mid-sized cities are dead. Live in mid-sized cities ! The epidemic of Covid-19 provide a contrast to the cities, the stars of the development of the territory ? This is not impossible… thanks to the development of telework, which is imposed during a public health crisis. At the end of march, according to the ministry of Labour, there was one employee out of four. This could allow the inhabitants of the cities, locked in an apartment more or less for two months, to realize their desire to settle in a house with a garden in a city on a human scale.
To The Point, France Attractive did the first list of cities in advanced to accommodate teleworkers. This ranking of the 70 largest cities in France has been divided in two according to the number of inhabitants. In the head of the pack of the metropolis, Lille arrives first, followed by Bordeaux and Lyon. These three cities are connected to Paris by TGV, have long since put in place a policy to attract new residents and focused on the digital as a tool for development. They offer a connection to the world via high speed broadband, is conducive to telework. All have also developed third-party-places able to accommodate remote workers. Lille has a very extensive spaces of coworking, and creates a surprise by rising to the top. The capital of Flanders boasts of its position as a crossroads between Paris, London and Brussels. It concentrates one of the leading international, in the sectors of large distribution, and health in particular, and continues to develop its digital economy around EuraTechnologies, the first incubator for start-ups in France.
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Coworking. La 2 e place de Bordeaux surprises less. For several years, his ex-mayor Alain Juppé has done everything to make it to the city of the three M (Montesquieu, Montaigne, Mauriac) to its former glory. Especially, since the launch in 2013 of the Darwin project, which brings together in an old barracks, a coworking space and two poles respectively dedicated to the creative economy and sustainable development, the number of third places has not ceased to grow in the metropolis : there are now thirty.
the fact Remains that, for many experts, what are the medium-sized cities that will be the big winners of telework. The demand of the companies is changing in this direction. “The world of tomorrow will not be metropolitan “, says Jean-Christophe Fromantin. In 2018, the mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine has published an essay, Work where we want to live, in which he draws a new spatial organization that makes beautiful use of the medium-sized cities. In our list, the top three of this category is occupied by La Rochelle, Pau and Angouleme.
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Third-party-places. In its ranking of French cities the most attractive published by The Dot in June 2019, France Attractive placed already the Rochelle in The pole position of medium-sized cities. “It is the effect of our quality of life, our cultural offer, our economic dynamism and our proximity to the coast. Increasingly, people are seeking to live in the cities calmed down, ” says the mayor, Jean-François Fountaine, who observes that the TGV in the morning for Paris is full of academics and managers, which could just as well in the future to stay on site thanks to the proliferation of third-places and nurseries of firms.
4 e position, Calais creates the surprise. It actually has several strings to his bow. Its geographical position, which has earned him wrestle with the migration crisis, is also paradoxically one of its strengths. “Calais is just thirty minutes from Lille, one hour thirty of Paris, one hour from London and an hour fifteen of Brussels, note Natacha Bouchart. Not to mention the part of life : between the land and sea ! “But this is not all, and the mayor of Calais knows it. Since his first election in 2008, she made the bet of the culture. On the digital front, the town has made great efforts to accelerate the development of the fiber. “Today, 90 % of the inhabitants of the metropolis have access to high speed broadband, noting the mayor. In addition, we created several locations that have digital equipment, are conducive to the reception of teleworkers, as well as the home of the digital, and two FabLabs. The access to these places is free, as well as the public transport throughout the city centre since January. “
Exodus from the city. other cities like Béthune (13 th position) could quickly move up in the rankings. The mayor, Olivier Gacquerre, who describes himself as a ” demonstrator smart city “, has chosen to rely on a framework of life-innovative-adapted to the new challenges. It has put in place an action plan to transform Béthune in smart city collaborative, sustainable and innovative. Thus was born The Factory, which is home to a FabLab and coworking space. “This project of city works, as evidenced by the rebound that knows the real estate market and the recent opening of a cinema in the city centre,” concludes Olivier Gacquerre.
” We are at the dawn of a déspatialisation of the place of work, theorizes David Lacombled, founder of the third-place Station in Saint-Omer. Telework at home has shown its limits, in particular on the lack of exchange. There must be places intermediaries between the enterprise and the home to work and meet. “At the time, FabLab, coworking space and a place of training, The Station was installed in late 2019 in the station. Teleworkers who crossed it would be without doubt, without this equipment, parties in Lille or Paris.
According to a survey by the Cevipof for the Association of mayors of France in 2019, ” the rural is much more in demand than the urban, and in urban areas medium-sized towns are much more attractive than the cities of over 200,000 inhabitants “. Ideally, 45% of those surveyed indicated that they would prefer to live in the country, 41 % in a medium-sized city and 13 % in a metropolis. “The urban exodus has begun,” observes Dominique Valentin. Founder of Relay companies, the first national network of third-places in the peri-urban and rural areas, it has deployed a hundred structures along the diagonal of the void “, from Ardennes to the Pyrenees. “The health crisis provides a contrast to these territories, missed will not be synonymous with archaism,” he said.
City home. ” The cities medians have a card to play : compared to the metropolis dense, they are less polluted, offer the rents are cheaper and living environment more pleasant note Denis Thuriot, mayor of Nevers. During the containment, a lot of Parisians who had residences on our territory have been aware that Nevers was nice beyond a weekend. “It is true that since 2014, the mayor is working to make its territory” smart “. It has created a directorate for innovation in its town hall, an incubator for digital and made of Nevers, one of the 13 cities chosen to host a campus connected. “The presence of a post-bac is one of the essential keys to attract “, says the one who has already signed a pact with the State in the deployment of 5 G.
“The ideal city does not exist,” explains urban planner Jean-Marc Offner. Those who want to have any down home, choose the large city. The others do not. And, today, almost everyone can have the city at home, thanks to digital, but also through the relocation of many of the equipment which install in the villages. The urban intensity is found everywhere, but not all the time. “There remains one obstacle to overcome : mindsets§
Sébastien ORTOLA/Csr
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