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Growth of spaces dedicated to coworking and development of work sharing in "third places".

Published on 26 March 2018
Update on 26 September 2022
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Summary

The Ministry of Territorial Cohesion has just launched a mission in charge of formulating proposals to develop collaborative work spaces, including in medium-sized cities and rural areas.

"The diversity of coworking space models reflects the diversity of needs. Medium-sized cities and rural areas do not always benefit from these transitions, which need to be supported in order to expand and spread them. In this perspective, the conditions for success must be identified so that everyone can mobilize them in favor of the territories of France.

According to the mission letter, the aim is to"establish a shared diagnosis with local stakeholders on the dynamics of coworking spaces in order to enable the government to identify the most suitable models for the territories, as well as the most effective economic models" . An initial progress report will be submitted at the end of March, and a more in-depth report at the end of June.

  • According to the IPSOS Revolution At work survey, 52% of French people would like to work more often elsewhere than in their workplace: in coworking spaces or cafés.
  • According to the latest data from the Caisse nationale du réseau des Urssaf (Acoss), nearly 1.2 million people were registered as microentrepreneurs at the end of June 2017: only slightly more than half (686,000) declared a turnover.
  • Malt and Ouishare estimate that there are 830,000 freelancers: self-employed without employees in professional occupations (their number increased from 126% in 10 years).
  • 25% of the employees practice telework: while 6% practice it in a contractualized framework, 19% work remotely in an informal and non-contractualized way.
Driven by the development of telecommuting and the rise of new forms of self-employment, shared work spaces or collaborative work spaces are flourishing in the region.

To take the measure of the phenomenon, it is probably appropriate to distinguish two facets in this rise of coworking spaces:

  • the opening of places mainly or exclusively dedicated to work sharing, whether associative or commercial
  • the deployment of "shared work spaces" in other "third places": digital public spaces, fablabs, incubators, business hotels.
At both the local and regional levels, public actors are often the primary partners and supporters of collaborative workspaces.

Nearly 700 spaces dedicated to coworking, unevenly distributed over the territory

The term coworking was first used in 1999 by Bernie de Koven, an American game designer. It referred to a way of working together, as equals, breaking the usual codes of hierarchical work that separates people by rank and level of pay. The first coworking places that were created moved away from the original definition, to propose working environments in which it is possible to work alone, together. That is, they brought together in one place a group of people who could work individually on their own project.

The first coworking space, the C-Base, was born in 1995 in Berlin by gathering a computer community.

Since then, these spaces have experienced a remarkable growth in the world. France is part of the same trend: there were 120 coworking spaces in 2013, 400 in 2013: nearly 600 spaces are listed in 2017.

The concept of coworking, which originated in the digital and collaborative economy, has since been taken up by corporate real estate professionals who have been developing dedicated brands for several years. The arrival of Blue Office, a subsidiary of Nexity, in 2014, and NextDoor, a subsidiary of Bouygues, signal the adaptation of the concept to the real estate market.

Coworking spaces were initially developed in city centers, with a public composed of independent workers (freelancers, entrepreneurs, self-employed), start-ups, micro-companies (TPE), before opening to employees, often from large groups.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/meYSM/1/

The BAP (Bureaux A Partager) group lists nearly 700 coworking spaces in France. Île-de-France alone accounts for nearly a third of them, three-quarters of which were created after 2010.

The Île-de-France Region maintains its own census of shared work spaces offered for rent: it thus counted at the beginning of 2018, 182 coworking spaces, 189 shared offices, to which 68 micro-working spaces set up in train stations.

Growing involvement of communities

While local authorities have long tried to encourage the development of telecenters, the emergence of third places and coworking spaces was initially the result of spontaneous associative dynamics.

Metropolises and regions are now showing their ambitions for the development of coworking spaces and third places.

According to a study conducted on behalf of the Assembly of French Communities (AdCF) and the Association of General Directors of French Communities (ADGCF), 88% of inter-municipalities plan to develop new collaborative work spaces. While in the past they tended to support the establishment of business hotels and incubators (with a view to providing accommodation), and then incubators, intermunicipalities now seem to favor coworking spaces, which account for 94% of the business real estate structures created in their territory over the past five years. 29% of them have formed partnerships with private players in the context of these workspaces.

