Urban dynamics of some French cities

Denise Pumain (1) , Thérèse Saint-Julien (1) , Lena Sanders (1)

1 GC (UMR_8504) - Géographie-cités

Empirical studies of the long-term evolution of the French urban network have showed some regularities which could be interpreted in the framework proposed by the Brussels’ school, based on the concepts of ‘dissipative structures’ : evolution according to deterministic trajectories and bifurcations, fluctuations and auto-organization. This empirical research shows the interest of a dynamic spatial model sich as the one presented in this paper. The model brings together many well-known empirical regularities and well established theoretical proposals such as logistic growth, economic base theory, distance decay functions, urban ecology and actors’ behaviour in an urban context. A first application of this model concerns the evolution of the French agglomeration of Rouen since 1954. The model will be applied to a few French cities in order to estimate the generality of the mechanisms of evolution which are included in the equations. The application shows that there are still some problems, both practical and theoretical, which must be solved before this kind of models will be truly be operational. Its principal interest at the moment is theoretical and pedagogical.

Mots clés: Systems; geography; urban affairs; simulation; differential equations

Domaines: Géographie; Méthodes et statistiques

Denise Pumain, Thérèse Saint-Julien, Lena Sanders. Urban dynamics of some French cities. European Journal of Operational Research, 1986, 25, pp.3-10. ⟨hal-01524103⟩