Congratulations to our new FdV Doctor Thomas COURTAT who graduated on Januray 31st 2012 at the MSC Lab of Paris Diderot university.

Thesis title : "Promenade dans les cartes de ville, Phénoménologie mathématique et physique de la ville - une approche géométrique" - (thesis defense in french)

details below

Short Abstract:
We are interested in the phenomenology of cities by restricting them to the geometry of their street network. This study aims at being synthetic, functional and interdisciplinary. It follows the large work that has been performed from the early XXth century by town-planners, social scientists, geographers, statisticians, physicists.
We try to demonstrate that the street - as a coherent alignment of street segments - can be considered as an essential elementary structure of the city. How much information is encoded in the street network? To what extent does it constraint the city use? How are the current urban layout and its evolution determined jointly by traffic axis and structuring elements?

Jury: Marc Barthelémy (CEA), Gilles Coppin (Télécom Bretagne), Vincent Danos (University of Edinburgh), Laurent Decreusefond (Télécom Paris Tech), Pablo Jensen (ENS Lyon), Jean-Pierre Frey (Université Paris Est Créteil)

Thesis supervisors : Stéphane Douady (CNRS MSC) et Catherine Gloaguen (Orange Labs)