Olivier Coutard is a socio-economist. He was trained as a civil engineer (ENPC 1988), and he holds a master's degree in transportation socio-economics (1988) and a PhD in economics and social sciences (ENPC 1994). His PhD thesis dealt with the introduction of competition in the electricity supply industry. He has been holding a full-time research position with the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) since March 1996. He is researching the governance of urban infrastructure services (water and energy supply, telecommunications, urban transportation), reforms in those sectors and their social and spatial implications. More specifically, his current work is about: - the relations between networked infrastructures and urban integration or splintering dynamics, - mobility and "automobility" behaviors of low income individuals, households or groups, - the development and "universalisation" of network services, - nework services and vulnerable or insolvent users. He is heading the Networks, Institutions, Territories research group within LATTS (since 2002), a member and the secretary of the French national commission for the assessement of CNRS researchers and research groups in Geography, Urban Planning and Architectural Research (2000-2004). He currently sits on the editorial boards of Flux, International Quarterly on Networks and Territories and of the Journal of Urban Technology.
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