioneer guidelines and recent works on the subject.

In this paper we present the methodological issues and choices related to the construction of the TRADEVE database, which allows following the population of European urban areas since 1961. Whereas most of the recent academic works related to this issue focus either on time depth (for larger cities) or on the large coverage of urban hierarchy (for a shorter period), one of the main interests of the TRADEVE database is to extend over a relatively long period (from 1961 to 2011) and to cover small and medium sized cities at the same time. But, above all, it distinguishes by taking into account the spatial expansion of urban areas during a period characterized by a pronounced sprawling process. First insights are provided that allow studying the hierarchical and regional expressions of urban growth slowing down during this period. A cluster analysis performed on the demographic trajectories of cities shows that 22% are decreasing, i.e. 870 out of the 3,930 considered in the database. Along with the paper, the TRADEVE database fully documented with metadata is available online in open access.

This paper analyzes the evolution in transport modal use in daily mobility of workers in the greater Paris area in the last decade. After many decades of continuous growth, car use has decreased while public transport, walking, cycling and motorized two-wheelers use has increased. The objective of this paper is to define the spatial and socio-demographic characteristics of workers who have changed their modes of transportation. A typological analysis is conducted based on data from the last two Paris region household travel surveys. This approach identifies who are the workers behind the decrease in private car use. A growing number of workers who live or work in Paris and in the inner suburbs, white collar and highly qualified workers, men, high incomes, workers with children, workers with driving license and workers in mono-motorized households have an alternative mobility. The results also underlines that high automobile mobility, a decreasing mobility behavior, concerns more and more peri-urban workers, craftsmen, tradesman, managers and blue collar, and workers over the age of thirty.

This paper compares Hierarchical Clustering, Bayesian Networks and Self-Organizing Map Neural Networks (SOM and superSOM) approaches used for clustering purposes in geographic space. The same dataset, covering the Republic of India and made of 55 indicators for 640 spatial units (administrative districts), is used in the three analyses. Indicators descry the several aspects of urban, economic and socio-demographic development in India. Bayesian Networks use a likelihood function while SOM/SuperSOM and Hierarchical Clustering minimize variance of Euclidean distance in variable space, the former by preserving the topological properties within the output space and the latter by successively combining similar items. Relatively similar multi-step protocols have been implemented for the three techniques, to take into account variable redundancy. Methods as well as clustering results are compared. From this perspective, the aim of the paper is to highlight the similarities between the protocols and to evaluate the differences between the segmentation approaches (geographical and variable space comparisons). A few key points are also discussed such as the data pre-processing steps, the conception of latent factors and the choice of the number of clusters.

The ‘Agrégation’ is the highest French teaching qualification, composed in part of an oral test without defined syllabus called “leçon de hors programme”. It has an especially strong symbolic dimension among students, based on its difficulty, and yet few researchers have examined its content and evolutions throughout the years. This paper intends to address this lack of coverage in the literature with both a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the specific part of the leçon. Starting from the last major reform of 2002, this paper questions the topics, the subfields and the spaces of the geographic discipline tackled by this exam. Thus, it intends to reveal the Agrégation’s impact on the training of future teachers and its relationship with the scientific production of knowledge in Geography.

Our previous papers showed the interest of using both structural binary logic and, particularly, processual ternary logic to apprehend resilience in urban geography. This paper is an in depth exploration of the association of S. Lupasco’s antagonistic ternary logic and the logic proposed by J.-Y. Béziau, in his work on the power of the hexagon. The heuristic improvements that these logics – amply explicated here – can bring to city systems issues are further examined. First by drawing from the results of the previous papers which defined the city as a type of geo-anthroposystem; then, by using current studies in mathematics, logic and geography which evolved a ternary thinking, integrating or exceeding the traditional binary-based thinking.The initial postulate behind this work was what can be called the “hexagonal” logic of R. Blanche and J.-Y. Beziau. Comparing a geographic hexagon, developed with well-known or easily understood urban concepts, to the trichotomic hexagon proposed by these authors produced a real but partial correspondence between the two forms, limited to the structure. This made it necessary to associate it with S. Lupasco’s antagonistic ternary logic to achieve a logico-geographical structure-processual construction of an urban geo-anthroposystem. Conceived on this basis, the resulting diagram goes beyond the initial requirement and establishes itself as an axiomatic construction conducive to verification and refutation: it can then be proposed as the archetype for any urban area, whether finished or in progress.

