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Rôle et limites des tiers-lieux dans la fabrique des villes contemporaines

Role and Limits of Third Places in the Fabrication of Contemporary Cities
Raphaël Besson

Résumés

La notion de tiers-lieux se développe de manière essentiellement empirique. Elle recouvre des réalités multiples, comme des projets de coworking spaces, de living labs et de fab labs. Certains tiers-lieux s’intéressent tout particulièrement à la ville et aux nouvelles conditions de la fabrique urbaine. En s’appuyant sur des méthodes d’innovation ouverte et le potentiel des outils numériques, ces tiers-lieux défendent l’idée d’un urbanisme qui ne soit plus le patrimoine exclusif d’experts, mais qui soit co-produit avec les habitants et les utilisateurs des villes. Ils défendent un droit à l’infrastructure des villes, que cette infrastructure soit matérielle ou immatérielle. Pour interroger le rôle et la portée des tiers-lieux dans la fabrique des villes contemporaines, nous nous appuyons sur l’analyse d’un ensemble de tiers-lieux français et espagnols positionnés sur le thème de l’urbanisme. Notre analyse permet de mieux comprendre le rôle des tiers-lieux dans la production urbaine. Elle met également en exergue les difficultés de construction d’une politique urbaine de tiers-lieux.

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Introduction

1The integration of technical innovations in the fabric of cities is not a new phenomenon. Without going back to Antiquity and the origin of cities, one may cite the urban projects of the architect-urbanists of the early 20th century. La Ville Contemporaine by Le Corbusier (1922), Broadacre City by Frank Lloyd Wright (1931), Manhattan 1950 by Raymond Hood (1929), and also La Cité Idéale by Tony Garnier feature the latest technological advances: integration of new construction materials (steel, reinforced concrete), immense monolithic sky-scrapers, an obsession with rapid transport (the elevator, the underground, automobiles), arial perspectives.

  • 1 We refer here to immersive technologies, RFID systems, sensors, enhanced reality tools, contactless (...)
  • 2 The Masdar Project in Abou-Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) or New Songdo City in South Corea.
  • 3 22@Urban Lab (Barcelona), Campus de l’innovation (Grenoble), innovation sector (Montréal, Boston), (...)

2The present age aligns itself with this perspective. Digital technologies1 increasingly participate in the fabric of urbanism. Its fields of application are many and concern such domains as mobility, security, urban planning, environment, sociability, and culture, as well as leisure activities. Certain economic operators and communities attempt to intensify this process by planning smart city projects,2 technological districts, sectors of the sciences or innovation.3 These projects transform the public space of cities into veritable showrooms and laboratories for experimenting with new technologies – this on the underlying hypothesis that the technologies would be able by themselves to produce positive effects for the urban and socio-economic development of cities.

3Progressively, digital technology is imposing its logic on cities, and beyond the technological tools, a ‘culture numérique’ (digital culture) is becoming diffused throughout the whole of urban society (Douheihi, 2011). Thus one witnesses the appearance of strange urban spaces characterised by collaborative and hybrid forms, which have their ‘origines dans celles de la micro-informatique libre’ (origins in those of free micro-computing) (Ambrosino and Guillon, 2016). And often, these emergent forms are termed ‘Third Places’. This notion was constructed by the American sociologist Ray Oldenburg in a book that appeared in 1989, The Great, Good Place (Oldenburg, 1989). In that work, R. Oldenburg (1989) studies the hybrid urban places which belong neither to home nor to work and are situated between public and the private spaces. Thus Oldenburg identifies a certain number of cafés, bookstores and intermediate spaces where individuals can meet and get together to exchange in an informal way. For this author, these Third Places play a role essential for civil society, democracy and civic engagement.

  • 4 Antoine Burret defines Third Spaces as ‘des lieux de partage, de socialisation, mais aussi d’innova (...)
  • 5 It is notable that since 2012, Third Places have also been developing in peri-urban and rural areas (...)

