Josef W. Konvitz

The nation-state, Paris and cartography in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France

Abstract Developments in French cartography in the eighteenth century produced an image of the country which was more integrated and centralized than was the reality at the time. These innovations in map-making contributed to efforts to re-order the nations political structure during the Revolution. The upheavals at that time affected the status of Paris as the urban focus of the nation state. Just as cartography had been related to efforts to eliminate spatial and institutional frictions in the country as a whole, it was also used to create a more unified spatial order within Paris itself. French cartography was thus intimately bound up with the political evolution of France from the eighteenth century, and in particular with the changing structure of the French urban system.

The Crises of Atlantic Port Cities 1880 to 1920

The industrialization of shipping, a process which accelerated rapidly between the 1870s and 1910s, induced and accompanied dramatic changes in European and American port cities. Never before or since have so few cities on both sides of the Atlantic concentrated such a large proportion of the worlds commerce. Thanks to the expansion of shipping, the great port cities of the Atlantic world acquired a significant manufacturing sector, including shipbuilding, and met the needs of their growing population for food and energy supplies. The reduction of freight rates and the expansion of shipping capacity and services brought considerable benefits to the urban economy. But the growth of shipping was also a factor in waves of migration, environmental and public health problems, traffic congestion, substandard housing, strikes, and conflict over strategies for development.

The national map survey in eighteenth-century France

Abstract Published national map surveys began in France. Colbert launched a geodetic survey around 1680 that was interrupted several times before its completion in 1744. A second survey was launched in 1747–1750 and completed on the eve of the Revolution. These surveys were funded by private and public sources. Although the role of the government was critical to their success, these surveys did not institutionalize map surveys and their publication as a routine administrative function. Cartography became established in the French bureaucracy in terms of specialized map forms: hydrographic maps (which were published) by the Navy, and topographic maps (which were not published) by the Army. Nevertheless, when other nations began to establish national map surveys of their own, they were inspired by the French model. They did not try to replicate the exact bureaucratic or institutional framework of the surveys, but tried instead to emulate and improve upon their scientific and graphic methods and results. The most lasting impact of French eighteenth-century national map surveys was the proof they gave, by example, that such a vast enterprise could be undertaken and concluded successfully.

The evolution of American urban technology

This paper provides a general outline for understanding the origins and development of technological systems in their urban settings during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The paper is divided into three parts: 1790-1880; 1880-1920; and 1920 to the present. During the period 1790-1880, the emphasis is on the walking or pedestrian city; for the four decades between 1880 and 1920, the focus is on the networked or wired, piped, and tracked city; and for the period since 1920, it looks at the technologies of the automobile-oriented decentralized metropolis. The first period can be viewed as a period of foundations; the second as one of construction of the core infrastructure throughout an extended metropolitan area with a concomitant decline of the central city.

Unbuilding Cities: Obduracy in Urban Sociotechnical Change (review)

nical details. For this reason, what might have been a study of interest only to devotees of prefabrication, or to architects disenchanted with their profession, becomes in effect a meditation on the larger connections among authorship, design, and mass production. Davies undersells this dimension to his argument, but it is clearly there. It is both a strength and a limitation of the book that it may leave readers wishing for more. Compact, well-illustrated, and well-written, The Prefabricated Home is very accessible, but the referencing is limited and some arguments cry out for development. Davies does not always cite his sources; he does not tell us where to go for more information on the modern Swedish building system, some intriguing aspects of which were unfamiliar to me and are important for his argument. His endnotes include most basic references, but omit others that an interested reader might wish to pursue. For example, neither of the two books on Lustron—one is admittedly very recent—is cited. The discussion of architect as author is tantalizingly brief and neglects the analogy of occupant as reader. More substantially, it would have been interesting to hear more about Davies’s views of conventional site production. He acknowledges that balloon framing, which originated as a site-based method and that in modified form (platform framing) still dominates house building in North America, is “brilliant” (p. 111) in its practical efficiency. He notes its integration with the use of pattern books, recently web-based, and its later use for many types of prefabrication, including mobile homes. But the scope of this book prevents him from connecting these insights into a sustained analysis of the design and technology of site production. We need such a book, and, on the present evidence, no writer is better equipped to produce it.

Geography and Enlightenment@@@Geography Unbound: French Geographic Science from Cassini to Humboldt

Part 1 Geographys crisis: the nature of 18th-century geography - cartographic and textual description geographys loss of direction and status. Part 2 Reaction and continuity: universal description the powerful mapping metaphor handmaiden to power. Part 3 Innovation on the margins: explaining the social realm innovation in natural geography tough-minded historical geography.