Sparsely populated areas are often characterized by incomplete territorial control by governments. This creates opportunities for informal and/or illegal activities, which can lead to the economic exploitation of the territories, paving the way for political domination or territorial conquest. Although these activities may not be officially recognized or accepted, they play a significant role in the symbolic, material, and economic construction of sparsely populated territories. This paper examines the case of informal gold mining in the interior of French Guiana, an overseas territory of France, through this perspective. Based on a detailed analysis of the interplay between formal territorial control by the government and informal exploration of natural resources by wildcat actors, it highlights the ways in which informal activities can shape the development and governance of these territories.

This paper examines the squares of Oran through their names. The city words field study represents an important approach to the analysis of the formative process of city's space. Names are key elements in the appropriation of urban space as they gradually shape collective memory and impacts significantly urban life. In this paper, we attempt to trace in some ways the “adventure” of square names to grab their emergence, their importance, their meaning. We borrow the term of “adventure” of Christian Topalov et al (2010) because it seems to express the idea of a travelled path, made of permanence or changes of use according to urban realities that the names have as a role to indicate.

Deaths caused by drug overdoses have increased significantly over the past 2 decades in the U.S, becoming a public health concern. Existing empirical evidence examining the spatial association between the contextual correlates and drug overdose death rates, however, remains limited and ambiguous. Additionally, death caused by drug overdose is a multi-disciplinary issue and requires a correspondingly multifaceted and multidisciplinary approach, but there has been little research to date in the U.S. focusing on risk factors of drug overdose deaths from a crime perspective. This paper uses geographically weighted regression to examine the relationship between drug overdose death rates and contextual characteristics at the county subdivision level in the State of Connecticut. The results show that explanatory variables, such as gender, education, poverty, housing, and racial/ethnic diversity, are associated with drug overdose death rates in the state. Most importantly, the association between drug overdose death rates and all explanatory variables in our analysis significantly varied over space, highlighting the need for local and context-specific drug overdose prevention and intervention programs. In addition, this research enables health practitioners, policy makers, and police to gain a better understanding of the geography of drug overdose victimization and efficiently allocate resources to battle drug overdose deaths.

This paper aims to document the mapping of environmental objects, such as wetlands functions and landscape, with digital geography tools. Even though these maps are used to support public policies on water management and climate change anticipation, their political dimension is not explicitly discussed. We focus on the methodological issues involved in the processes of describing, recognizing and locating these environmental objects. We undid the illusion of a quick and automatic digital mapping, allowing addressing of any issue in an objective way: methodological choices must be discussed according to the purpose of the map. In an interdisciplinary context, it is necessary to get the measure of the polysemy of terms to reach an agreement on a common definition of objects to be represented. Digital tools challenge expertise: scientists standing between practice and research must consider the political underpinnings of maps produced with data and algorithms with issues that are not made explicit. This is why we question the purpose of the maps based on observations and interviews with their sponsors and end users. This provides key elements to renew the mapping process by examining a plurality of technical solutions, in particular the choice of relevant databases and spatial resolution.

The paper is based on a study, from a social science point of view, of a book of Blaise Cendrars (L’Homme foudroyé) in which this writer develops a theory of the human experience of space. This is also to argue that this method is, in general, fruitful ; it implies considering seriously that writers do take part in theoretical debates and that their œuvre is also a tool for transmission of knowledge. After presenting the book which is here the « field » for research, the author of the paper analyses more specifically the Rhapsodies gitanes (last part of the book). The originality of Cendrars as a writer is that he creates a space which is a network of places while he destructures the chronology and continuity of time, he defines this method as a « prochronie ».

