Au bon air des jardins (18e-21e siècles) – Blois (France)
The aim of the conference is to provide food for thought on air and climate from the socio-spatial perspective of public urban parks and gardens in France and the rest of the world. Its aim is to show whether these spaces are marked by common or, on the contrary, different geo-historical developments and transitions in air- and climate-related issues (Corbin 1982; Metzger 2018; Brassart et al. 2022). It is this geo-historical approach that the symposium wishes to highlight by opening up prospects for fruitful dialogue between the past, present and future of these spaces that have been developed to welcome the public or opened to the public at some point in their history. For example, have there been specific discourses or practices relating to air in parks and gardens, depending on the location or political tendency? Why have certain periods been more favourable than others in terms of taking account of this issue? What specific place was given to parks and gardens when the car became increasingly present in towns and cities, particularly after the Second World War? Were these areas used as experimental sites for studying air pollution (Escourrou 1991) and global warming?