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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.

The expansion of casino concessions and subsequent growth of employment and gross domestic product (GDP) per Capita in Macau after the 1999 handover from Portugal created an illusion of prosperity in a post-colonial territory of less than 30 sq. km. A Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), it is the only place in China where adults can legally gamble in casinos. This paper, using interviews with local residents, argues that the imagined category of “World Centre of Tourism and Leisure” coined by local authorities’ masks an illicit occult economy. The paper argues that the miraculous swiftness of GDP per capital, employment and budget surplus growth, was a result of a new post-colonial elite looking backwards into its colonial past. The paper argues that while the “World Centre of Tourism and Leisure” is a political construct and key hegemonic project to keep citizens in a hyper-real world of simulacra and control, it is at the cost of everyday gossip, caution, self-censorship and demoralization.

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.

Networks provide a powerful lens to understand the complex relations that are transforming social, economic and political life. Through a discussion of the various streams of network research in tourism, this paper argues that policy matters run across and throughout these strands. Rather than arguing for increased interest in tourism policy network research as a separate subfield, the paper argues for deeper theoretical engagement with the policy dimensions in tourism network research. Researchers adopting a network ontology could gain considerable insights and open up new lines of inquiry into what is really going on if they engage with, unpack and critique policy and political science theories, tools, frameworks and concepts.

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.

As intercity competition increases, cities search for distinctive meanings and create identifiable symbols for places to increase their attractiveness. These symbols change the urban landscape and shift the characteristics of ordinary neighborhoods. This paper is a case study of a neighborhood called Yulin in Chengdu in southwest China. Developed in the 1980s, Yulin was an ordinary neighborhood representing Chengdu’s work unit housing in the 1980s and 90s. Although its name is well known by locals, Yulin was suddenly exposed to the wider public of the country due to a folk song. In 2017, a folk musician, Zhao Lei, performed his song, Chengdu, on Hunan TV. Using guitar, piano, and children’s voices, the song depicts a romantic story on the street of Yulin and reinforces the imaginaries of Chengdu as a leisure city. Names and addresses in the lyrics became well-known overnight. From then on, tourism-induced investments have driven significant changes in Yulin. This study focuses on the built environment of Yulin and shows the power of folk music to shift people, buildings, and money. It discusses how a contemporary folk song resonates with the imaginaries of Chengdu as “the city of leisure” and how Yulin has been changed due to musical imaginaries. In addition, it aims to enrich the discourse of city branding and placemaking to raise awareness of tourism-induced changes in ordinary neighborhoods, in China and beyond.

The various films of the two successful spy franchises, James Bond and Mission: Impossible, are distinguished not only by their lead actors (heroes and antagonists), but also by their geographical settings. Each new film must explore new destinations, and the audience expects a change of scenery. This change of scenery, far from depending solely on the filming locations, is in fact literally skilfully orchestrated. This paper aims to show how the music composed for these movies contributes to the creation of topoi by promoting exoticism and orientalism, notably through the use of local instruments and musical motifs and through the representation, on screen, of traditional musical and artistic practices (singing, dancing, etc.). We analyze the music that accompanies the hero's travels to emblematic “exotic” places, by studying the tourist imaginaries that they convey, help to reinforce or reconfigure.

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 is based on the following field research conducted in 2010: (i) a tourist accommodation experience in Chora, capital of the Greek island of Skyros, in a house that in all likelihood was never originally intended for tourists; and (ii) a visit of the Estonian city of Paldiski, an important military port under Soviet rule. These two cases, a priori very different, generated intense feelings of uneasiness similar to both guilt and voyeurism in the two groups of tourists involved, which included the author of this paper. For both of these experiences, the tourists we were had the impression of “breaking and entering”, of unlawfully accessing areas that were not intended for us and which should have remained well off the standard tourist trails. And yet, in both cases we experienced something of this fantasy of tourism authenticity: entering totally uncharted territory, without mediator or staging, with a view to understanding what life there was really like and discovering this “behind-the-scenes” that is supposed to systematically guarantee “enchantment” with tourists. In this paper, we shall attempt to understand why the enchantment gave way to dysphoria in both of these cases, which we consider to have been “borderline”.