4Today the notion of Third Place is enjoying a renewal of interest (Burret, 2015).4 The present concept takes up the idea of a hybrid space which facilitates encounters between heterogeneous actors. But it has a tendency to accentuate the productive capacity of Third Places, analysed as new spaces of work and innovation adapted to the era of the economy of knowledge and digitalization (Besson, 2014b; Azam et al., 2015; Liefooghe, 2016). The development of Third Spaces also tends to be concentrated in city centres, at the heart of urban and digital culture. The metropolitan territory, with its sites of production and research, its density, its social and functional diversity and its multiple amenities, produces a series of external elements which prove essential to the functioning and attractiveness of Third Places (Moriset, 2014).5

  • 6 Definition of the European Union, 2009.
  • 7 Fab labs (abbreviation for ‘fabrication laboratory’) are defined by the FING (Fondation Internet No (...)

5Despite attempts at conceptualisation, the notion of Third Place still suffers from a certain conceptual vagueness. It overlays multiple realities, such as ‘coworking spaces’ (shared and collaborative work-spaces), living labs (‘open full-size innovation environments where users participate in the creation of new services, products and societal infrastructures’6) or fab labs.7 Some Third Places organise themselves around themes such as environment, health, agriculture, scientific culture or design. Others concentrate particularly on the city and the new conditions of the urban fabric. Relying on the methods of open innovation and the potential of digital tools, these Third Places maintain the idea of an urbanism which would be co-produced together with the inhabitants and users of cities. They maintain a right to the infrastructure of cities (Corsín, 2014), whether that infrastructure is material (public spaces and equipment, urban amenities, places of production, networks of water, gas, electricity) or immaterial (urban services, data, urban planning, digital networks, the memory and intangible heritage of cities).

  • 8 With 360 spaces identified in 2015 for more than 10,000 co-workers, co-working spaces represent the (...)
  • 9 Recently, enterprises such as Leroy Merlin, Renault, Airbus, Safran, Air Liquide and Alcatel-Lucent (...)

6In order to examine the role and the scope of Third Places in the fabric of contemporary cities, we use as a basis the analysis of a group of Third Places oriented toward the theme of urbanism. As a result, Third Places having an essentially economic function (co-working spaces,8 fab labs and living labs within enterprises9), or thematised in different fields, have been excluded from our study. Another criterion has been determinant in identifying our case studies: namely, the feasibility of the analysis and access to information, the actors and strategic documents. Accordingly, we have selected projects in which we have previously intervened as researcher or evaluator (with the exception of the TUBÁ in Lyons and Grands Voisins in Paris). Finally, it has seemed to us essential to identify cases where the public sector was involved, both in the processes of emergence and in the functioning of the Third Place.

7On the basis of this analytical grid, we have selected six Third Places, including four French examples (La TUBÁ, Lyons; La Casemate, Grenoble; Les Grands Voisins, Paris; and the urban Living Lab project in Marseille) and two Spanish locales (the Laboratorios ciudadanos in Madrid and the Ateneus de Fabricació in Barcelona). Our analysis was therefore not limited to a single city or case study. Rather, on the contrary, we have sought to multiply the cases in order to define, beyond the different socio-economic and urban contexts, the essential characteristics of Third Places having an urban purpose. Undoubtedly, the analysis of a single locale would have allowed us to assemble empirical data of better quality. But it seems to us that the diversity of size, of economic model or of functioning of Third Places constitutes one of the characteristics of these spaces – a heterogeneity which we wish to address within this article. Finally, let us stipulate that the Third Places selected are recent, with some not yet having produced all their material effects, such as the urban living lab of Marseille, which is still in the planning stage. Nevertheless, they are sufficiently developed to permit observation of a certain number of processes, spaces or realisations. Study of the different Third Places is conducted by means of an analysis essentially qualitative. Our empirical material has been constituted on the basis of observation of the Third Places and the conducting of twenty or so interviews with the principal persons responsible and the users of the Third Places. Through these interviews, we have sought better to understand the origin and functioning of these spaces, as well as the results obtained for the structure and management of the cities. This work on the interviews was completed by the study of recent documents: press dossiers, research articles, studies and internal working documents.

