Les nouvelles situations d’intermédiation territoriale : l’exemple des « quart-lieux » périphériques (espaces de coworkation)

As a large part of their work is done outside the designated timetable and physical space of their companies, a growing number of knowledge workers are being freed from geographical constraints. Digital nomads have a lifestyle which is disconnected from a place of production (their activities do not depend on physical location). Third-places (coworking spaces, fab-labs), offering an in-between individual space and workspace, have met this occupational phenomenon and are often chosen by digital nomads. Fourth-places have recently developed, which specify in hosting digital nomads from around the world who join them for short-term periods of residential mobility. Offered to independent location workers and based on digital independence from intermediaries, those places might favour a form of going back to territorial integration/re-territorialisation. Gathering activities mixing « work - home life - tourism », those spaces give birth to new practices catalysing economic activities and seem to enhance territorial dynamics (social innovation, local development of territories). Under these schemes, territories do not escape a potential exploitation on the part of fourth-places managers and users. The places under study here are found in territories remote from big cities and benefitting from tourist attractions. They represent an array of territorial intermediation on the intraterritorial level : by favouring exchanges between digital nomads and the territory, by connecting digital nomads and fourth places to a cultural and digital community and by entering international global logics.