Beatriz Fernandez continues the Spring 2025 seminar series.
Beatriz Fernandez, associate professor at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) visits us to deliver two lectures as part of our Spring 2025 series. Both lectures will be held in English.
Date: Both presentations will take place on the seventh of April (2025.04.07)
Location: ELTE BTK, Múzeum krt. 6-8, 247.
Presentation abstracts:
10:00
Transfers and exchanges: the role of Léon Jaussely from a transnational perspective
Léon Jaussely (1875–1932) was considered by his contemporaries as a forerunner and one of the most outstanding French planners of his time. He had a remarkable professional career in France and took part in several important international planning competitions. Jaussely’s work, in many respects, is central to better comprehend both the evolution of urban planning and planner’s exchanges at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, his significant role can only be fully understood from a transnational perspective.
This paper aims, first, to analyze Jaussely’s distinctive approach to cities and urban planning. Secondly, it intends to place his ideas within the transnational debate and examine his connections with British, American, and German planning. His role as a passeur culturel in the diffusion and adaptation of planning international principles in France is then discussed, showing how this study can contribute greatly to the research on cross-national exchanges and the transnational circulation of planning models at the beginning of the twentieth century. Finally, insights on Jaussely and the French town planning movement can provide a deeperunderstanding about historical alternatives to modernist architecture, and therefore highlight continuities between nineteenth and twentieth century practices.
14:00
Shrinking and aging central cities in Western Europe: the cases of Paris and Madrid.
In political and media discourse, large metropolitan areas are usually associated with a young and dynamic population. Moreover, a large body of literature highlights the agglomeration and clustering effects of large city regions, particularly for young and well-educated adults (Glaeser, 2011). Research shows that the cores of North American large metropolitan areas have experienced “youthification” in recent decades (Moos et al, 2019). In North America, “young adult geographies are highly centralized, particularly in metropolitan regions with gentrified, amenity-rich downtowns successful in the knowledge economy” (Ibid: 224). In Japan, “shrinking areas are unevenly distributed. From a national perspective, smaller cities in more remote regions; and from a regional perspective, suburban areas, are losing the most population” (Hattori, 2017). These patterns contrast with Western European core cities, such as Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Rome or Lisbon, which are facing demographic shrinkage and where large proportions of older adults of 65 years and above coexist with younger adults (Fernandez, 2024). These population shifts question the urban policies and planning implemented in Western European central cities and calls for a multifaceted idea of inclusion which considers the particular needs of the increasing share of older adults.
Since the turn of the millennium, Paris and Madrid have featured similar demographic geographies. Both core cities (Madrid and Paris intramuros) have experienced population loss whereas their metropolitan areas grew. Both central cities are aging at a faster pace than their surroundings. In 2019, the share of older adults of 65 years and above in the city of Madrid and several Paris districts, was higher than the national average (20%). We posit that population growth and high concentrations of younger adults in the periphery may have hidden the shrinking and aging dynamics of the core cities as well as the specific planning challenges involved.
This research provides an in-depth examination of the socio-demographic shifts in Paris and Madrid over the last two decades to determine the intensity and geography of socio-demographic change in the two core cities, the emergent challenges resulting from population shrinkage and aging, and the effectiveness of planning responses. First, statistical and spatial analysis is used to determine socio-spatial dynamics. Multivariate analysis allows us to better understand the extent to which the geographies of age, class and shrinkage overlap or differ. Second, through the analysis of urban policies promoting the inclusion of older adults in Madrid and Paris, we question the extent to which planning considers (or underestimates) population aging.
