Measuring one century of railway accessibility and population change in France. A historical GIS approach
Résumé
This article presents an innovative study of the relationship between railway accessibility and population change in France from 1860 to 1930. Using a large, geo-historical database and spatial analysis, it identifies key advantages of historical GIS in transport history as well as its limitations. It illustrates the challenges of creating reliable data on population change for the 36,000 communes of France over eight decades and integrating them with the main and local lines of the evolving French railways system. In so doing, it reexamines the structuring effect of railway expansion over the long period in which rail transport was the predominant means of moving goods and passengers over long distances. The increasing speed of rapid transport- -part of the “speed revolution” according to Studeny (1995) -- reshaped territorial spaces and spatial relationships, in effect, shrinking the space-time connectivity of communities with accessible rail service, and augmenting that of communities not well so served. The “conquest of space” by railways was thus not homogeneous, even, or continuous, but fractured, uneven, and discontinuous.
Domaines
Géographie
Origine : Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s)