Olivier Zeller

ABSTRACT The history of modern urban space is mainly concerned with large-scale developments and improvement projects. However, a better understanding of the way public services worked towards improving urban aesthetics and traffic can also be gained by looking at the micro-history of the buildings, using a GIS based on building permits. This article deals with the alignment procedure which established, and very often set back, the line of the façade in order to widen the streets. From the mid-seventeenth century onwards, this procedure greatly transformed the cityscape of Lyon, which was made both more functional and visually pleasing to the elite. The financing of the expropriations through payments or rents became standard and is examined in detail.

ABSTRACT Written sources often include implicit spatial indications, notably in the tax rolls that implied a visit on the ground to collect the needed information. It is possible, following a method developed here, to locate this information at the scale of its registering, generally the property unit or a house. This implies a good understanding of the visit practiced by local civil officers and of the administration of the city regarding the quarters (pennonages in Lyon). This needs also a close examination of the contemporary property map production and of the subsisting buildings, historical sources themselves, explicitly spatial. Once realized, this location, a sort of addressing system based on the known proprietors of the buildings, makes it possible to locate all information bearing a minimal spatial component or part of a visit sequence. Many sources are usable in that new way and one has no more to do as often in the past, i.e. generalize at the scale of a district or even a street, but can study features at their finest scale, the building. This new precision opens new questions.