An interdisciplinary research work between urban planning and language sciences now published in the journal Urban Studies

Thomas Buhler, laboratory ThéMA and Virgnie Lethier, ELLIADD (University of Franche-Comté) present a new method which opens up research perspectives for the coming years.

For several decades now, French cities - like many others around the world - regularly publish urban planning documents in which their strategies are expressed for the next 5, 10 or even 15 years. These documents concern particular themes (transport, land use regulations, housing, etc.). Begun two years ago, an interdisciplinary project between research centres ThéMA and ELLIADD focuses on the analysis of the these 'planning discourses', based on textometry, a reproducible method of textual data analysis. This systematic method aims to overcome certain methodological and technical obstacles present in the field of urban policy discourse analysis, which is often based on interpretative methods that are weakly reproducible or documented.

Buhler, T., & Lethier, V. (2019). Analysing urban policy discourses using textometry: An application to French urban transport plans (2000–2015). Urban Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098019873824