8The first two parts of our article are descriptive in approach. Their objective is better to understand Third Places within the material and immaterial fabric of cities. The third part purports to be more analytical and examines the possibilities of establishing an urban policy of Third Places.

1. Third Places and the immaterial fabric of cities

9Third Places deploy a series of experiments which affect the immaterial infrastructure of cities: digital networks, urban services, data, urban planning, the intangible heritage of cities. From the point of view of the fabric of this immaterial infrastructure, the effect of the Third Places may be analysed with respect to three orientations: conceiving, placing and co-producing the digital city.

1.1. Conceiving the digital city

10The digital city entails a series of problematics. First, it is confronted with a phenomenon of acceleration of the technological innovations which are supposed to optimise the management and the functioning of cities. It depends on the deployment of large-scale sensors, which produce and collect a large quantity of information and data (Viévard, 2014). Moreover, studies have shown that the social fabric of cities is not necessarily open to technological innovations unless these are placed in the context of social, urban or indeed environmental objectives. Sectors of innovation, such as 22@Barcelona, the Distrito tecnológico de Buenos Aires or the GIANT / Presqu’île project à Grenoble are confronted with critiques coming from a fringe of the population. It is the contribution of technologies to the improvement of well-being, the risks of the instrumentalisation of the inhabitants and the menaces posed to individual liberties which are questioned. The dangers linked to health (electromagnetic waves, bio- and nano-technologies) and to the insufficient mastery of gentrification phenomena induced by the development of these technological districts are also cited (Besson, 2012).

11These anxieties, together with the acceleration of the innovations, render necessary the creation of spaces of interaction between the technologies and society, so that society may have the time to undertake a true ‘apprentissage social’ (social learning) (Stiegler, 2009). According to some authors, city-dwellers should be placed at the centre of planning the technologised city, so as to become co-authors of urban actions tailored to their needs (Corsín, 2014; Harvey, 2013). This is an essential factor in Third Places which propose hybrid spaces for conceiving the digital city.

  • 10 La Casmate was the first Centre de Culture Scientifique, Technique et Industrielle (CCSTI) created (...)

12Let us consider the Centre de Culture Scientifique et Technique in Grenoble, La Casemate,10 which organises the occasions essential for questioning the supposed neutrality of technological tools and the contours of a city conceived by and for the digital age. Thus La Casmate proposes multiples events and spaces with various social and functional dimensions, including interactive exhibition rooms, workshops, creativity sessions and spaces for testing digital equipment. This Third Space positions itself as a hyper-space combining the real and the virtual, propitious both for reflection on the new uses of sciences and techniques (living labs) and for the digital fabrication of objects and services (fab labs). In contrast to policies of diffusion of scientific knowledge to the ‘general public’, all is conceived so that the public will question the contribution and the limits of the scientific and technological content, particularly as it relates to the digital city.

  • 11 This exposition bringing together arts, sciences and technologies sponsored by the Atelier Arts Sci (...)
  • 12 Students in architectural school, in urbanism and in geography, pupils in ‘second-chance’ school, p (...)
  • 13 The prototypes were the fruit of collaborations between universities (Pôle supérieur de design, Vil (...)
  • 14 Statements recorded during the workshops of restitution and debate organised on 12 Octobre 2013. Fo (...)

13The living lab of the exposition ‘Arts-Sciences’ EXPERIMENTA11 is one of the events organised by La Casemate. En 2013, this living lab took up the theme of digital cities. Thus a hundred visitors of various kinds12 explored a model and an interactive urban terminal, tested a geo-temporal and portable digital application, or investigated the contribution of digital technologies to the space-time of urban transport systems. After testing these different hybrid prototypes,13 the visitors had to respond to a series of open and closed questions with the following objectives: to measure both the feelings and impressions of the testers; to measure the rapidity and ease of understanding of the prototypes; to test the usefulness of the prototypes in relation to the needs, uses and practices of the participants; to test the usability of the prototypes (design, ergonomics, functionality, etc.); and, finally, to test other uses and/or potential fields of application. All of the responses were subsequently analysed and synthesised during the workshops of restitution and debate organised at the conclusion of the EXPERIMENTA exposition. These workshops brought together the visitors who had participated in the experiment, as well as the artists, researchers and heads of enterprises present at EXPERIMENTA. In general, the testers highlighted all the ambivalence associated with the digital technologies, which were perceived as possible tools for expression by ordinary citizens but also as ‘gadget technologies’, which posed the risk of increasing ‘social isolation’ and ‘digital divide’: it should be noted that the ‘elitist’ character of the devices was regularly emphasised. By numerous participants, the technologies were said to be too much ‘oriented towards a category of “neo-urban” ultra-trendies possessing smartphones’.14

