Article
French
ID: <
10670/1.ovos6r>
Abstract
`titrebThe City, an Object, or a Problem' Urban geography in France (1890-1960) `/titreb Urban geography is a sub-branch of geography that is much more highly developed and more advanced than is usually acknowledged. Before the period that appears to have been foundational, the time of the manuals of the fifties and the expansion of specialised research in human geography, we can make out several moments when French geographers showed a lively interest in cities: the period from the end of the nineteenth century to the 1910's, marked by a number of projects that were limited, but eclectic, then the twenties, in which urban geography was becoming visibly established everywhere, notably at the international level. Although the monograph of the city and the organicistic analogy were dominant, this genre was only one aspect of the research undertaken. The author retraces a contradictory general development, which is responsible in part for the weak representation of this branch today: on the one hand the reinforcement over half a century of a strictly disciplinary project, but within a certain explosion of the implicit problematics, and lacking in a real work of conceptual construction, and on the other, an extreme sensitivity to the current relevance of the city, which, we might add, does not coincide with a rhythm of urbanisation, but is modeled on the urban ?problem? or ?question?.