Jean Gottmann's theoretical writings: The art of reinventing geography

Abstract

The author is a researcher at the University of Namur in Belgium. He works on the regional aspects of transport and mobility, especially in the Walloon region. He devoted his Ph. D thesis to the epistemological issue of the discontinuities in geographical space (1992). That led him to examine and comment on Jean Gottmann's conception of geographical space and Gilles Ritchoťs structural theory on the forms of human settlement. Epistemology of geography remains one of his interests in parallel with empirical studies on mobility and on the dynamics of human settlements. Since 1996, he has collaborated with François Moriconi-Ebrard on the "Terrae Statisticae" project, which archives and analyzes historical demographic data at the lowest territorial level, all around the world.