Marie-Claire Robic

Beaujeu-Garnier, J.

A brilliant figure in a mans world, Jacqueline Beaujeu-Garnier (1917–95) was one of the most influential women of her generation in geography, in France and internationally, in the second half of the twentieth century, and she also earned recognition in the areas of spatial development and planning. Her systematic purpose in promoting the application of geography to regional and urban planning is a feature of her entire career. She was a pioneer in population geography and urban geography. She analyzed the challenges of the post-war period on worldwide scale, and also on the various scales of geographical space. She was a specialist in the problems facing large metropolises, she remained very open to methodological and thematic innovation, and she explored numerous subareas of human geography (commercial activities, health, etc.). Her itinerary and the positions she adopted show a pragmatic approach, removed from quarrels among schools of thought and epistemological issues.

A hundred years before Christaller... A central place theory

This paper is a brief introduction to a text so far unknown, which was one of the first to formulate a central place theory. It was published in 1841 by a Frenchman, J. Reynaud.