This paper presents the PixScape software dedicated to landscape visibility modeling based on digital spatial data. PixScape is an integrated software combining all existing functions in standard GIS tools in this field, and proposing ‘other original functions. It facilitates the overall processing chain of visibility analyses, and offers a wide range of commonly used metrics. Its originality is to offer a choice between two specific methods of visibility computations, and the possibility of advanced analysis of landscape visible configuration. The paper presents an overview of all the visibility analysis parameters offered by PixScape, all the available visibility metrics, and the parallelization methods for reducing computation time.

This paper deals with the link between urban forms and energy balance. Nowadays, many French urban planners recommend dense and compact cities to suit the imperatives of sustainable development. Dense cities are usually said to consume little energy and space, contrarily to more spread out cities. In the last twenty years, many studies showed the compactness of a building can impact its heating loads: the more compact the building, the lower its heating consumption is. But, this relationship between form and energy is less obvious on a city-wide scale since the forms and morphologies of cities are complex. First of all, this paper presents the urban and scientific context our study is relating to. It concludes that a change of scale is necessary to suit energy efficient (pieces of) cities with "reasoned" urban density. Then our research is divided into two parts. The first one introduces the issue of density distributions by analysing the energy efficiency of six archetypal urban forms that have the same density. The second one deals with the main study of our research: the morphogenesis of a piece of city thanks to a genetic algorithm optimisation process considering three parameters: density of population, energy performance and sun penetration. Finally, the results are detailed, aiming at discussing advantages and limits of such a micro-urban morphogenesis method.

Urban sprawl is one of those terms that became a major keyword in the scientific sphere as well as in everyday uses, to the extent that it is often considered as self-explanatory. Based on a literature study on urban sprawl this paper highlights the plural understandings of the term that result from a lack of consensus on a common definition. Thus, this paper aims at questioning urban sprawl by asserting its polysemy. Starting with an overview of the methodologies used among the scientific community, the research reveals a dual meaning of the term, considering urban sprawl from a point of view either statistical (quantitative approach) or morphological and functional (qualitative approach). More specifically the analysis is anchored in the United States, where sprawl historically emerged and shows its most advanced expressions. Building on a selection of case studies (Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Nashville), the inputs and limits of both approaches are considered, and a discrepancy is proven between perceptions and reality when studying urban sprawl in the US.

This paper presents the methodologies used to assess environmental exposure to air pesticides. It relies on a literature review conducted on the basis of articles published in epidemiology and human science journals, concerning environmental exposure in North America, Europe and Australia. The first part of the paper presents direct assessment methods (pesticides concentrations in air, house dust or biological matrices) and indirect methods (estimates indicators based on agricultural land-use, type of crops, applied pesticide and auto-declaration of pesticide use). These two types of methods are mainly oriented towards an assessment of exposure at place of residence. Secondly the explanations of the spatial variability of pesticide exposure are discussed. Two modes of explanation are put forward: the variation is a function of the distance to the application site; the variation depends on the residential context (rural, peri-urban and urban). Finally, the limits of the exposure assessment methods are exposed: the results are difficult to compare as the authors use a wide range of methodologies. Besides, urban areas are almost never included in the studies and the mobility of the resident population on the short or long term is rarely taken into account.

Alexandre Meunier (1870-1942), a forgotten French cartographer working for the "Service Géographique" at the Colonial Ministry, contributed heavily to the production of maps over the French colonial empire. Among his maps, were 3 maps (Djibouti, Harrar and Addis Ababa) on La Côte française des Somalis et contrées avoisinantes, published in 1908-1909. The maps are analysed combining analysis of the map design and their thematic contents as well as their colonial discourse. The geo-political context of the time and the institutional aspects surrounding their publication are brought forward. Beyond the wish to give Alexandre Meunier a place he deserves in the history of cartography, this paper intends to shed light on this particular type of map produced under the colonial scramble in the Horn of Africa where Italy, Great Britain and France competed together on Abyssinia. It shows how apparently ordinary maps contributed to colonial rivalries and international diplomacy.

