“Back to basics. Les géographes à la reconquête du milieu?”

Epistemological work often utilises “hind sight”. Observation of other scientific practices is useful to anyone trying to understand what constitutes, within the logical framework of their own discipline, a good explanation or a sound model. Geography can benefit from comparing its knowledge and history to the way in which architecture is related to by its historians and critics and in particular its relationship to place and the production of territories. This is what I intend to attempt in the following discussion of three recent publications or new editions in urban studies which appear to me to have particular relevance to the geographical sciences [read a translation].