La centralité d'affaires parisienne face au desserrement des emplois. Un examen par le biais de la localisation d'activités « témoins » (1993-2008)

During the last decades, the economic reshaping of major French cities has put forward the issue of the attractiveness and power of central business districts. In Paris, recent works suggest that the decline of employment in the city centre is leading to the slackening of the Parisian centrality attributes, causing a relatively widespread urban sprawl. This article is a contribution to the current debate. Based on an original spatial slicing of Île-de-France municipalities, on the definition of control economic sectors and on growth, weight and specialization / differentiation indicators, several hypotheses are tested. First, is the economic centrality of the Paris central business district really declining? Second, is it on the contrary enlarging by the dissemination of control activities within the nearby municipalities? Finally, are the economic profiles of pericentral municipalities and central neighbourhoods being increasingly similar? Our results moderate the generally pessimistic reading of the evolution of central business districts and emphasize the current maintaining of centripetal forces in the economic geography of Paris Region.