Tiaret, an intermediate city in the interior of Algeria, has undergone both rapid and extensive urban growth since the 1970s, transforming its urban structure. The city maintained this evolution rhythm to recompose on its own since 2000 by densifying. In addition to urban expansion, which accelerated in connection with its role as a junction city and regional hub, the city has witnessed a rapid diffusion of tertiary activities, mainly along the structuring and transit roads, creating commercial strips animated by retail trade that transformed and reconfigured the urban landscape. This evolution process is characterized by the diversification of tertiary activities, conducted by both public and private actors, operates a continual metamorphosis. This paper attempts to approach these mutation processes by mobilizing data from direct questionnaire surveys and field surveys. The results show interactions between these functional transformations and the spatial context in which they occur. The linear spread of retail on the periphery, led mainly by young traders, is transforming the urban landscape, making the city more attractive and bringing it to life, but it is generating land pressure, particularly in the individual housing estates, and placing the city center, which is not very favourable to traffic, in partial but long-term competition.

This article looks at the transformation of the geography of immigration in sparsely populated areas (rural, peri-urban, small towns) in France since the late 1990s, using a multi-dimensional approach. The spatial dynamics of immigration are most of the time studied in a segmented way and according to a single dimension - the geographical origin of individuals in general. To better understand the complexity of the socio-spatial changes of immigration in low-density areas of mainland France, this paper takes into account the variety of individuals' geographic origins as well as their social and demographic characteristics. The results presented are based on the exploitation of 1999 and 2015 detailed census data and an exploratory multivariate analysis method at two levels. First, at the individual level, the analyses show that the profiles of immigrants in sparsely populated areas have changed since the end of the 1990s, on the one hand, by the aging of part of the population from the former waves of labor immigration from Europe and North Africa and, on the other hand, by the emergence of new profiles with more varied geographic origins and social characteristics. Secondly, at the macro level, this research shows that these changes are also spatial in nature, by revealing six major dynamics of the geographical patterns of immigration. Thus, the article contributes to recent work on the diversification of immigration outside of large urban regions and offers new avenues of research for local analyses.

Climate change and rising temperatures are some of the biggest challenges tropical cities face. These cities need to be designed to accommodate high population growth while providing a comfortable thermal environment. In this context, we propose a framework for developing urban design guidelines with a focus on improving thermal comfort in outdoor environments, a concept known as Outdoor Thermal Comfort (OTC). The framework is based on computing climate variables such as temperature, wind speed, humidity, and others for several urban design strategies at the district scale. Furthermore, we use the spatial occupancy over the course of the day in the district to calculate an overall OTC performance score. Finally, the design strategies are ranked and represented in a three-dimensional space. The strategies are extracted from the body of knowledge of urban planning and design, and adjusted to local status and building codes. The climate variables are computed using numerical climate models, and the OTC performance score is calculated using a statistical risk management model. The guidelines discussed in this paper are limited to passive design strategies such as urban geometry, orientation and vegetation for tropical cities with high density. These guidelines can be used to support architects and urban planners in the early design stages of a new district.

This paper highlights the evolution of localisation strategies of economic activities in the Belgian urban hierarchy and, by extension, analyses modifications in the economic profile of Belgian urban areas. The shift to post-Fordism and the rise of post-industrial society constantly seeking for flexibility for its economic production system has led to a complete change of structure in economy networks and has induced a readjustment within the models and strategies of economic activity localisation. Consequently, the inherited spatial economic structures had to adapt to these changes. Firstly, this paper focuses on how these changes have affected the urban hierarchy distribution of activities and stresses the specificities of the Belgian city-system associated with these evolutions. Secondly, this paper aims to evaluate the hierarchical processes’ impacts on the systemic evolution of the Belgian urban areas and on their economic profiles. In order to do so, multivariate analysis was chosen for its robustness and its potential to conciliate sectorial employment data, diachronic study and systemic analysis of the Belgian city-system.

