ABSTRACT
The first group of interest in ‘time and spatial representation’ emerges from genealogical hypotheses: the knowledge of the active and past processes underlying the observed reality directly provides a good interpretation of the space organisation. Interaction between processes, for example, nature and society, or in another way, between social actors and decision-makers managing space, bears important explanatory factors-the way and the kind of urban growth explain one part of the urban structures showing successive rings. In the same way, management measures that aim at producing a required situation must be based on the ability to direct the active processes toward this purpose. There appears a need for information or knowledge about the active structures, their dynamics and inertia conditions.
