La ville des géographes français de l'époque moderne, XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles

Abstract

French Geographers' View of the City in the Modern Period, 17th - 18th Century This article attempts to reconstruct the sources of the way geographers used to talk about cities. The importance of Antiquity, of Ptolomaic science and the : major preoccupation with the exact : location of places using astronomical calculations led to a parallel view of stellar and urban systems, and gave rise . to a flattering discourse reproduced in : comparisons borrowed from society. The cities, listed and observed one after another by the same scholars, were poor candidates for such systématisation, hence the early crisis of definitions that was accelerated during the revolutionary period. The number of human beings - a criterion of replacement - also covered other hidden meanings. It did. however, enable a profound change in the elements entering into the definition, which shifted from the very concrete (buildings, dwellings, intra-muros areas) to the immaterial (functions, patterns, environments).