This paper introduces an interactive web platform called “SLIDER” to explore longitudinal data and an original graphical display called “slide plot” which is conceived to visualize aggregated trajectories. The paper begins with a short state of the art of existing graphical displays used to analyze longitudinal data. Then, it presents the main characteristics of the proposed slide plot visualization. At last, it gives a technical description of the web application and the graphical display, both implemented using the R software and the shiny R package.

This contribution proposes to throw off the shackles of the usual rigid European rationale, which presupposes a “natural” domination of the urban centers on peri-urban areas. The focus of this paper is guided by the following hypothesis: one of the major reasons why urban sprawl is unsustainable is because it is conceived and designed as an extension of the city. Such a supposition suggests two corollaries:-Peri-urbanization may turn sustainable when based on the former non-urban land uses space (agriculture or forestry, natural areas, wastelands).-Thus, such a sustainable peri-urbanization should lead to specific and original forms of social and spatial organization (multifunctionality, lifestyles, access to nature).Moreover, this position offers a new perspective, for planners, to understand the complex reality of what is an urban area. It also helps to renew urban design and urban management, which are both usually based on the bias of continuous areas, at least simplistic and largely inadequate to think the actual disperse cities. This paper tries to determine how to foster a periurban transition to sustainability with regard to local authorities and planners’ actions, in relation with local communities.

This article highlights the issues of urban renewal in major Algerian cities, through a case study in the precarious district of El M'Haffeur in Annaba, a city in eastern Algeria. This paper confronts the search for territorial equity, through requalification of marginalized spaces, with the realities of a gentrification process that occurs on pericentral spaces according to market opportunities. The article demonstrates that the device for the reduction of precarious housing looks like a legitimizing tool to free up land coveted by private real estate developers who are the main actors in this gentrification. The evicted inhabitants, whose words are recorded and analyzed in this article, express a strong feeling of injustice finding themselves forced to give up for their right to housing and against their right to the city.

Promoting biodiversity is a major issue in urban planning. Estimating the biodiversity potential of patches in the landscape matrix often uses the tools of spatial analysis and landscape ecology indices, especially in large study areas. In this paper, we present the construction of a composite biodiversity potential index (CBPI) based on structural and functional approaches of landscape ecology. The CBPI is composed of eight indices (quality: permeability, fragmentation, environmental management; shape: size, shape complexity; configuration: contrast between neighbouring patches, distance to the most favourable habitats, distance from built-up areas). The CBPI appears to be suitable for anthropised and fragmented landscape matrices. It can be used to identify ecological networks in an ‘Avoid, Reduce, Compensate’ approach and can be readily updated with new map databases.

Urban microclimate studies could help manage heatwave crises and improve climate friendly urban planning. This paper presents adjustments to tools and approaches, in particular the Urban Climate Maps framework, typically produced in industrialized countries for contexts relevant to developing countries, where accurate urban data are often not available. In this study, relevant urban, architectural and land use data were collected and constructed to enable numerical simulations of a heat wave episode in the Greater Metropolitan area of Tunis. The simulation results indicate that the diurnal heat stress reached very high values corresponding to an extreme heat stress level, according to the Urban Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) scale, by 9 a.m. local time. The highest sea-breeze speeds were over the sea (∼8 m s−1). However, the effect of the sea breeze was low over densely urbanized areas (

Air quality is a major issue for urban policies, which implement regulatory monitoring devices and fine-scale modelling tools to monitor air pollution. Recently, mobile and connected devices have been used as a valuable tool in this regard, allowing more observations and real-time indicative data on individual exposure in all environments. In this article, individual exposure to the pollutants PM2.5, NO2 and Black Carbon (BC) is analysed based on geolocated and embedded micro-sensor observations from eighty-eight voluntary participants of two cohorts in Île-de-France. This data was complemented by interviews with eight of the cohorts’ participants and ten institutional stakeholders. Our findings reveal wide variations in exposure depending on the pollutant, on the microenvironment ("home", "work", "transport", "other places"), on the transport modes and on particular daily activities. In addition to commuting, this paper highlights additional exposure, particularly to PM2.5 during weekends, within and when travelling to the microenvironment "other places" that include indoor and outdoor leisure time spaces. Peaks of pollutant concentration during some individual travel by tram and bicycle are interpreted in their specific contexts. An analytical synthesis of all our results shows that mobility behavior and exposure intensity in some specific microenvironments require particular attention from an air quality perspective.

