Diffusion régionale et intégration urbaine des espaces de coworking . Les spécificités d’une région française faiblement métropolisée

The geography of economic activities is evolving rapidly and the emergence of alternative workplaces - the so-called third-places - changes its traditional models. This paper takes a geographical and urban planning outlook at the dynamics of coworking spaces (abbreviated in CWS) by analyzing the links between CWS and space at different scales. As CWS are widespread and quite well studied in metropolitan areas, our focus here is on CWS in intermediate and mid-sized cities. The first section reviews the existing literature in geography and urban planning on coworking and its urban context. Then, we present the qualitative methodology (cartography, observation and interviews) that was used to study the location patterns of CWS in a non-metropolitan French region. Section 3 presents the Loire Valley region and the intermediate cities where the spatial diffusion of CWS was analysed : Tours, Orleans and Blois. Section 4 presents our main findings : (i) the location patterns of CWS in intermediate cities varies according to the status of the project?s holder (private, public, not-for-profit); (ii) the transformative effects of CWS at the scale of a neighbourhood are not very noticeable in intermediate cities; and (iii) local government can play an important part in creating or anchoring CWS in cities.