Nineteenth-Century Urban Cartography and the Scientific Ideal: The Case of Paris

Abstract

Nineteenth-century Parisian cartography was marked by the emergence of a new cartographic genre: the specialized atlas of the city. This genre was linked to a change in the function assigned to urban maps. Before the French Revolution, the plans of Paris had been shaped by either the desire to portray the city and its singularity or the quest for accuracy in the representation of its layout. In contrast, nineteenth-century plans and atlases reflected the ambition to understand the city according to the light provided by the various natural and social sciences. This article explores the different kinds of maps and atlases produced throughout the nineteenth century in relation to this ambition. Of special interest in this respect are the Bertillon family's thematic maps based on statistics gathered by the Parisian administration. CARTOGRAPHIC GENRES AND THE MEANING OF MAPSLike other historical documents, maps can be interpreted on various levels.1 The first and most evident one is related to the information they convey. Renaissance maps and atlases enable the historian to measure the degree of knowledge of the New World that had been acquired by the time of their production. A second level of analysis concerns the graphic techniques used by the mapmaker. These techniques are linked to broader issues, such as the definition of accuracy and the relation between observation and representational conventions that prevailed in a given culture. Many historians of cartography have focused on these fundamental issues. There are, however, many other ways to look at maps. For instance, one can pay attention to the genres to which they belong. These genres, from the atlas of the world to the detailed representation of a city, are defined by contrasting one with another. Each is permeated with preoccupations that can be better apprehended by taking into account the entire system of genres and its characteristics. In literature, a convenient way to understand how tragedy

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“…A cartografia alinhou-se com outros saberes técnicos para compreender o fenômeno urbano em termos rigorosos e mensuráveis. Compreender e representar como a cidade era organizada, e, acima de tudo, como funcionava, virou uma précondição para seu controle (Picon, 2003).…”

“…Abordaremos mais sobre a análise dos contextos e intenções juntamente com a descrição dos mapas indicados. (Carter, 1979;Picon, 2003).…”

An objective point of view: the orthogonal grid in eighteenth-century plans of Paris

“…Like the adoption of mechanical reproduction techniques in scientific practices, the grid in mapmaking functioned as an instrument to regularise the image based on the incorporation of scientific values in cartography. 40 The implication of this shift from bird's-eye views and other perspectival representations to orthogonal plans and planar views was that it compelled a corollary shift in how town planning was practised and understood. Principally, orthogonal plans allowed architects, engineers and administrators to see the city synoptically, that is, to see the whole at once and in its structural parts at the same scale.…”

The Golden Age of Statistical Graphics

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