14The living lab TUBÀ (‘Tube à expérimentations urbaines’) in Lyons also offers spaces of mediation to enable the public and professionals to test, evaluate and discuss innovative urban devices: sensors, digital information terminals, mobility applications, connected objects, and projects based on the public data of the Lyons agglomeration (transportation, road traffic, energy, etc.), as well as the private data of large companies (Véolia, EDF, Enedis, Keolis). According to Philippe Val, director of information systems for ‘Grand Lyon’, TUBÀ should permit businesses and citizens to ‘disposer d’un terrain de jeu, pour co-construire des services de la ville de demain sur la base de données’ (have at their disposal a play-ground for co-constructing the city of tomorrow using the database). This living lab of 600 m² is implanted in the Part Dieu neighbourhood of Lyons. It is situated in immediate proximity to the railway station and consequently benefits from a significant flow of potential testers (roughly 500,000 journeys per day). It includes a space for experimentation and demonstration on the ground floor (the ‘Lab’), open to the general public from Monday to Friday. A space for co-working, the ‘Mix’, is situated on the first floor. It is composed of different sub-spaces, which allow for diverse situations of encounter and exchange (the ‘Bocal’ (jar), the ‘Muscu’ (bodybuilding) room, the ‘Ring’). Since November 2014, the TUBÀ has accompanied the realisations of numerous project initiators, mounting roughly thirty collaborative projects. This living lab has played an important role in the development of twenty or so start-ups (CityLity, CoPark, For City, Green on, Karos, etc.) specialising in such varied fields as energy, mobility, health, social binding and leisure activities (Devau, 2016).

15By proposing spaces of ‘science-society’ interaction, the Third Places La Casemate and TUBÀ provide an essential ‘middle-ground’ function (Cohendet et al., 2011). They organise regular events (forums, barcamps, hackathons, thematic workshops, etc.), which permit the socialisation of knowledge and innovations between the ‘Uppergound’ of administrations, businesses, research laboratories and technology transfer centres, and the ‘Underground’ of inhabitants, users and the cultural and artistic spheres. Such moments make possible the encounter of stakeholders with representatives of various professions and create the conditions for ‘proximités temporaires’ (temporary proximities) between very different social universes (Suire, 2015). In this respect, it is interesting to observe that these Third Places conceive of themselves less as places than as ‘interfaces’, ‘platforms of innovation’, ‘concentrators of networks’, ‘hybrid spaces’ situated ‘au carrefour de la recherche, de l’innovation, de l’entrepreneuriat et de la culture créative, des « plateformes de l’innovation’ (at the crossroads of research, innovation, entrepreneurship and creative culture) (conversation with Laurent Chicoineau, Director of La Casemate).

1.2. Embedding the digital city

16By way of this ‘middle-ground’ function, Third Places oppose an interactive model able to ‘urbaniser les technologies’ (urbanise technologies) (Sassen, 2014) to the model of diffusionist innovation represented by ‘smart cities’. They do not, therefore, take a stand against technological innovations, notably digital ones, but rather endeavour to embed them socially and to redirect them, with regard to cultural, economic or environmental goals, in order to make them tools in service to the city.

  • 15 According to a recent study of the urbanism agency of the agglomeration of Marseille (AGAM, 2016).

