Changes in the intra-metropolitan location of producer services in Ile-De-France (1978-1997): do information technologies promote a more dispersed spatial pattern
Because of their intensive need for face-to-face contacts, producer services have, historically, been found at the core of CBDs. However, it has been suggested that advances in information technologies could lead to the erosion of the CBD's economic base, rendering face-to-face contacts obsolete and enabling producer services to suburbanize. Although a considerable amount of empirical work has been done on the suburbanization of these activities in North-America, the same is not true of France. In this paper, we adopt an original methodology to study the role played by face-to-face contacts in the spatial distribution of producer services in the Ile-de-France region between 1978 and 1997. Our findings confirm that producer services did indeed suburbanize during the study period. Nevertheless, this suburbanization was multicentric, rather than scattered, suggesting that face-to-face contacts remain an important factor in the location of such services. / Une raison traditionnellement avancée pour expliquer la localisation des services aux producteurs dans les CBD est leur fort besoin de contacts face à face. Néanmoins, ce pouvoir d'agglomération des contacts face à face pourrait être remis en cause par l'essor des technologies de la communication ce qui conduirait à une répartition plus uniforme de ces activités. Les centres villes ne seraient plus alors l'espace privilégié de localisation de ces activités et perdraient leur pouvoir d'organisation sur l'aire métropolitaine. Bien que le processus de suburbanisation ait fait l'objet de nombreuses études empiriques, ces dernières restent, à notre connaissance, peu nombreuses en France. Dans ce papier, nous proposons une méthode originale pour étudier le rôle des contacts face à face dans les choix de localisation des services aux producteurs dans la région Ile-de-France entre 1978 et 1997. Nos résultats confirment que les services aux producteurs ont effectivement connu une vague de suburbanisation mais que cette dernière conduit à la formation de nouvelles polarités plutôt qu'à leur dispersion au sein de l'aire métropolitaine. Ceci suggère, qu'en dépit des progrès dans les technologies de la communication, les contacts face à face restent un facteur important de localisation pour ces services.
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Paper provided by LEG, Laboratoire d'Economie et de Gestion, CNRS UMR 5118, Université de Bourgogne in its series LEG - Document de travail - Economie with number
2003-06.
Length: 24 pages Date of creation: Apr 2003 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:lat:legeco:2003-06
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Alex Anas & Richard Arnott & Kenneth A. Small, 1998.
"Urban Spatial Structure,"
Journal of Economic Literature,
American Economic Association, vol. 36(3), pages 1426-1464, September.
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