Urban history & territorial planning
10.00 Doing urban history with Marcel Roncayolo. Around Sur les pas d'un géographe singulier (Parenthèses, 2023)
To coincide with the publication of a book in his honour, this lecture will look back at the intellectual career of geographer Marcel Roncayolo (1926-2018) in the field of urban studies, which he helped to develop in France. His multidisciplinary approach was initially inspired by the social and economic history of the Annales movement. He then entered into dialogue with specialists in urban history (Bergeron, Perrot, Garden, Lepetit). Later in his career, Roncayolo developed an urban history similar to the historical and 'retrospective' geography applied to the rural landscape by Roger Dion. This led him to study the temporality of the city in an original way, in an approach distinct from that of Braudel. We will also look at Roncayolo's borrowings from other social sciences, such as Durkheimian sociology and the Chicago School.
14.00 Some contemporary changes in territorial planning
In France, spatial planning was institutionalised in the aftermath of the Second World War in accordance with the principles inherited from the French Revolution: universality, equality, balance and centralisation. It was therefore a matter of influencing locations, distributing subsidies and defining public policies with the requirement that they be applied uniformly throughout the territory. Since decentralisation in the 1980s, Europeanisation and the development of neo-liberalism and New Public Management, spatial planning has undergone a profound transformation, accepting the principle of differentiation. Territorial public action also includes the method of local experimentation, the dissemination of 'good practice' and citizen participation. The conference will analyse these new planning methods and their departure from the universalism and centralisation of French-style government.
Time: 29 April 2024
Venue: ELTE Faculty of Humanities, main building, 2th floor, 247.