Systèmes d'information géographique. Dossier ... - CiteSeerX

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the INSEE in 1973, the creation of large national statistical files such as the SIRENE file.
The concern back then was not thematic but technical. Computerisation was perceived as a
possibility for automation and speeding-up repetitive or boring jobs. That is why the initial
objectives were mainly limited to a viewpoint for the reduction in the time for researching,
updating and producing plans. Let’s also take into account the fact that the first UDB were
usually entrusted to the computer departments and the planning departments. These facts,
which sound like a fairy story, in fact partly explain the main choices made twenty years ago.
The data of reference (types, scales, accuracy, referential and especially geographical), as
well as the types of applications (at the start quite far removed from the notions of planning for
the urban territory), were proposed based on these approaches.
The lessons learnt from this period are both linked to the economic climate and structural.
Linked to the economic climate firstly, because the major difficulties could not be explained
(delay and overspending amongst others), that were encountered by these pioneering towns
without putting them into perspective with the technical environment of the age. The lack of
performance of the tools back then, the limitations of the tools chosen for data collection, the
absence of qualified staff, etc., played an important role in the progress of these few
experiments without however being the only sources of their difficulties.
The years from 1980 to 1990
It was a period of transition during which certain of the pioneering UDB continued and
strengthened their bases (such as Paris or Marseilles), whilst others started a change
towards the setting-up of new bases. The data base of reference was then basically the plan
for roads on a scale of 1:200 (Grenoble, Valence…). The approach basically turned towards
the production of plans of reference for knowledge about and the works on the underground
networks. One example of this approach is provided by the UDB in Toulouse, set up in 1984
and whose plan at a scale of 1:200 was completed in 1989.
The revolution in software allowed the modernisation of the production of plans and CAD
applications to be introduced more easily (Computer-aided design). Hence the applications of
these UDB had basically turned towards supplying management data for the technical
services, and not towards the implementation of a true information system for the community.
Urban planning was firstly understood in its technical dimension, and the localised information
as a support for the plan.
In practice, "it seems that these interventions on the urban space are often limited to
management, that is to say, to a process for calculation governed by the restraints of
profitability. In the same way, the UDB have become a tool for urban management in the
strictest sense of the word. The town would now appear, as recorded by the district UDB, to
be an object to be managed and no longer as a place and an entity that includes different
kinds of projects, don’t you think?" (Aillaud, 1992).
So this was a period of transition, from which some new concerns arose, accompanied by
the highly significant breakthroughs in computing, and especially the arrival of the first
standard GIS in Europe and in France.
The years from 1990 to 1998