Creation a GIS on the urban evolution of Daugavpils, Latvia

International audienceDaugavpils is located in Latvia, it's the second city after Riga. It's a city in the south east of Latvia and it's situated along the River Daugava. The territory is partially covered with forests, with lakes and with rivers. This territory faces environment issues with the phenomenon of eutrophication from lakes. Daugavpils is known for its food and textile industries. To explain this diachronic approach, I used three satellites pictures with different dates: 1986, 2000 and 2007. This dates correspond to the Soviet and post-Soviet period after the independence. Latvia was annexed by URSS and then claimed its independence on 6th September 1991. The purpose was to show the urban evolution of a post-sovietic city through the creation of a GIS. Questions of modernity and underdevelopment ask after this urban evolution. Indeed, urban areas created by the Soviet citizens stayed the same, they didn't evolve much; and new areas ("ex-nihilo") based themselves on the model of European cities corresponds to a certain modernity. These various questions are going to be opposed, just like the populations who live there: the outer-urban populations and the populations during Soviet time. The spatial and territorial approach by the use of satellite pictures allows highlighting the processes of growth of the urban areas