As our studio remained only two students, we were joined in with a studio of fifth year diploma students working under the same professor with more or less the same parameters (though larger and more intense). That is, we are still addressing this soon the be built 106 km canal in Northern France. We are spending at least the first half of the semester diagram as much information as possible, overlaying it to find issues to address (and from whence to define a program for a design project).

So with that said I have been given the task of researching demographic information which, like most areas of research on the part of France, is scarce. So I've begun simply with these diagrams about total populations, population change, population ranking.

Charting ranking cities along the canal by population and thus likely industrial/economic importance, the bands connecting represent the growth or decline in population of the city from 1962 to 1999, the larger the strong the greater the percentage, the ranking alters for either year.


Now using this same information I disposed with the ranking system in favor of a geographic ordering to try to find patterns of increase or decrease in population.


This is just the beginning of a more detailed look at one of the largest cities on the canal, Peronne, as this uses past information on the general development of the village to inform the future development towards the trade centers along the proposed canal. Though the declining population gives perhaps doubt on that prediction of development.