Groupe Chronos

Yasmine Abbas* calls neo-nomads today's hyper mobile individuals. For the designer, they cannot just be seen as people on the move (see also on this topic the study on "hypermobility" conducted by Chronos). They also have mental skills in a sense that, when they travel to foreign places, they kind of adapt to different cultures. Finally, neo-nomads have an intensive use of digital technologies. To say it briefly, they are self-centered, flexible and multi-masks (click here to read Philippe Gargov's paper on "Le jeu d'adresses ou les masques du nomade").

With those physical, mental and digital characteristics, neo-nomads interact in a specific way with spaces and territories. When needed, they go beyond official functions of places. They use them according to their needs, with creativity, sometimes combining several functions. Neo-nomads become territories' "craftmen". That being said, being a neo-nomad can be really stressful. Yasmine Abbas highlights five main constraints :

• disorientation (loss of referents),
• fear (as missing flights or luggage's loss),
• body fatigue (due to the jetlag),
• less social efficiency (loss of integrity, productivity, accountability...),
• wastes (unused spaces, loss of time...).

So, how can design and technologies address these costs of mobilities ? According to her, designers should introduce transience in urban services. In the city, the concept refers to the creation of adaptable and flexible services, in order to cope with the diverse needs that neo-nomads can have during their trips. Those services have to be thought both at the individuals' level and at the communities' level. As for the individuals' level, services must be situational and relational, meaning that they have to adjust to everybody's experiences. At the community level, those services should encourage the sharing of spaces, digital tools and other resources (see also the report on the New Sharing Economy).

One should finally keep in mind that neo-nomads consume more spaces and pollute more than other people. As such, Yasmine Abbas considers that sharing is part of the answer to address this issue. To conclude, she reminds us that neo-nomads are not always willing to be so. But how do you draw the line between the ones who have chosen to become neo-nomads and the ones who haven't?

* Yasmine Abbas was speakerin at Liftconference 2011 (Geneva).