The Île-de-France Region financially supported 68 workspace projects (coworking spaces, telecenters, business centers) between 2012 and 2015: 26 in Paris, 16 in Seine-et-Marne, 8 in Seine Saint-Denis, 6 in Hauts-de-Seine, 5 in Val-de-Marne, 2 in Essonne, 2 in Yvelines, 4 in Val-d'Oise. In 2016, it set itself the goal of creating a network of 1,000 third places in Île-de-France, with priority given to the areas with the fewest third places (suburban and rural areas).

It is a similar approach that had been implemented by the Aquitaine, Limousin and Poitou-Charentes regions through calls for expressions of interest common to the three regions in 2015 and 2016. The New Aquitaine region, which resulted from the merger of these three regions, now has 52 coworking spaces, 8 telecenters, and 12 business centers. The New Aquitaine Region plans a distributed network of about 300 coworking spaces and/or collaborative fablabs by 2020. Nearly half of the 120 new spaces should be supported by the Region in 4 years. This is the purpose of the new 2017- 2018 Call for expressions of interest Tiers-Lieux.

In November 2017, the Hauts-de-France region announced, in turn, that the strengthening of third places would be a pillar of its digital policy. The Region will thus support them up to 50% for their investments up to 30,000 euros in favor of animation actions. In addition, it will provide start-up assistance for new projects, as well as support over three years up to 45,000 euros.

Hybridization, diversification, new combinations: coworking is making its way into other third places

As part of an expedition dedicated to the mutations of third places in the digital era, the FING highlights the hybridization of various types of third places: coworking spaces, Fab labs, food labs, hackerspaces, recycling, accorderie etc. collective.

"The community is often a central element of these new places. The users of the space are not just users accessing services, but have a more active role: members of the community of the space, they contribute by bringing their skills, projects, ideas or even by proposing services... The animation and the event times, provided by the owners of the place, are essential in these spaces, in order to stimulate meetings and frictions between the users, who can themselves contribute to the animation and the functioning of these places. All these places claim to be communities, but this covers different realities: more or less animated, encouraging more or less sharing, etc. The limits of communities are also sometimes questioned: they are often built by skilfully juggling inclusion and exclusion: opening up sufficiently to a diversity of profiles, but building codes and values - even implicit ones - that will exclude others, at the risk of promoting "entre-soi".

The operation, governance and financial equilibrium of third places also require finding their own models. "This is where new combinations emerge; some places offer a whole range of services but also host third-party services (basket deliveries, relaxation classes, etc.), while others diversify their activities as different sources of income.

Moreover, " if coworking spaces and their close relatives are still dedicated above all to professional use, the evolution of business and work contributes to the emergence of other types of places that are no longer dedicated to work, but to activity, productive or not".

The Fing also points out the extension of this new collaborative way of life to the private sphere:"some third places now offer additional services such as a crèche, as is the case with the Ruche in Marseille, sports rooms, etc. Others go even further by offering workspaces and night spaces to live and work in the same space.Others go even further by offering work spaces and night spaces to live and work in the same space. Progressively, within these places, the boundaries between professional and personal life are blurred, coworkers become roommates, leisure and work intersect".

Coworking dominates the landscape of Third Places in Aquitaine

According to the survey conducted among third places in New Aquitaine, 71% of them offer coworking spaces and 41.5% individual offices openspace.coworking. While coworking dominates the landscape of Aquitaine's third places, 92% of them offer additional activities, with training and knowledge sharing in the lead, cultural or mediation spaces, followed closely by catering services. There are also concierge services (16%), stores (11%), recycling centers (9%), housing (7.7%) and digital mediation (6%).

While the associative model is the preferred form of third-party space in New Aquitaine, far ahead of private or public support alone, the survey highlights the increase in mixed support between private and public actors.

Chronicle of a hybridization

In Chronique d'une hybrydation, three researchers, Martine Azam, Nathalie Chauvac and Laurence Cloutier, analyze the emergence of a third place in Toulouse called "Le Multiple". They describe the genesis of a place that associates and combines FabLab, coworking space, events organization and implementation of a showroom where the creations of designers and artisans are visible from the street. Their analysis, which takes the form of a story told in three stages: (meeting between the "worlds" of the fablab and that of the social and solidarity economy, commitment and structuring), reveals the key role played by the place: at times pretext, at times engine, at times catalyst.

