Mehdi Iraqi is defending his PhD thesis "Theoretical approaches for a geometrical optimization of urban shapes. Towards a fractal city development." on November 29th 2017 in Besançon.

Category: Dissertation Defence

The defense will take place at the "Maison des Sciences de l'Homme et de l'Environnement Claude Nicolas Ledoux", salle 4 (1 rue Charles Nodier). This work was directed by Pierre Frankhauser.

Defense jury

Pierre Frankhauser, Professor at the University of Franche-Comté 

Gabriel Dupuy, Emeritus Professor at the University Paris I

Geoffrey Caruso, Professor at the University of Luxembourg

Dominique Mignot, Scientific Director of IFSTTAR

Dominique Peeters, Emeritus Professor at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

Igor Agbossou, Lecturer at the University of Franche-Comté 

 

Abstract

This thesis is based on the challenges of assessing the impacts of urban planning decisions in the light of the imperatives of sustainable development. Beyond the vagueness often emerges from this concept, it is here to conduct a reflection on a balance to be found between the three pillars identified about sustainable development: economic, social and environmental. The aim is to consider how to assess the impacts of development policies in each of these three pillars and what conclusions should be drawn from them? The aim here is to provide answers by assessing the performance of the territories studied in these three pillars of sustainable development. For this purpose, the work is based on simulation models (here the MobiSim model developed within Laboratoire ThéMA) and on the production of synthetic indicators allowing a readable analysis and evaluation of the space. The combination of these synthetic indicators makes it possible to visualize and analyze the sustainability of the territory studied and to deduce the measures to be implemented with a view to ensuring a sustainable development policy. It is a question of putting the methodology and the results obtained into perspective in a global vision, seeking to establish by the balance between the three pillars a harmony which allows to satisfy the objectives of a policy guided by the imperatives linked to the concept of inherited from the Bruntland report. A critical approach to this concept and an analysis of the sets of actors of a territory are here conduits in order to be able to implement the scientific research work within a decision-making process. The challenge is to allow the results of research based on power modeling tools to find a more concrete and operational problem.