[Portrait] Thibault LECOURT, temporary teaching and research assistant and doctoral student in geography and planning (UMR ESPACE)

What is your research about?

My research focuses on land ownership by local authorities in France. Owning land is a fundamental way for local authorities to control and direct their development, but the context of budgetary austerity is encouraging them to sell their property. I'm trying to objectivise and measure this phenomenon by analysing massive and complex data on land ownership, from tax sources, on a national scale.

Figure 1: Plot of land under negotiation.
Thibault Lecourt, 2012 (CC-BY-SA).

What are your current scientific activities?

Two articles have recently been published, the first in collaboration with Laure Casanova Enault and Didier Josselin: it focuses on the public domain, a particular category of public property that is difficult to capture in cadastral data, with the result that certain dynamics of privatisation, artificialisation and property production can escape land studies. The article proposes a method to remedy this situation and analyses the results for Rennes and Bordeaux.
>> Read the article

The second publication is a reflection on land data: for a long time, opening up land data was a utopian dream, but today it is a reality that offers many opportunities. The massification of land data also brings with it a series of limits and questions that are technical, scientific and political.
>> Read the article

Figure 2: Aerial photographs illustrating the production of buildings on public land (DNC) in Rennes.

Why did you choose to work in academic research?

After a number of professional experiences in private, public and semi-public companies, I wanted to find a working environment that was less constrained by the objectives of economic profitability. During my first contract as a research engineer, my supervisor said to me: "Here are our research problems, here is the data to be processed: try to find things interesting I realised I was in the right place. I realised I'd come to the right place.

What advice would you give to students who want to do research?

I would advise students who want to do research not to be too quick to lock themselves into a particular theme or discipline. I'm convinced that research is nourished by concepts, methods and analyses that are 'outside the box', that allow you to shift your perspective and think outside the box. I believe that you need to build up a general knowledge base at an early stage so that you know what tools to use to explore a specialist subject.

What object or image from your business best illustrates you?

The object that best illustrates me today is undoubtedly first and foremost a map, which uses land data and represents the property of local authorities!

Figure 3: Map of communal land ownership in mainland France in 2021.

Event: Midiscience on 27 February

On 27 February 2025, from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m., Thibault Lecourt will present a Midiscience on the theme :

"Land ownership by local authorities in France: the current situation

>> Read more

UMR espace

The ESPACE laboratory mainly studies space-nature-society interactions and their sustainability, from the scale of housing to that of the continent, with the Mediterranean basin as a privileged but not exhaustive field of study. ESPACE is attached to two CNRS institutes: the INSHS (Institut Sciences Humaines et Sociales) on a primary basis and the INEE (Institut Écologie et Environnement) on a secondary basis.