Third places and coworking spaces in rural areas

The promotion of coworking in rural areas is driven by an ambition to revitalize territories and town centers. It is based on the concept regenerative ecosystem developed by the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations. According to Franck Chaigneau, an expert in rural development at the CDC, "the concept is based on the observation that traditional economic development tools are inadequate for rural contexts. The vision of economic development viewed through the prism of business sectors, economic sectors, equipment or infrastructure seems ill-suited to low-density territories. Moreover, the metropolitan approach to innovation, focused on technological issues, concentration of talent and R&D facilities, also seems to exclude rural territories from the classic frameworks of territorial development.

According to Raphaël Besson, Director of Villes Innovations and researcher at the CNRS, third places "in rural areas" should make it possible to bring local services to lifé by welcoming self-employed workers, employees, or neo-ruralists into the centers. They appear as nerve centers to (re)activate the resources of rural territories and anchor new forms of innovation and development, outside of metropolitan contexts. They are conceived by public authorities as new tools for the regeneration of low-density territories.

A first generation of "telecenters" had already seen the light of day in the middle of the 2000s. Through a call for projects in 2005, the DATAR (at the time the DIACT) set a goal of 100 telecenters hosting 1000 jobs by 2007. Localized projects could receive 20,000 euros for four workstations. At the beginning of 2011, 35 telecenters in rural revitalization zones were operational. In 2011, the geographer Bruno Moriset drew up a severe assessment of these telecenters: " nearly half were empty most of the time, more than a quarter were complete flops. ..The creation of these centers was sometimes motivated by the windfall effect, without the elected officials and managers of the communities concerned having a prior vision of telework and digital development of the territory. (Out of 28 telecentres, 10 centers never saw teleworkers, 8 centers received between one and five regular or permanent teleworkers).

In 2011, Bruno Moriset drew a series of lessons from this relative failure: " To be successful, a telecenter must provideself-employed or salaried teleworkers with added value that justifies a move, and the payment of even a modest rent. This added value can be provided in several areas:

  • a professional working environment, especially for welcoming customers, and flexible in use (accessible 24 hours a day and 365 days a year for regular users)
  • a technical device of a higher level than what teleworkers can expect at home, secure, and able to satisfy companies that employ salaried teleworkers
  • animation and services to create conviviality, social ties, and "networking" ".
The promotion of coworking in rural areas has given rise to new regional or departmental initiatives over the past two years: in the Perche, Verdon, Orne, Haut-Jura, southern Ardèche, or in Aquitaine in Mont de Marsan, Hagetmau, Mimizan or Captieux.

The emphasis is now on networking, professionalization, animation, and linking or crossing with other forms of third places, such as public service centers (MSAP), digital public spaces (EPN), or incubators. In Lozère, the Solozère network of third places, co-sponsored by the Maison de l'Emploi et de la Cohésion Sociale and Lozère Développement, offers a range of free services (broadband access, legal support, collaborative tools, etc.): it is based on 13 reception areas (9 of which are attached to Maisons de Service au Public).

Four typical profiles of coworking space users

The users of coworking spaces depend on the services they offer, their specialization, but also on their location. In addition to shared facilities (printers, meeting rooms, broadband network) and legal domiciliation, they come looking for social ties, conviviality and networking opportunities, which are always advantageous for self-employed workers looking for contracts.

These places also allow for the circulation of information, which is beneficial to the small businesses housed there.

The IAU (Institut d'aménagement et d'urbanisme de la Région parisienne) distinguishes four user profiles of coworking spaces:
  • The young graduate who has become self-employed (25-35 years old) after his or her studies or a short period in a company. The status is generally that of microentrepreneur, then evolves towards that of EURL/SARL, according to the dynamics of their sector of activity.
  • The small business in a start-up or growth phase, managed by 2-3 founders under 30 years of age who create a limited company and employ employees. A transitional occupation is sometimes followed by a move to larger offices.
  • The self-employed person with business experience (35-45 years old), who preferred to practice alone in his initial field of competence, or in professional reconversion.
  • The nomadic employee or teleworker, a rarer status (12% of users) but one that is likely to develop. The share of teleworkers is increasing as this practice develops in the organization of companies. 20% of the spaces welcome large groups, often motivated by the search for innovative work methods and a more open culture.