Although the expression "revitalisation" appears more frequently in the field of public policy, particularly in France since the mid-1990s, it remains unexplored by researchers. Often linked to territorial issues, revitalisation is a fuzzy concept, both in the field of public action and in scientific publications. Characterizing this process to discriminate it from other territorial dynamics is, however, a real academic and practical challenge to better support public policies by clarifying the elements of diagnosis, the roles of actors and the modalities of its implementation. Building on experiments carried out in several fields of territorial policies in the region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté (France), our interdisciplinary group of researchers has therefore set out to conceptualise the "territorial revitalisation" with an open perspective that is expected to be further developed through other experiences. This paper thus initiates a collective intelligence approach aiming at the co-construction of an evolving concept, based on studied and/or supported revitalisation experiences, with other researchers and actors taking part in such processes. Based on a synthesis of the knowledge, resulting from a cognitive analysis of the discourse on a specially prepared corpus, we set out the interdisciplinary approach that made it possible to articulate differentiated but complementary theoretical frameworks via a series of keys for reading the territory as a complex system. Our conceptualization of territorial revitalization is based on five principles, introduced by the case study on the deployment of the Techn'hom project in Belfort, from the 2000s to the present day. This example calls for further case studies to refine and make the concept operational.

This paper presents the development of the methodology used to create an Urban Climatic Analytical Map (UC-AnMap) of Salvador, Brazil, based on its Land Use Patterns Map (MPO). Located in the Northeast Region of Brazil, Salvador is currently the fourth most populous city in the country, with nearly three million people. First, the MPO was used as a layer; then, an updated version of the MPO was used as a fundamental layer to derive thematic maps based on the distinct urban morphologies found in the city. MPOs are suggested here as a starting methodological procedure, a facilitative tool for the construction of an Urban Climatic Map. MPOs allow the variety of urban land use patterns to be captured and are based on universally available information, such as Google Earth images and tools, regardless of the existence of sophisticated and costly databases, which are not usually accessible in cities in developing countries. MPOs involve identifying and delimiting visually homogeneous land use areas in polygons at an adequate scale of 1:10,000. Similar areas are grouped under the same patterns, regardless of their urban functions, creating a classification system that characterizes different existing patterns by their distinct urban attributes. Salvador’s social and economic inequalities have produced ongoing unequal urban patterns, and institutional and structural factors have contributed to the absence of up-to-date digital urban databases. Given the local context, the Salvador UC-AnMap could not have been made without developing an MPO.

This article examines the use of a research method coming from Visual studies (photo elicitation interview) in a particular geographical field research (everyday landscapes discussed in terms of resident experience). The paper argues that photo elicitation interview is an appropriate technique to produce a different kind of information by driving informants in a thinking process about their relationship with their everyday landscapes. First of all, methodological insights and practical considerations about using photographs in interviews are presented and discussed. Whereafter, the paper shows, based on concrete examples, how this technique is able to promote more direct and stronger involvement of the informants in the research process and also provide access to a quantitatively and qualitatively different information to that obtained in conventional interviews.

This paper focuses on the management of scarce water resources in two metropolises of the arid West of the United States facing intensifying droughts and increased water stress. Located in the Sonoran Desert and built on the model of the oasis city, Phoenix and Tucson are great examples of the socio-ecological challenges linked to extreme water scarcity. This study considers these two cities as laboratories for urban adaptation to climate change and explores competing modalities of adaptation to water scarcity. Since the system of large hydraulic infrastructures underpinning urban growth is increasingly called into question, we observe and analyze the power relations between stakeholders involved in water resource management. Using an urban political ecology framework, this contribution shows that adaptation strategies are implemented by dominant actors in order to maintain the growth trajectory of particularly attractive cities. Yet, it also highlights the role that citizen empowerment plays in the emergence of potential environmental alternatives. The results show that environmental alternatives play an important role in regulating resource control strategies and in calling for socio-environmental transformations in the urban metabolism.

