Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe (4 August 1913,

Cambrai Cambrai (, ; pcd, Kimbré; nl, Kamerijk), formerly Cambray and historically in English Camerick or Camericke, is a city in the Nord (French department), Nord Departments of France, department and in the Hauts-de-France Regions of France, regio ...

– 11 January 1998, Antony), was a noted French urban sociologist. He was strongly influenced by the Chicago school and was an early advocate of

participatory planning Participatory planning is an urban planning paradigm that emphasizes involving the entire community in the community planning process. Participatory planning emerged in response to the centralized and rationalistic approaches that defined early ...

.Newsome, W. Brian (2008) "Paul-Henry Chombart De Lauwe: Catholicism, Social Science, and Democratic Planning" in '' French Politics, Culture and Society'', Vol. 26, No. 3

Biography

In the 1930s, Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe studied sculpture and philosophy at the

École des Beaux-Arts École des Beaux-Arts (; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth century ...

, where he also became interested in ethnology and sociology. After graduating in philosophy, he first worked in Cameroun, but in 1937 returned to France to absolve the compulsory military service. After the defeat of the French army in 1940, he first fled to North Africa but returned to France after the armistice, where he cooperated with the Resistance. In 1942 he fled again via Spain to North Africa, and joined the Allied air force as a fighter pilot. The postwar housing shortage raised Chombart de Lauwe's interest in urban sociology. In 1950 he established the ''Groupe d'ethnologie sociale'' to study the

social history Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...

of Paris. Based on this research, he proposed significant changes to the planning of Paris, including public access to the city's monuments, avoiding the segregation of residential and industrial land uses - a mantra of modernist urban planning at the time, and public engagement in

urban renewal Urban renewal (also called urban regeneration in the United Kingdom and urban redevelopment in the United States) is a program of land redevelopment often used to address urban decay in cities. Urban renewal involves the clearing out of blighte ...

projects.

Publications

*''La découverte aérienne du monde'', Horizon de France, Paris, 1948 * ''Paris et l'agglomération parisienne'', Presses universitaires de France, Paris, 1952 *''Des hommes et des villes'', 1965 *''Pour une sociologie des aspirations'', 1969 *''La Culture et le pouvoir'', 1975 *''La Fin des villes : mythe ou réalité ?'', 1982

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chombart de Lauwe, Paul-Henry Urban sociologists French sociologists 1913 births 1998 deaths French male writers 20th-century French male writers