Freelancers are not the only ones to populate these spaces

According to the 2017 BAP Coworking Index, coworking spaces in France host 20% of employees from large groups.

According to the Global CoWorking Survey, in France, 18.5% of employees of organizations whose employer pays for their monthly subscription are hosted by them. (Worldwide, the average is 26%).

In a survey conducted in 2015, BAP and the Foundry underlined that 49.5% of coworkers are employees of small businesses, SMEs or associations: they rent CoWorking spaces for varying lengths of time.

Six types of coworking spaces

According to the 2017 Coworking Index compiled by BAP, the motivations for coworking are "networking and meeting people, location (coworking spaces are often located in very attractive areas but unaffordable as individual offices), and then price.

Coworking spaces do not seek to create the same "types" of sociability.

Studying how coworking spaces can help "break the isolation" of workers, Orange Lab and CELSA researchers have highlighted four criteria that divide the operating logic of these spaces:

  • their internal architecture, notably in the proportion ofopen spaces and closed individual offices
  • the composition of the population using them (the diversity of professions and categories reflects the reality of mutual aid)
  • the way in which the manager intervenes in their functioning (the managers or certain participants play a determining role, by their "animation", to encourage sharing and cooperation between coworkers)
  • its degree of openness to "external events
These four criteria allowed them to highlight six categories of coworking spaces:
  • The "accompanying ECs": they aim above all to help coworkers, whether through the organization of training, assistance in business management or support in accessing calls for projects or public aid: it is a logic of support.
  • The"revenue generating ECs": in a logic of maximizing revenues: they offer individual closed offices, which is economically interesting since the rates for these offices are higher than those charged for renting space in an open space, and constitute a more secure and sustainable source of revenue; they are open to all professions, which naturally increases the potential clientele of the space. They host external events by renting out their walls, which is also a significant source of revenue given the rates charged in the Parisian event industry.
  • The"EC nurseries": Operating in a real estate logic, they aim above all to host entrepreneurs or start-ups, in the image of a business nursery, allowing any trade to be hosted. The collaborative dimension is put in the background, in favor of a more real estate vision of the space.
  • The ECs are the most faithful to the origins of the movement: they are in a logic of collaboration by category of profession or by center of interest (e.g. the professions of publishing, the developers of Microsoft applications...) to facilitate the interactions between the coworkers. Thus, many events are organized to create a "community" or a "second family". These spaces also host external events, but mostly offer training and seminars on practices related to the profession in question, etc.
  •  Associative ECs :In a community logic, they wish to create a collective gathered around a profession, common values and a real desire to work together. Adopting an operation very similar to that of associations, this type of space also has the most fragile economic model: its sources of income are entirely linked to the use of the space by the coworkers. There are no individual closed offices or hosting of external events. To function, this type of space therefore needs a solid base of coworkers.
  • Coworking spaces "meeting gas pedals": they operate according to a logic of creating networks (professional or not) in an informal setting. The collaborative dimension is less advanced, but joint projects are not excluded. These spaces can be located in strategic and busy places (like the Sentier, in Paris, for example) or near business incubators. There are generally fewer permanent coworkers in this type of space, where mixing and passing through are preferred to permanent links and sedentariness. These spaces have sometimes become places of passage and hosting of very popular events, somewhat abandoning the community dimension.

Interest in "coworking spaces" reflected in online searches

Wondering about the "war of words" (which is also a war of precedence and territory) that the actors of the collaborative ecosystem are waging around what "third places" are or should be, researchers have undertaken to use Google Trends data to evaluate the demand (and the craze) for the various terms associated with third places.
  • They thus noted the low number of requests concerning the term "third places" (particularly rare), with a very relative increase since 2013.
  • The results are richer (and more massive) for the terms "Makerspace", "fablab", "coworking space" or "Hackerspace".
  • The term "Fablab" is meeting the strongest interest with a strong and continuous growth in searches since 2012.
  • The terms "business center" or "telecenter", which were more popular between 2004 and 2006, are gradually being replaced by "coworking space".
  • Regarding the query "Coworking Space", it has been growing strongly since February 2014. In terms of interest generated, the term "Coworking Space" topped the rankings in June 2017 of the many terms associated with third places.

Growth of spaces dedicated to coworking and development of work sharing in "third places".