Multicriteria Spatial Decision Support System (MC-SDSS) is one of the most common tools for solving the spatial decision problems. Using the MC-SDSS in the Web 2.0 environment enhances the collaborative decision making by providing a flexible problem-solving framework, where the relevant GIS-based multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) tools and information are provided for active participation/collaboration. However, the Web 2.0-based collaborative GIS-MCDA knowledge including the user generated content (preferences/opinions) and the GIS-MCDA elements are not machine-understandable. Thus, such knowledge cannot be interpreted, processed, searched, shared, and reused by the Web-based software agents and applications. Additionally, the GIS-MCDA models are often constructed based on the knowledge and understanding that arises out of the subjective viewpoints and they lack a shared and common reference for collaboration, thus making it hard for participants to collaboratively solve the decision problem. To address these problems, this paper proposes the Web 3.0-based collaborative MC-SDSS, which integrates the Web 2.0 (a Web of people) community methods and the Semantic Web (a Web of meaning) technologies. The collaborative/participatory GIS-MCDA knowledge is semantically modeled in an ontological framework as a backbone of the Semantic Web. The ontology is needed to express the collaborative GIS-MCDA knowledge in a shared, unified, structured, meaningful, and machine-interpretable form, ready for software agents and people to interpret, process, communicate, share, and reuse it. The paper demonstrates an implementation of the proposed Web 3.0-based MC-SDSS for solving the parking site selection problem in Tehran, Iran.

Created in a multidisciplinary research program, the IDURAMAZ system of indicators focuses on the territorial impacts of different projects of sustainable development implemented in Amazonian rural areas during the last twenty years. Originally constructed to be subdivided in 4 synthetic indexes, 14 indicators and 44 sub-indicators related to socioeconomic, environmental, institutional and generational questions, we wanted to reduce the number of its components and its architecture in order to obtain a dashboard of more relevant indicators. During the realization of the key indicators selection, we focused on two main goals. First, making our methodology more intelligible to the targeted public by conserving the most explicit indicators and limiting the use of composed ones (those that are constructed with different variables). Second, facilitating the research on the determinants of sustainability, which means the most important criteria for the success or the failure of the projects realized in its name. This paper exposes the principles that have piloted the selection of the key indicators, the results obtained as to the key factors of sustainability and some reflections about the themes to be added. Behind the reflections on the DURAMAZ project and its indicators system, this paper has a more general range on the way to select a core set of indicators to approach the question of sustainability.

Many studies agree on the positive influence of green spaces on the quality of life of city dwellers. While there is a growing awareness of the diversity of uses of green spaces in relation to the well-being they provide, the role of the green environment itself has so far attracted little attention. This paper therefore aims at a better understanding of the links between the green environment (the structures of space), the respondents' feelings (the cognitive structures) and the values associated with this environment (the social structures). It explores suitable methods for collecting socio-cognitive representations of the vegetal space. Our approach consists in transforming city dwellers into "reflexive inhabitants", by proposing to them to stroll along an urban route, take photographs and comment on them using a digital tool (by delivering their feelings, the values attributed, etc.). Several types of routes are offered (central vs. peripheral districts, etc.) in order to test different degrees of integration of the planted space into the landscape. We formulate the hypothesis that the following elements influence positively the feelings: the importance of the views on the vegetation (perspectives...), the "small vegetation" (flowerpot...), the good knowledge of the places visited, the habit of a proximity to nature via one's place of residence, one's geographical origins or the practice of gardening... Conversely, negative feelings are more related to an environment that clashes with the vegetation (noise, waste, etc.) than to specific vegetation. And finally, the large size of the planted areas does not imply that they are seen or appreciated. This article does not (yet) provide analytical results, but proposes a survey protocol for collecting individual or collective representations of the planted space in urban environments.