Member

Paul Gourdon is a PhD candidate at the UMR Géographie-cités, under the supervision of Professor Anne Bretagnolle.

His work examines urban policy mobilities and territorial cooperation in Europe and questions the spatiality of political knowledge about urban governance.

2021

Territorial cooperation and Transnational Municipal Networks in Europe: the convergence of urban governance through urban policy mobilities.

Abstract

This thesis investigates the political relations between European cities from 2000 to 2020. Through the construction of two large-scale databases, we empirically analyze the systems of relations forged by the EU cooperation projects and by transnational municipal networks. Using spatial analysis, network analysis and text mining, this thesis explores the space of the European cooperation, describes the networks of affiliation and analyzes the urban models that circulate through these channels. The goal is to rethink and conceptualize the “transnational” as a process through which local policies are selected, benchmarked and turned into “best practices”. Findings highlight the enforcement and strengthening of standardized public action policies on a European scale.

Cooperation between cities unfolds over large regional areas and displays the level of internationalisation correlated with the size and the administrative status of cities. Whilst smaller cities play a lesser role, their participation can prove decisive for gaining visibility and voicing collective aims. Local policies, mediated through these networks, contribute to the circulation of the urban power discourses, as expressed through the language of neoliberalism. Yet, the framing of the “small town” category reveals a more complex picture in which the desire to enter inter-urban competition coexists with long-term ecological and social strategies. This challenges the metropolitan trope of the states and the EU, and confronts the failures of the uneven development produced by capitalism.

Keywords

• Territorial Cooperation
• Europe
• Network Analysis
• Small Cities
• Urban Policy Mobilities
• Quantitative Geography
• Political Geography
• Urban Studies

2015-2021
PhD in Geography, University of Paris 1 – Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Territorial cooperation and Transnational Municipal Networks in Europe: the convergence of urban governance through urban policy mobilities, under the supervision of Professor Anne Bretagnolle.

2014-2015
Master 2 Geoprism, University of Paris 1 – Panthéon-Sorbonne.

2012-2013
Master 1 Geography, University of Paris 1 – Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Research dissertation: The production of domestic space: a geographical perspective on the appropriation of home by a few middle-class families in the Paris area , under the supervision of Professor Béatrice Collignon.

2009-2012
Degree in Geography and Planning, Centre Universitaire Jean-François Champollion, Albi.

Journal articles

GOURDON Paul, BRETAGNOLLE Anne, GUÉROIS Marianne, PAVARD Antonin (2019), « Des petites villes davantage touchées par la décroissance? Comparaison des trajectoires démographiques à l’échelle européenne (1961-2011) », Belgeo, Belgian Journal of Geography.   10.4000/belgeo.34876

BRETAGNOLLE Anne, GUÉROIS Marianne, PAVARD Antonin, GOURDON Paul, ZDANOWSKA Natalia (2019), « Following the population of European urban areas in the last half century (1961-2011): the TRADEVE database », Cybergeo, European Journal of Geography.  10.4000/cybergeo.32034

GUÉROIS M., BRETAGNOLLE, A., PAVARD, A., GOURDON, P., & ZDANOWSKA, N. (2019), « A harmonized database to follow the demographic trajectories of European cities, the TRADEVE database (Demographic Trajectories of European Cities) », Cybergeo, European Journal of Geography. 10.4000/cybergeo.32077

GOURDON Paul (2019), « The challenge of small and medium-sized cities: what can we take away from the experiment in cooperation ? », Urbanisme, n°66, Hors-Série « URBACT, 15 years of cooperation between cities  ».

Research Reports

BRETAGNOLLE Anne, GUÉROIS Marianne, PAVARD Antonin, GOURDON Paul, ZDANOWSKA Natalia, et al. (2016), « Demographical Trajectories of European urban areas (1961-2011) (TRADEVE) ». [Research Report] University of Paris 1 – Panthéon-Sorbonne. halshs-01311420

GOURDON Paul (2021), « Analyser les relations politiques transnationales entre villes européennes sur 20 ans : réseaux d’affiliation et graphes bipartis », Sixième rencontre du groupe Res-Hist (Réseaux & Histoire), « Réseaux bipartis en histoire », Aix-en-Provence, 21-22/10/21

GOURDON Paul (2019), « How to study urban policy mobilities on a large scale? Network analysis and text mining to explore cooperation between European cities », ECTQG 2019, 21st European Colloquium on Theoretical and Quantitative Geography, Mondorf-Les-Bains, Luxembourg, 5-9/09/19

GOURDON Paul, GLITA Ivan, BRETAGNOLLE Anne, (2019), « Trajectories of decay for small German and French Cities: A comparative overview through a harmonized database », Small and medium-sized cities, service and territory : a Franco-German perspective, Paris, 5/07/19.

BRETAGNOLLE Anne, GOURDON Paul, GUEROIS Marianne, PAVARD Antonin (2019) , «La décroissance démographique des petites villes d’Europe (1961-2011): méthodes et premiers résultats », Journées d’étude 20 ans de recherche, 20 ans d’action sur la décroissance urbaine: rétrospectives et perspectives. ENS/EHESS, Paris, 25-26/01/19.

GOURDON Paul (2018), « Les villes européennes et la circulation de modèles urbains : labellisation des municipalités et légitimation de l’action des pouvoirs locaux », 4ème colloque du CIST, « Représenter les territoires », Rouen, 23/03/2019.

GOURDON Paul (2017), « Les villes européennes au sein du programme URBACT : questionner la structure d’un réseau de coopération transnationale », 54ème Colloque de l’ASRDLF, 2017, Athènes, 07/07/17.

2021-2022 Assistant Professor, Université de Rouen

2019-2020 Assistant Professor, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne – Panthéon-Sorbonne (mi-temps)

2015-2018 Lecturer, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne – Panthéon-Sorbonne

• Locational and Spatial Analysis
• Network Analysis
• Data Mining
• Text Mining
• R stats