The Ministry of Territorial Cohesion has just launched a mission in charge of formulating proposals to develop collaborative work spaces, including in medium-sized cities and rural areas.

"The diversity of coworking space models reflects the diversity of needs. Medium-sized cities and rural areas do not always benefit from these transitions, which need to be supported in order to expand and spread them. In this perspective, the conditions for success must be identified so that everyone can mobilize them in favor of the territories of France.

According to the mission letter, the aim is to"establish a shared diagnosis with local stakeholders on the dynamics of coworking spaces in order to enable the government to identify the most suitable models for the territories, as well as the most effective economic models" . An initial progress report will be submitted at the end of March, and a more in-depth report at the end of June.

  • According to the IPSOS Revolution At work survey, 52% of French people would like to work more often elsewhere than in their workplace: in coworking spaces or cafés.
  • According to the latest data from the Caisse nationale du réseau des Urssaf (Acoss), nearly 1.2 million people were registered as microentrepreneurs at the end of June 2017: only slightly more than half (686,000) declared a turnover.
  • Malt and Ouishare estimate that there are 830,000 freelancers: self-employed without employees in professional occupations (their number increased from 126% in 10 years).
  • 25% of the employees practice telework: while 6% practice it in a contractualized framework, 19% work remotely in an informal and non-contractualized way.
Driven by the development of telecommuting and the rise of new forms of self-employment, shared work spaces or collaborative work spaces are flourishing in the region.

To take the measure of the phenomenon, it is probably appropriate to distinguish two facets in this rise of coworking spaces:

  • the opening of places mainly or exclusively dedicated to work sharing, whether associative or commercial
  • the deployment of "shared work spaces" in other "third places": digital public spaces, fablabs, incubators, business hotels.
At both the local and regional levels, public actors are often the primary partners and supporters of collaborative workspaces.

Nearly 700 spaces dedicated to coworking, unevenly distributed over the territory

The term coworking was first used in 1999 by Bernie de Koven, an American game designer. It referred to a way of working together, as equals, breaking the usual codes of hierarchical work that separates people by rank and level of pay. The first coworking places that were created moved away from the original definition, to propose working environments in which it is possible to work alone, together. That is, they brought together in one place a group of people who could work individually on their own project.

The first coworking space, the C-Base, was born in 1995 in Berlin by gathering a computer community.

Since then, these spaces have experienced a remarkable growth in the world. France is part of the same trend: there were 120 coworking spaces in 2013, 400 in 2013: nearly 600 spaces are listed in 2017.

The concept of coworking, which originated in the digital and collaborative economy, has since been taken up by corporate real estate professionals who have been developing dedicated brands for several years. The arrival of Blue Office, a subsidiary of Nexity, in 2014, and NextDoor, a subsidiary of Bouygues, signal the adaptation of the concept to the real estate market.

Coworking spaces were initially developed in city centers, with a public composed of independent workers (freelancers, entrepreneurs, self-employed), start-ups, micro-companies (TPE), before opening to employees, often from large groups.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/meYSM/1/

The BAP (Bureaux A Partager) group lists nearly 700 coworking spaces in France. Île-de-France alone accounts for nearly a third of them, three-quarters of which were created after 2010.

The Île-de-France Region maintains its own census of shared work spaces offered for rent: it thus counted at the beginning of 2018, 182 coworking spaces, 189 shared offices, to which 68 micro-working spaces set up in train stations.

Growing involvement of communities

While local authorities have long tried to encourage the development of telecenters, the emergence of third places and coworking spaces was initially the result of spontaneous associative dynamics.

Metropolises and regions are now showing their ambitions for the development of coworking spaces and third places.

According to a study conducted on behalf of the Assembly of French Communities (AdCF) and the Association of General Directors of French Communities (ADGCF), 88% of inter-municipalities plan to develop new collaborative work spaces. While in the past they tended to support the establishment of business hotels and incubators (with a view to providing accommodation), and then incubators, intermunicipalities now seem to favor coworking spaces, which account for 94% of the business real estate structures created in their territory over the past five years. 29% of them have formed partnerships with private players in the context of these workspaces.

