Systèmes de villes et pouvoir. L’analyse de Giovanni Botero à l’époque de la Renaissance

• Main Authors: Denise Pumain, Jean Pierre Gaudin
• Format: Article
• Language: deu
• Published: Unité Mixte de Recherche 8504 Géographie-cités 2002-11-01
• Series: Cybergeo
• Subjects: government; history of political thought; political power; Renaissance; territoriality; territory
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/cybergeo/1836

The work published in 1588 by Giovanni Botero: Delle cause della grandezza e magnificenza delle città, should be considered a major landmark in the history of urban theory, in that it presents a rich and innovative view of the competition for growth between cities and the processes through which it occurs. We analyse this work, which has been neglected in France, from the dual perspective of the dynamics of cities and the control of territory. Botero is highly original when listing and comparing the causes of urban attraction, while his ideas on government are more representative of the concepts of his time. But taken as a whole, what is sketched out in the work by this Renaissance author is indeed a new representation of territoriality.