This paper is based on the following field research conducted in 2010: (i) a tourist accommodation experience in Chora, capital of the Greek island of Skyros, in a house that in all likelihood was never originally intended for tourists; and (ii) a visit of the Estonian city of Paldiski, an important military port under Soviet rule. These two cases, a priori very different, generated intense feelings of uneasiness similar to both guilt and voyeurism in the two groups of tourists involved, which included the author of this paper. For both of these experiences, the tourists we were had the impression of “breaking and entering”, of unlawfully accessing areas that were not intended for us and which should have remained well off the standard tourist trails. And yet, in both cases we experienced something of this fantasy of tourism authenticity: entering totally uncharted territory, without mediator or staging, with a view to understanding what life there was really like and discovering this “behind-the-scenes” that is supposed to systematically guarantee “enchantment” with tourists. In this paper, we shall attempt to understand why the enchantment gave way to dysphoria in both of these cases, which we consider to have been “borderline”.

In a highly globalised, competitive world, urban strategies often highlight festivals and events as activities which can attract tourists and investors, extend the tourism season and boost the economy. Event tourism as a term is now well established in the tourism lexicon, however, it is usually employed in quite a limited way that offers only partial insights into a complex phenomenon. To redress this deficit, this paper examines the case of Dublin, where for the last twenty-five years, policy-makers have been using festivals and events to boost the city’s international standing. The aim is to investigate whether policy-makers can strategically use events to further tourism goals while simultaneously fostering socio-cultural development more broadly. Methodologically, the study reported undertakes a detailed, critical analysis of public policy documents that relate festivals and events to tourism. It finds a range of policy perspectives at play but overall, there is a clear tendency for festivals and events to be framed through an urban entrepreneurial lens that under-appreciates social and cultural issues. In contrast, a second set of findings reported from primary research undertaken at one of the main tourism–oriented festivals in the city show how festival experiences can generate enjoyment, sociability, pride, inclusion and belonging for both tourists and other city users alike, while simultaneously producing economic returns. Together, the findings of the policy analysis and the empirical case point to the need to re-think how events and tourism intersect to achieve optimal outcomes, especially in these post pandemic times when cities the world over are searching for more sustainable tourism futures. The study recommends that event tourism policy-making adopt broader, more holistic terms of reference and suggests that lessons from practice could be employed to inform better policies.

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.

The imaginary world of “Old England” has attracted tourists and incomers to the English countryside since the 19th century. This has had a great impact on the local community. This paper is a case study of a country town in the Cotswolds. It describes the local community and their reactions to tourism and migration, and highlights the prominent role played by incomers in maintaining the imaginary world which drew them to the town. This paper also looks at how local people have worked to uphold the legacy of their ancestors.

L’immagine idealizzata della “Vecchia Inghilterra” ha attratto turisti e immigrati nella campagna inglese sin dal XIX secolo. Questo fenomeno ha avuto un grande impatto sulla comunità locale. Il presente paper illustra un caso di studio riguardante una cittadina di campagna situata nei Cotswolds e descrive le comunità locali e la loro reazione di fronte ai fenomeni turistici e migratori, oltre ad evidenziare il ruolo fondamentale svolto dagli immigrati nel mantenere intatta l’immagine del luogo che li ha attratti sul territorio. Il paper analizza anche il lavoro svolto dalla comunità locale per preservare l’eredità dei propri antenati.

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 paper will show how community tourism projects in protected areas can often fail due to both a lack of communication between the different actors and the insufficient integration of the relevant socio-anthropological issues. In the same way as a World Heritage site, the case of Loango National Park in Gabon clearly demonstrates that the original objectives of involvement by and empowerment of the local population are still far from being met. This paper presents an overview of a project initiated by the European Union in 2003, analyses the reasons behind the failure of this project, and suggests strategies to achieve greater consensus among conservation and tourism actors and local populations within the framework of community tourism projects in protected areas.

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.

The obsolescence of some tourism sites has been researched and modelled by the geographers R.W. Butler and M. Chadefaud who applied the concept of a product’s life cycle. This approach to the evolution of destinations has been adapted to Lourdes, a major religious tourism destination. By disrupting the system in Lourdes, the COVID-19 crisis could accelerate the transformation of the destination and facilitate the transition. From a diachronic and synchronic viewpoint, this paper gives a wider perspective to the current crisis. Although the Sanctuary is introducing some innovative concepts, those innovations fall more within a logic of “adaptation-resilience” than a transformation process. These initiatives are not universally welcomed by local tourism professionals, who find it difficult to consider a new approach to the destination. So far, the crisis seems to have exacerbated tensions among the tourism stakeholders in Lourdes rather than federating their energies around a common project of transition towards a more sustainable tourism model.