The Île-de-France Region financially supported 68 workspace projects (coworking spaces, telecenters, business centers) between 2012 and 2015: 26 in Paris, 16 in Seine-et-Marne, 8 in Seine Saint-Denis, 6 in Hauts-de-Seine, 5 in Val-de-Marne, 2 in Essonne, 2 in Yvelines, 4 in Val-d'Oise. In 2016, it set itself the goal of creating a network of 1,000 third places in Île-de-France, with priority given to the areas with the fewest third places (suburban and rural areas).

It is a similar approach that had been implemented by the Aquitaine, Limousin and Poitou-Charentes regions through calls for expressions of interest common to the three regions in 2015 and 2016. The New Aquitaine region, which resulted from the merger of these three regions, now has 52 coworking spaces, 8 telecenters, and 12 business centers. The New Aquitaine Region plans a distributed network of about 300 coworking spaces and/or collaborative fablabs by 2020. Nearly half of the 120 new spaces should be supported by the Region in 4 years. This is the purpose of the new 2017- 2018 Call for expressions of interest Tiers-Lieux.

In November 2017, the Hauts-de-France region announced, in turn, that the strengthening of third places would be a pillar of its digital policy. The Region will thus support them up to 50% for their investments up to 30,000 euros in favor of animation actions. In addition, it will provide start-up assistance for new projects, as well as support over three years up to 45,000 euros.

Hybridization, diversification, new combinations: coworking is making its way into other third places

As part of an expedition dedicated to the mutations of third places in the digital era, the FING highlights the hybridization of various types of third places: coworking spaces, Fab labs, food labs, hackerspaces, recycling, accorderie etc. collective.

"The community is often a central element of these new places. The users of the space are not just users accessing services, but have a more active role: members of the community of the space, they contribute by bringing their skills, projects, ideas or even by proposing services... The animation and the event times, provided by the owners of the place, are essential in these spaces, in order to stimulate meetings and frictions between the users, who can themselves contribute to the animation and the functioning of these places. All these places claim to be communities, but this covers different realities: more or less animated, encouraging more or less sharing, etc. The limits of communities are also sometimes questioned: they are often built by skilfully juggling inclusion and exclusion: opening up sufficiently to a diversity of profiles, but building codes and values - even implicit ones - that will exclude others, at the risk of promoting "entre-soi".

The operation, governance and financial equilibrium of third places also require finding their own models. "This is where new combinations emerge; some places offer a whole range of services but also host third-party services (basket deliveries, relaxation classes, etc.), while others diversify their activities as different sources of income.

Moreover, " if coworking spaces and their close relatives are still dedicated above all to professional use, the evolution of business and work contributes to the emergence of other types of places that are no longer dedicated to work, but to activity, productive or not".

The Fing also points out the extension of this new collaborative way of life to the private sphere:"some third places now offer additional services such as a crèche, as is the case with the Ruche in Marseille, sports rooms, etc. Others go even further by offering workspaces and night spaces to live and work in the same space.Others go even further by offering work spaces and night spaces to live and work in the same space. Progressively, within these places, the boundaries between professional and personal life are blurred, coworkers become roommates, leisure and work intersect".

Coworking dominates the landscape of Third Places in Aquitaine

According to the survey conducted among third places in New Aquitaine, 71% of them offer coworking spaces and 41.5% individual offices openspace.coworking. While coworking dominates the landscape of Aquitaine's third places, 92% of them offer additional activities, with training and knowledge sharing in the lead, cultural or mediation spaces, followed closely by catering services. There are also concierge services (16%), stores (11%), recycling centers (9%), housing (7.7%) and digital mediation (6%).

While the associative model is the preferred form of third-party space in New Aquitaine, far ahead of private or public support alone, the survey highlights the increase in mixed support between private and public actors.

Chronicle of a hybridization

In Chronique d'une hybrydation, three researchers, Martine Azam, Nathalie Chauvac and Laurence Cloutier, analyze the emergence of a third place in Toulouse called "Le Multiple". They describe the genesis of a place that associates and combines FabLab, coworking space, events organization and implementation of a showroom where the creations of designers and artisans are visible from the street. Their analysis, which takes the form of a story told in three stages: (meeting between the "worlds" of the fablab and that of the social and solidarity economy, commitment and structuring), reveals the key role played by the place: at times pretext, at times engine, at times catalyst.

