Contenu du sommaire

Transport nodes and national borders. The invention of the Basel metropolis A major cross-road city in Europe, Basel presents a surprising way of organizing its transport hubs. To further its development, the city has been forced to reconcile several geographical constraints : the territorial exiguity along the narrow Rhine valley, and the double border line with France and Germany. Given that its transport function constitutes a permanent risk for disruption, Basel has made it a priority to invest in the urban planning of its transport networks. Basel has thus been engaged in an tireless construction work of the city and its transport networks, whose effectiveness is an indisputable gauge for success. Such articulation condenses in singular devices, which one can consequently describe as “border nodes”. They present themselves as hybrid devices, both technical and legal, nodes of circulation, where the management of international traffic flows is inseparable from their insertion in the central urban space.

Flood hazard management in the Val-de-Marne and the concept of territory : can one exist without the other ? Territory is a useful concept in hazard studies. Not only does it enable us to focus on the physical aspects of hazard, but also on its social and political aspects. If we look at French state risk policy since 1995, we can observe that specific hazard areas were created, but without taking into account the economical, social and environmental issues of floodplains. This explains why local stakeholders are little involved in flood management and do not take part into the flood risk planning processes. However, the Val-de-Marne case puts into relief the fact that planning projects can go along with the development needs of the communes while taking into account flood hazards. The main issue is to think about a relevant flood hazard management and governance, involving all the aspects of risks, that is, the physical characteristics of flood, the population's perception of the river's landscape, the development projects of the local stakeholders, the different local political issues... The keyword is scale : how can we link together the national aims at reducing people's vulnerability to flood risk, wherever one lives in France, and the local wish to increase the attractiveness of the territory for the inhabitants ? Our main purpose is to discuss the different modes of regulation and to define a global risk management which integrates the interests of all the stakeholders who act at various scales.

Geography and Globalization. French Geographers facing the 1930's Crisis To the contrary of what is generally thought about French geography during the 1920s and 1930s, that is, a triumphant geography set in its regional focus, this paper tries to present a different perspective. With the World economic crisis set in motion, the 1930s were a time when human geographers not only discovered some new objects, but also modified their patterns of explanation. The world as a new scale became indeed for a lot of geographers an essential part of their analysis. This quite paradoxical emergence of globalization in the geographic discourse allows us to reread the French geography's history in its classical age. That implies to emphasize the role of the 1930s critical context in the opening up of geography to globalization.

Metaphors and models in urban geography : Continuum from the Chicago School to the L. A. School This paper sets out to review the Park and Burgess urban ecology approach from the standpoint of researchers belonging to the Los Angeles school. As this critique claims, a postmodern approach to urban geography must be used instead of the ecological model and the Burgess diagram and replace them with what they call keno capitalism. Models and metaphors associated to urban geography are revisited and the many contributions of the Chicago school and its impact on this particular field of study are examined. The discussion centres on models of urban growth and of location and on interactionist approaches that recognise the importance of social actors. Through this discussion, we are able to show that the Los Angeles school's proposition does not break with Chicago, but is in continuity with it.