Guy Baudelle’s research while affiliated with University of Rennes 2 and other places

This study investigates the potential devolution of coworking spaces (CSs) to rural areas during the COVID-19 pandemic and explores the factors driving this shift. Using a geolocalised database of French CSs and employing spatial durbin model, we found that the pandemic may have driven CS distribution towards less densely populated regions. Our study highlights the impact of the pandemic on economic landscapes and spatial patterns of shared workspaces, with implications for place-based policies and regional development. The results suggest that supporting CSs in remote areas with longer commuting times and distances can address the urban-rural divide, fostering territorial resilience in the post-pandemic era.

Public spaces in Algeria are characterized by the strong lack of interest among people who rely entirely on public authority. Not any tendency here to make of it a common good. The purpose of the paper is to exhibit the extent of popular indifference from in situ observations in Algiers and to explain this attitude through historical analysis. Indeed, the collective imaginary and practices have not always been insensitive to public spaces. On the contrary, in traditional rural society, public spaces were perceived as a continuity of domestic space. The peasant was obliged to take charge of its maintenance as well as for his home, his intimate space. To understand the later behavioural evolution, we must refer to the Ottoman and colonial domination processes. Each period had its own way of considering public spaces, but the urban management systems have always been based on a discrimination policy against natives and a strict control of the public spaces to the point of making them appear as the State property in the collective mentality. This perception of a grabbing of public spaces by the Turkish governor (Beylik) and later by the French colonial administration (for security reasons) has led amongst city dwellers to a feeling of exclusion and a disaffection that still characterize their attitude today.

Les espaces de coworking ont essaimé hors des grands centres urbains où ils ont été moins étudiés, malgré les espoirs de développement territorial fondés sur eux. À partir d’une enquête internationale attentive aux dimensions territoriale, collaborative et individuelle des entrepreneurs, on montre que ceux fréquentant les espaces hors métropole entretiennent des relations paradoxales avec leur territoire d’accueil. Les résultats ne concordent guère avec les analyses métropolitaines proposées par la littérature. Si le cadre de travail permettant de concilier qualité de vie et accès aux ressources numériques est plébiscité, la dimension collaborative interne reste en effet discrète tout comme les relations avec le milieu local ou les collectivités. Ce paradoxe s’explique par le profil et le parcours professionnel des entrepreneurs, rarement originaires de leur territoire d’implantation. L’impact de leur installation sur le développement local est notable mais ne saurait donc être surestimé.

French local authorities developed over 500 km of pop-up cycling infrastructure to face the Covid-19 pandemic. These experiments raise questions about the impact of a crisis situation on public decision-making and policies. This chapter reports on a comprehensive analysis of the roll-out of the Covid cycle lanes in four metropolises—Paris, Lyon, Montpellier, and Rennes—with a particular attention to the factors of continuity or interruption pre-and post-crisis. It retraces the involvement in collective action of the different actors during the crisis peak, the reactions sparked by these measures, and the status of the temporary infrastructure in the local mobility policy landscape a year after it was introduced. It shows that the crisis has served more as an accelerator than as a course changer for public policies introducing elements of change for the future by slightly modifying the actors’ interests, representations, and instruments.

L’épidémie de Covid-19 a eu de multiples effets analysés par la géographie, notamment sur les mobilités urbaines. Parmi eux, l’engouement pour le vélo à Paris comme dans la plupart des agglomérations françaises a été favorisé par d’importants aménagements aiguillonnés par l’urbanisme tactique, qui fait référence à des aménagements temporaires, à petite échelle et à faible coût, préfigurant des aménagements permanents. Nous nous interrogeons cependant sur la pérennité de cette transition apparente vers une plus grande place donnée au vélo et nous tirons les enseignements de ces initiatives en matière de gestion de l’espace public comme de pratiques et de politiques de mobilité. Nous étudions d’abord la façon dont la pandémie a modifié la mobilité urbaine, puis nous nous demandons comment le vélo a permis à l’urbanisme tactique d’effectuer une percée dans les pratiques d’aménagement.