Third places and coworking spaces in rural areas

The promotion of coworking in rural areas is driven by an ambition to revitalize territories and town centers. It is based on the concept regenerative ecosystem developed by the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations. According to Franck Chaigneau, an expert in rural development at the CDC, "the concept is based on the observation that traditional economic development tools are inadequate for rural contexts. The vision of economic development viewed through the prism of business sectors, economic sectors, equipment or infrastructure seems ill-suited to low-density territories. Moreover, the metropolitan approach to innovation, focused on technological issues, concentration of talent and R&D facilities, also seems to exclude rural territories from the classic frameworks of territorial development.

According to Raphaël Besson, Director of Villes Innovations and researcher at the CNRS, third places "in rural areas" should make it possible to bring local services to lifé by welcoming self-employed workers, employees, or neo-ruralists into the centers. They appear as nerve centers to (re)activate the resources of rural territories and anchor new forms of innovation and development, outside of metropolitan contexts. They are conceived by public authorities as new tools for the regeneration of low-density territories.

A first generation of "telecenters" had already seen the light of day in the middle of the 2000s. Through a call for projects in 2005, the DATAR (at the time the DIACT) set a goal of 100 telecenters hosting 1000 jobs by 2007. Localized projects could receive 20,000 euros for four workstations. At the beginning of 2011, 35 telecenters in rural revitalization zones were operational. In 2011, the geographer Bruno Moriset drew up a severe assessment of these telecenters: " nearly half were empty most of the time, more than a quarter were complete flops. ..The creation of these centers was sometimes motivated by the windfall effect, without the elected officials and managers of the communities concerned having a prior vision of telework and digital development of the territory. (Out of 28 telecentres, 10 centers never saw teleworkers, 8 centers received between one and five regular or permanent teleworkers).

In 2011, Bruno Moriset drew a series of lessons from this relative failure: " To be successful, a telecenter must provideself-employed or salaried teleworkers with added value that justifies a move, and the payment of even a modest rent. This added value can be provided in several areas:

  • a professional working environment, especially for welcoming customers, and flexible in use (accessible 24 hours a day and 365 days a year for regular users)
  • a technical device of a higher level than what teleworkers can expect at home, secure, and able to satisfy companies that employ salaried teleworkers
  • animation and services to create conviviality, social ties, and "networking" ".
The promotion of coworking in rural areas has given rise to new regional or departmental initiatives over the past two years: in the Perche, Verdon, Orne, Haut-Jura, southern Ardèche, or in Aquitaine in Mont de Marsan, Hagetmau, Mimizan or Captieux.

The emphasis is now on networking, professionalization, animation, and linking or crossing with other forms of third places, such as public service centers (MSAP), digital public spaces (EPN), or incubators. In Lozère, the Solozère network of third places, co-sponsored by the Maison de l'Emploi et de la Cohésion Sociale and Lozère Développement, offers a range of free services (broadband access, legal support, collaborative tools, etc.): it is based on 13 reception areas (9 of which are attached to Maisons de Service au Public).

Four typical profiles of coworking space users

The users of coworking spaces depend on the services they offer, their specialization, but also on their location. In addition to shared facilities (printers, meeting rooms, broadband network) and legal domiciliation, they come looking for social ties, conviviality and networking opportunities, which are always advantageous for self-employed workers looking for contracts.

These places also allow for the circulation of information, which is beneficial to the small businesses housed there.

The IAU (Institut d'aménagement et d'urbanisme de la Région parisienne) distinguishes four user profiles of coworking spaces:
  • The young graduate who has become self-employed (25-35 years old) after his or her studies or a short period in a company. The status is generally that of microentrepreneur, then evolves towards that of EURL/SARL, according to the dynamics of their sector of activity.
  • The small business in a start-up or growth phase, managed by 2-3 founders under 30 years of age who create a limited company and employ employees. A transitional occupation is sometimes followed by a move to larger offices.
  • The self-employed person with business experience (35-45 years old), who preferred to practice alone in his initial field of competence, or in professional reconversion.
  • The nomadic employee or teleworker, a rarer status (12% of users) but one that is likely to develop. The share of teleworkers is increasing as this practice develops in the organization of companies. 20% of the spaces welcome large groups, often motivated by the search for innovative work methods and a more open culture.

