Groupe Chronos

Through his research, Marc Augé fortunately elaborated the works of Michel Foucault and Michel de Certeau Marc Augé has shown that our society has produced 'space'. These are places without spirit, without character, without a soul. (James Howard Kunstler calls it, 'places not worth caring about.') No one lives there: people only pass through. They are the highway interchanges, airport halls, and certain commercial buildings. Halting is prohibited. Along side these spaces that are meeting places and the anchor of our identity (we are from which village, which district, and even which building?) appear - non-places. They are non-identities. There, time accelerates. A necessary reminder of the failure of society to produce urban places in step with the requirements of contemporary mobility. The quote is from an article outlining a lavish toolkit for digital worlds, thrown together in a particularly intelligent way by Yann Leroux.

From non-places to third place

It is precisely the extension of this analysis that brings us to the idea of third-places, or at least what we claim it to be. This apt term coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg took another turn today (Economist: New Oases). It is about going beyond the recognition of the urgent need for a third place between home and work, it is about imagining an urban space in step with swelling expansion not only by decades of automobile mobility, but mostly by the unexpected extension of our daily practices and countless social technical networks; of course we are referring to geographical extensions, but not only physical expansion. The de-synchronization of time imposes other tempos, in other words new ways of governing, therefore new stops, urban transits, and the between places.

The city goes through a re-appropriation

Here in effect, it is necessary to reintroduce Michel de Foucault and Michel de Certeau, suggested by Yann Leroux. Behind the concept of 'Heterotopia' there is first, the inventiveness of children, of citizens, of urban residents to invent 'space-time' to match their imagination to the intersection of not only their needs, cemeteries, and prisons but also the children's tent in the attic or Club Med (in the 60's). While the second reminds us that innovation derived from individuals in no way exonerates the industry players and especially services to work on the innovations that essentially accompany the evolution of society. But this is radically changing the approach to these issues. There is no more speculating about the applications and imagining what might be the answers. It must be done with a concerted effort. We are in a different light, inductive, where the user is admitted as the "place" of the re- appropriation, or as the creation. He observes, said Michel de Certeau, "the difference in using imposed products, which creates a freedom by which each task helps to live better in the social order and the violence of things."

Dreams of a transit rich city is broken up over metro-to-work

So, how do we not prohibit stopping? Extend it? Enrich it? In short, how do we make it urban? Indeed it is presumptuous to imagine something, which we know is not dictated, but by the way it is meshed to the ordinary daily routine: the morning treadmill? What time do I drop the kids off at day care? What time is the bus? sending emails? and the chit chat, the network access, Is there any coffee? Those and other things, is the city that Michel de Certeau has repeatedly called for the users themselves to intervene. But how does city-transit work when dreams are broken up on the recurrent metro to work route and where "domestic" relationships are categorized as "necessary" in the work agenda. The agonizing struggle of a work-life balance is not the responsibility of the transportation operator, he becomes one of the company, for the basic reason of work productivity, therefore, that "studies on 'presentee-ism' show that physical presence is not the key to collaboration."

The Daily Deviations

However companies are convinced that productivity is less in the path of the small gray Transilien than in information communication networks, which not only connect employees to the company but a good part of them between one another. Companies try, with flexibility to bridge the ever-growing abyss between two worlds who, do not cease to travel farther apart, work and home (family life, professional life, the big difference). The study commissioned by the Union Nationale des Associations Familiales (UNAF) came before the European Commission. It asked the member countries to conduct a formal investigation by 2012 on the reconciliation between work life and family life. Reading the survey is revealing. The questions asked highlight the difficulties many working parents face. It is equally notable for the absence of any questions about travel. Well, not exactly, as "telecommuting and working from home" was the first suggestion, which resonated (25.3%) but was subsequently followed by "simple rules of everyday life, such as: avoid meetings early in the morning or late the evening" (23.8%).

Between-times and Between-places

Try to live in Belleville and work every day on the Saclay plateau. We followed these travelers along their improbable route, sometimes painful but always long and erratic. We began to realize how difficult this commute was. The thoughtlessness of the system is disastrously tearing apart the areas that are beyond a reasonable distance, all while keeping these networks open for all other itineraries. Should the supply of mobility always be summed up by the capacity to move people from point A to point B? Are we unable to imagine option other than cramming ourselves onto a crowded line 13 train at 8:13am? Can we not imagine between places? At the junctions of the transportation networks? These are the current issues. They will soon be dealt with from two different angles. First, at the UTP/Chronos symposium on March 4th themed: "The City in networks;" then at the Chronos Forum: "From one kind of mobility ... to another. Mobilities and de-mobilites combine.

Bahn City or City Transit

A pleasant surprise awaited us on this route undergoing construction. A 2007/2009 program (See interim report) aims to experiment with new ways of planning and of designing urban development around the train stations. This is the goal of the Franco-German BahnVille 2, which calls for "urbanism derived out of uses" (p. 64). The action-research aims to promote urbanism oriented towards rail transit: "The project is not just the development of one single pre-determined site, but rather a plan to improve the articulations from multiple fields - land, urban renewal, transportation, travel, services - which contribute to the production of the city." It is comprised of four axes: "accessible land", "territory directed towards rail transportation", "train stations integrated into the city," and "residents brought to the train." Even if the idea that we are launching is not limited to train stations, to further advance these plans they must take advantage of the length of the rail network.

Read the original article in French.