Contenu du sommaire : La ville, entre urbanité et ruralité

The creation of the liberty of La Rochelle at the end of the Middle Age Already at the moment of its incorporation in the XIIth century, the new town and commune of La Rochelle took on a daring challenge. The bulk of its finances, consigned to the wine market, were dependent on the success of international maritime trade. Thus, from early on the bourgeois class was conscious of the fact that their wealth and autonomy resided in their capacity to control both wine production and distribution, as well as the potential competition from outlying ports and villages. In order to face this challenge, during the XIIIth and XIVth centuries aldermen and magistrates progressively devised an overall policy in accordance with which the semi-urban areas of the city were to play a central and decisive role. By distinguishing between the various forms of ascendancy exerted by La Rochelle in the way of property ownership and taxation, or economic and military influence, the present study attempts to examine the modes of implementation of this policy and, through them, the very nature of the suburban areas of La Rochelle.

The parisian quarries between town and country At the Gallo-Roman period, the first parisian quarries of limestone for building were just outside of the town. Then, they extanded outside in the countryside because architects needed more materials for building. So the oldest quarries were progressively integrated to the city. At the Modern period, quarrymen extracted stones both in Paris and outside. Consequently, they made a real link between these two worlds, country and city and between the quarry and the monument.

Rural structures confronted with town planning constraints The case of Brive-la-Gaillarde (Corrèze) The town of Brive-la-Gaillarde,sous-préfecture of the Corrèze in the Limousin region, experienced a remarkable growth of population in the 19th and 20th centuries which made it the second largest regional town after Limoges. The transformation of the town, which began in the 18th with the demolition of its medieval walls, has always been based on the regulations laid down by successive town planning Acts. Between 1811 and 1931 six ground-layout plans remodelled the old city centre and provided a blueprint for suburban housing on former agricultural land. This article describes two cases in which the zealous application of regulations has been antagonistic to an old-established way of life and of living. The first concerns the very difficult area formerly inside the medieval walls; the second describes how houses with an outside staircase, still visible in the surrounding countryside, have progressively disappeared.

Eighteenth Century Besançon. Landscapes and architectures of a town with the scent of countryside Up to the 18th century Besançon was a large village. The period of the Enlightenment expanded its urban prerogatives, which in turn led to a large increase of population, and one might think that all rural features would consequently have disappeared from the city centre. However this did not happen. Wine-growing still remained the main preoccupation of the townspeople, as in the Middle Ages, and vegetable gardens, orchards and farm animals such as cows, pigs or poultry could be found in mansions. This article will attempt to construct an archeology of urban «rurality » by setting old plans and historical descriptions side by side with present-day reality.

A pasture near Le Mans under the Second Empire The aim of this article is to carry out an analysis of the fringes of a provincial town on a local scale under the Second Empire. To do so, about ten hectares which are located by the region of Le Mans, were chosen as framework because of the available private writings (source Ledru-Rollin) and the range of the questions that could be raised. Of course, the exploitation of the rural qualities of space, the responds to urban transformations and the expropriations due to the passing by of the railroad lines are here intertwined. This diversity of the themes enables us to grasp the uncertainty zone better, in which the protagonists are (owners and managers), and these latter are confronted with the continuous moving of space. This study leads us to raise the question concerning the bringing up of the private archives to the urban history, especially the studies on a small scale.

The unplanned city? The suburb of Prosperidad in Madrid (1860-1940) The category of the spontaneous city, as opposed to the planned city, is commonly used in urban analysis. This paper wants to criticise it through the case of Prosperidad in Madrid. This suburb appeared in a context where the opposition between two types of urbanisation seemed particularly radical, since it was the direct and unwanted consequence of a city extension project adopted in 1860. The analysis of the suburb's urban forms, through the confrontation of general observations and case studies, brings to light, à plot level, a large homogeneity of the building process and, at suburb level, certain elements of order, some of them due to members of the urban elite. This last observation leads to reconsider the claimed rejection of unplanned urbanisation – which actually responds to the demand of lower-class housing – by the municipal authorities.

The countryside within reach of the garden: the contribution of XIXth century horticultural societies In the course of the XIXth century, it became necessary for people living in or around towns to have a garden. The establishment of new living districts on the outskirts of towns and the development of holiday and resort urbanism brought about new approaches to gardening in town. This trend was encouraged and accompanied by the emergence of a large number of horticultural societies, national, regional or simply local, which federated amateur and professional gardeners, the very people who were about to structure some of the landscape, including that around Paris. This new art of gardening also gradually became better known through a network of new horticultural periodicals. This source has hitherto been somewhat underexploited and deserves to be exhaustively investigated.

The building of the town-country. From utopia to realities Relations between city and countryside are social and spatial constructions. They depend on historical patterns and can change according to culturals features of societies. Two types of agriculture can be noted around urban areas. One is only related with agricultural stuffs global market, the other is aware of city dwellers needs, such as rural goods and services or open spaces.