Sustainability and Spatiality in Co-Workers' Mobility Practices – COWORKWORLDS

The COWORKWORLDS project combines methodologies from different disciplines (anthropology, computer science, economics, geomatics, sociology, urban planning). A this stage :
- a database of coworking spaces in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region was created in order to analyse coworking spaces’ territorial context
- a questionnaire survey about coworkers’ working and mobility practices was carried out. The aim was to collect information about their socio-economic characteristics (age, gender, level of income, etc.) and their working and travelling practices (daily mobility, business trips, etc.)
- a qualitative survey was conducted among creators of coworking spaces. The aim was to better understand their project, locational strategy and how they take into account sustainable mobility issues
- a qualitative survey was conducted among coworkers to explore coworkers’ professional, family and housing pathways and their attitudes towards sustainable mobility
- two participant observations were carried out over a period of six months in two coworking spaces, one located in the centre of a metropolis and the other in a small town

The results show, first of all, that coworking spaces do not necessarily promote more environmentally friendly daily mobility practices. These practices are still largely conditioned by residential locations, with the use of alternative modes in high-density areas and the use of cars in low-density areas. However, there is a desire among some coworkers to organize their daily lives around proximity. Coworking spaces, on the other hand, appear to be key places for linking residential and professional mobility. Because of their flexibility (shared costs, low commitment, diversity of locations, etc.), coworking spaces make it possible to achieve professional or residential projects. They facilitate professional retraining by providing access to a workplace and a professional and local network. Similarly, they are a way to achieve residential projects, based on nomadism as well as anchoring, which benefit both metropolitan areas and small cities. Finally, coworking spaces appear as an escape from home-based telework for these workers who are highly-skilled. On the one hand, they allow them to break social isolation by rediscovering an ordinary sociability (discussing over a coffee break, meeting colleagues working in other sectors of activity, etc.) and, on the other hand, to establish a clear division between work and domestic life. The mobility practices of coworkers, understood in a broad sense, thus respond more to economic and social issues than to environmental ones, and shape spatialities that are organized around both metropolitan areas and small towns characterized by strong urban amenities.

The results of the COWORKWORLDS project are likely to be of interest to both public actors (State services, local authorities, etc.) and private actors (companies, associations, consultancies, etc.). They can provide them with new elements of knowledge on the changes in the organization of the work of highly skilled workers and their impacts on mobility and territories. For public actors, they allow them to better identify the challenges associated with the establishment of coworking spaces in their territory and the support they can provide. For private actors, they provide a better understanding of this new way of organizing work, which makes it possible to meet the expectations of highly skilled employees and to better determine the interest or not of integrating coworking as a way of working in companies.

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Flipo A.,2020, « Espaces de coworking et tiers-lieux : les réseaux d’une nouvelle ruralité ? », Études rurales, 206 | 2020, DOI :https://doi-org.inshs.bib.cnrs.fr/10.4000/etudesrurales.23887

Lejoux P., 2020, Co-organisation avec le PUCA d’un webinaire Le coworking : sous l’effet de mode, quelle réalité ? Analyse des effets urbains et sociaux de la multiplication des espaces de coworking, 22 septembre. Source : www.urbanisme-puca.gouv.fr/22-09-webinaire-le-coworking-sous-l-effet-de-mode-a2059.html

Flipo A. ,2020, “Tiers-lieux et espaces de coworking à la campagne: quel impact sur les mobilités ?” In: Demoli Y. (dir.), Peut-on se passer de la voiture hors des agglomérations?, Paris Saclay, Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme-Paris Saclay, p. 205-222.

Lejoux P., Flipo A., Ortar N., Ovtracht N., Souche-Lecorverc S., Stanica R., 2019, “Coworking, a way to achieve sustainable mobility ? Designing an interdisciplinary research project”, Sustainability, 11 (24), 7161, doi.org/10.3390/su11247161.

The purpose of COWORKWORLDS is to understand how digital technologies may encourage or discourage more sustainable mobility within urban systems. It aims to do this by focusing on a research topic in the field of urban studies and mobility studies that has so far received little attention from researchers, namely the development of co-working. Co-working may be defined as a new way of organising work based on the sharing of workspace and a network of workers stimulating collaboration. Encouraged by the development of portable digital technologies and the dematerialisation of information, these new intermediate workplaces between the traditional office and the home appeared in San Francisco in 2005 and since then have spread throughout the world. In France, the movement has really gained strength in the last five years, with co-working spaces being set up in large cities as well as in medium-sized ones and peri-urban or rural areas. The creation of co-working spaces by companies is accompanied by a very voluntarist discourse on the part of the authorities who encourage and even financially support their development. This support is justified by the supposedly beneficial (though unproven) effects of co-working, in terms of sustainable mobility. By offering working people the possibility of working close to home, co-working spaces are thought to result in less congestion and pollution, an improvement in the transport situation and more balanced land development. The objective of the COWORKWORLDS project is to question the evidence for the urban sustainability of co-working in different spatial contexts. To what extent does the development of co-working constitute a new direction that is likely to promote more sustainable ways of moving around? The project’s main premise is that the urban sustainability of co-workers’ mobility practices depends on the social (professional, family) and spatial (territorial, residential) arrangements to which they are committed. The whole challenge of the project is to identify the diversity of these socio-spatial configurations and determine whether they are more or less favourable to urban sustainability. This will be achieved by studying both the physical and virtual mobility of co-workers (means of transport, their use of digital tools), understanding the choices which lead them to adopt these practices and gaining a perspective on the spatiality that emerges from them. In order to analyse the physical and virtual mobility practices of co-workers and to distinguish the networks of locations formed by these practices, the project aims to combine a qualitative investigation and a quantitative investigation. As the purpose of this is to vary the profile of both the co-workers and the areas under investigation, the surveys will be carried out in the urban areas of Lyon and Grenoble (city centre and peri-urban areas), as well as in Annecy and the departments of the Drôme and the Ardèche. The COWORKWORLDS project is organized in three survey phases. The first phase aims at characterising coworkers’ socio-spatial configurations. The second phase is devoted to identify the diversity of these socio-spatial configurations. The aim of the third phase is to gain a perspective on the spatiality that emerges from them and determine whether they are more or less favourable to urban sustainability. The project could have impacts in the scientific domain as well as in the economic and social domain (public and privates in the sector of transport and mobility, companies, employees).