Freelancers are not the only ones to populate these spaces

According to the 2017 BAP Coworking Index, coworking spaces in France host 20% of employees from large groups.

According to the Global CoWorking Survey, in France, 18.5% of employees of organizations whose employer pays for their monthly subscription are hosted by them. (Worldwide, the average is 26%).

In a survey conducted in 2015, BAP and the Foundry underlined that 49.5% of coworkers are employees of small businesses, SMEs or associations: they rent CoWorking spaces for varying lengths of time.

Six types of coworking spaces

According to the 2017 Coworking Index compiled by BAP, the motivations for coworking are "networking and meeting people, location (coworking spaces are often located in very attractive areas but unaffordable as individual offices), and then price.

Coworking spaces do not seek to create the same "types" of sociability.

Studying how coworking spaces can help "break the isolation" of workers, Orange Lab and CELSA researchers have highlighted four criteria that divide the operating logic of these spaces:

  • their internal architecture, notably in the proportion ofopen spaces and closed individual offices
  • the composition of the population using them (the diversity of professions and categories reflects the reality of mutual aid)
  • the way in which the manager intervenes in their functioning (the managers or certain participants play a determining role, by their "animation", to encourage sharing and cooperation between coworkers)
  • its degree of openness to "external events
These four criteria allowed them to highlight six categories of coworking spaces:
  • The "accompanying ECs": they aim above all to help coworkers, whether through the organization of training, assistance in business management or support in accessing calls for projects or public aid: it is a logic of support.
  • The"revenue generating ECs": in a logic of maximizing revenues: they offer individual closed offices, which is economically interesting since the rates for these offices are higher than those charged for renting space in an open space, and constitute a more secure and sustainable source of revenue; they are open to all professions, which naturally increases the potential clientele of the space. They host external events by renting out their walls, which is also a significant source of revenue given the rates charged in the Parisian event industry.
  • The"EC nurseries": Operating in a real estate logic, they aim above all to host entrepreneurs or start-ups, in the image of a business nursery, allowing any trade to be hosted. The collaborative dimension is put in the background, in favor of a more real estate vision of the space.
  • The ECs are the most faithful to the origins of the movement: they are in a logic of collaboration by category of profession or by center of interest (e.g. the professions of publishing, the developers of Microsoft applications...) to facilitate the interactions between the coworkers. Thus, many events are organized to create a "community" or a "second family". These spaces also host external events, but mostly offer training and seminars on practices related to the profession in question, etc.
  •  Associative ECs :In a community logic, they wish to create a collective gathered around a profession, common values and a real desire to work together. Adopting an operation very similar to that of associations, this type of space also has the most fragile economic model: its sources of income are entirely linked to the use of the space by the coworkers. There are no individual closed offices or hosting of external events. To function, this type of space therefore needs a solid base of coworkers.
  • Coworking spaces "meeting gas pedals": they operate according to a logic of creating networks (professional or not) in an informal setting. The collaborative dimension is less advanced, but joint projects are not excluded. These spaces can be located in strategic and busy places (like the Sentier, in Paris, for example) or near business incubators. There are generally fewer permanent coworkers in this type of space, where mixing and passing through are preferred to permanent links and sedentariness. These spaces have sometimes become places of passage and hosting of very popular events, somewhat abandoning the community dimension.

Interest in "coworking spaces" reflected in online searches

Wondering about the "war of words" (which is also a war of precedence and territory) that the actors of the collaborative ecosystem are waging around what "third places" are or should be, researchers have undertaken to use Google Trends data to evaluate the demand (and the craze) for the various terms associated with third places.
  • They thus noted the low number of requests concerning the term "third places" (particularly rare), with a very relative increase since 2013.
  • The results are richer (and more massive) for the terms "Makerspace", "fablab", "coworking space" or "Hackerspace".
  • The term "Fablab" is meeting the strongest interest with a strong and continuous growth in searches since 2012.
  • The terms "business center" or "telecenter", which were more popular between 2004 and 2006, are gradually being replaced by "coworking space".
  • Regarding the query "Coworking Space", it has been growing strongly since February 2014. In terms of interest generated, the term "Coworking Space" topped the rankings in June 2017 of the many terms associated with third places.

Labo Société Numérique

Labo République Française Agence nationale de cohésion des territoires
Growth of spaces dedicated to coworking and development of work sharing in "third places".