Research
I am an urban geographer specialised in the economic, social and spatial aspects of inequality in cities. My on-going research project SEGUE deals with the identification and modeling of the combination of economic, geographic, sociological and demographical drivers of urban economic segregation. I have a strong research interest in analytical urban models and systematic literature reviews. Past projects involves research on urban scaling laws and urbanisartion in the post-Soviet space.
Research positions
On-going project
My main line of research revolves around the integration of multiple mechanisms of economic segregation in analytical models of cities. This is the core of my ERC Starting Grant SEGUE, which started in September 2022 and will run until August 2027.
The knowledge gaps related to the evolution of urban economic segregation in multiple cities can be reduced first, by accounting for the economic composition and inequality dynamics of the entire system (nationally), and second, by accounting for individual and family trajectories of economic mobility, through a focus on demographic factors and wealth transmission. Although these national and individual processes are well documented empirically and theoretically, we do not know where they materialise (between and within cities) and how they interact with other spatial processes.
The innovative ambition of SEGUE is to consider, for the first time, the analysis of processes of (re-)production of inequality which affect the spatial distribution of economic groups in cities through the construction of a modular agent-based model, calibrated on exhaustive longitudinal and geolocated empirical microdata from the Netherlands.
My ultimate objective is to use this model to assess and compare different policy strategies (typical, past and current) to reduce urban inequality and economic segregation in a cost-effective and time-saving way: within the virtual laboratory of a simulation (in silico). This objective can only be fulfilled if the relevant drivers of urban economic segregation are accounted for jointly.
Current research Topics
Analytical urban models of urban inequality
In my research, I use analytical models to integrate and archive multidisciplinary knowledge on cities and to highlight patterns and stylised facts which are not currently well understood and explained. Following epistemological developments in analytical sociology (Hedstrom, 2005), I defend the idea that descriptive models (e.g. statistical regression) and generative models (e.g. agent-based models - ABMs) can be used in combination to produce better and more robust causal explanations of collective urban phenomena such as economic segregation.
To operationalise this idea, I review existing knowledge and relevant models (Cottineau et al., 2024), combine them into modular infrastructure of agent-based modelling (Cottineau et al., 2015), and use empirical microdata to test hypotheses (Cottineau & Arcaute, 2020) (Askenazy & Cottineau, 2024).
Systematic literatre reviews
Systematic literature reviews have been a method of choice that I have used, developed and argued for in urban studies and agent-based modelling over the past 5 years (Cottineau, 2017a) (Cottineau, 2022) (Janssen et al., 2023) (Cottineau, 2024) because they are particularly suited to multidisciplinary research fields (where it is easy to miss literature in a different discipline because a given concept or process is known and studied under a different term) and when we are interested in reviewing emerging methods such as ABMs (where most models are built from scratch for a single use, hindering cumulative knowledge and the incremental improvement of models). Using this experience, I now work on improving approaches and sharing open toolboxes available for urban researchers and agent-based modellers to conduct systematic reviews (Achter et al., 2024).
Previous projects
In the past, I have studied urban scaling laws and how the delineation of cities (for instance the choice of density and commuting thresholds) affected their estimation (Cottineau et al., 2017) (Finance & Cottineau, 2019) (Cottineau & Vanhoof, 2019).
As part of my PhD research, I looked into the specificity of urbanisation in the post-Soviet space, using general models as baseline (Cottineau, 2011) (Cottineau, 2012) (Cottineau et al., 2015) (Cottineau, 2017b) and considering urban shrinkage (Cottineau, 2016) (Cottineau & Frost, 2018).
References
Achter, S., Borit, M., Cottineau, C., Meyer, M., Polhill, J. G., & Radchuk, V. (2024). How to conduct more systematic reviews of agent-based models and foster theory development-taking stock and looking ahead. Environmental Modelling & Software, 173, 105867.
Askenazy, P., & Cottineau, C. (2024). The geography of collective bargaining in french multi-establishment companies. Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society.
Cottineau, C. (2011). Processus de métropolisation dans l’espace frontalier post-soviétique: L’exemple de rostov-sur-le-don. Cybergeo: European Journal of Geography.
Cottineau, C. (2012). An intermediate system. Trajectories of russian cities between general dynamics and specific histories. Espace géographique (English Edition), 41(3), 247–265.
Cottineau, C. (2016). A multilevel portrait of shrinking urban russia. Espace Populations Sociétés. Space Populations Societies, 2015/3-2016/1.
Cottineau, C. (2017a). MetaZipf. A dynamic meta-analysis of city size distributions. PloS One, 12(8), e0183919.
Cottineau, C. (2017b). Peut-on estimer la singularité des villes (post-) soviétiques? Économie Régionale Et Urbaine, 1, 5–32.
Cottineau, C. (2022). What do analyses of city size distributions have in common? Scientometrics, 127(3), 1439–1463.
Cottineau, C. (2024). Generative modelling. In R. Harris, A. Heppenstall, & L. J. Wolf (Eds.), A research agenda for spatial analysis (pp. 113–124). Elgar.
Cottineau, C., & Arcaute, E. (2020). The nested structure of urban business clusters. Applied Network Science, 5(1), 1–20.
Cottineau, C., & Frost, I. (2018). The russian urban system: Evolution engaged with transition. In D. Pumain, C. Rozenblat, & E. Velasquez (Eds.), International and transnational perspectives on urban systems (pp. 263–284). Springer.
Cottineau, C., Hatna, E., Arcaute, E., & Batty, M. (2017). Diverse cities or the systematic paradox of urban scaling laws. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 63, 80–94.
Cottineau, C., M., B., Benenson, I., Delloye, J., Hatna, E., Pumain, D., Sarkar, S., Tannier, C., & Ubarevičienė, R. (2024). The role of analytical models and their circulation in urban studies and policy. Urban Studies, OnlineFirst.
Cottineau, C., Reuillon, R., Chapron, P., Rey-Coyrehourcq, S., & Pumain, D. (2015). A modular modelling framework for hypotheses testing in the simulation of urbanisation. Systems, 3(4), 348–377.
Cottineau, C., & Vanhoof, M. (2019). Mobile phone indicators and their relation to the socioeconomic organisation of cities. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 8(1), 19.
Finance, O., & Cottineau, C. (2019). Are the absent always wrong? Dealing with zero values in urban scaling. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 46(9), 1663–1677.
Hedstrom, P. (2005). Dissecting the social: On the principles of analytical sociology. Cambridge University Press.
Janssen, K. M. J., Cottineau, C., Kleinhans, R., & Bueren, E. van. (2023). Gentrification and the origin and destination of movers: A systematic review. Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie, 114(4), 300–318.