17This is one of the major objectives of the urban living lab project in Marseillle. This project, initiated by the Departmental Council of Bouches du Rhône, aims at revitalising the centre of Marseille by putting in place a locale of experimentation and interaction between the cultural, economic and an digital actors in the area. The city-centre continues to suffer from a deteriorated socio-economic situation and a loss of attractiveness15 – this despite the development of ambitious urban policies (implantation of public services and structuring facilities, such as the University d’Aix-Marseille, development of public transport, renewal of public spaces). The traditional methods of urbanism are not succeeding in revitalising the city-centre, particularly the historical axis of La Canebière. In these conditions, the living lab approach has presented itself as a new strategy for urban regeneration.

  • 16 In November 2014, the museums Arles Antique and Museon Arlaten opened their collections, remixed du (...)

18The decision to engage in the living lab approach is based on a certain number of precedents. Events such as Marseille Provence 2013 and Museomix16 initiated the region’s actors in the methods of full-scale co-production and experimentation. Those active in Marseille within the arts and digital cultures, such as Zinc, PRIMI, Seconde Nature, La Fabulerie, Urban Prod, l’Office, as well as Hexalab, have also developed savoir-faire in living-lab approaches. Numerous experiments in open innovation have been initiated, such as the ‘City Média’ experimentation deployed in the Bibliothèque de l’Alcazar en 2011, the co-production of a public space in the Place Louise Michel (‘Belsunce Tropical’, Collectif Etc, 2014) or the realisation of an urban tour conceived by the residents of Noailles (‘Noailles Tous ici’, 2016).

19This project of an urban living lab is also based on the spontaneous localisation of cultural actors and on the new economy on the perimeter of city-centre/Canebière (figure 1). These activities are attracted by the low rents, accessibility by public transport and the presence of urban amenities (shops, facilities, leisure spaces, social and cultural diversity) – essential factors for attracting activities of the new economy (Suire, 2003; Grondeau et al., 2006; Besson, 2012). Moreover, the departmental council is working on the planning of a series of cultural events over three years incorporating, in part, living-lab approaches: the ‘dimanches de la Canebière’ (Canebière Sundays), ‘MP 2018’ and Manifesta (Biennale of contemporary art in 2020).

Figure 1: Localisation of innovation actors in the Marseille city-centre

Figure 1: Localisation of innovation actors in the Marseille city-centre

Source: Raphaël Besson (Villes Innovations) et Sylvia Andriantsimahavandy (Cultures Créatives), 2016.

  • 17 Study conducted in 2016 by the firms Cultures Créatives and Villes Innovations on behalf of the Bou (...)
  • 18 Secrétariat Général aux Affaires Régionales.
  • 19 Involved here, for example, are interactive mobile applications, ‘smart glasses’ that enhance reali (...)

20A feasibility study, moreover, has shown that an urban living lab in the city centre would make it possible to complement in a useful way the existing innovation offerings of the Aix-Marseille metropolis (Technopôle Château-Gombert, Friche Belle de Mai, Pôle Media, Euroméditerranée).17 The living lab could establish itself as an intermediary innovation centre focusing on themes, goals and functions (full-scale urban test and experimentation, innovation through use, temporary reception of start-ups…), which are not yet covered by the local eco-system of innovation. The study also confirmed that the living-lab project fits into the strategic orientations of the public actors: the PACA region, the urban Community and the city of Marseille with their smart-cities strategies; the urbanism agency of the Marseille agglomeration in the framework of its deliberation concerning an innovative offer of an office building for the city-centre; the PACA’s SGAR,18 with its deployment of a public innovation laboratory in Marseille (the ‘laboratoire zéro’). Moreover, the study revealed the desire of a certain number of cultural and economic actors to benefit from a central urban space in which to experiment with new creations and innovations. This is the case, for example, with French Tech Culture, which is thinking of deploying the tested prototypes during the festivals of Aix-en-Provence and Avignon,19 and also with the digital campus The Camp in Aix-en-Provence, which is interested in testing innovative urban devices starting in 2018.

21In view of this collection of urban opportunities, economic and cultural, the orientation of the living lab will be structured around three thematic experimentation laboratories. The Urban lab will make it possible to co-construct usage scenarios, to prototype, test and evaluate in life-size new services and urban infrastructures. The Culture lab will develop experimentations whose objective will be to valorise the distinctive features and cultural resources of La Canebière, especially in order to transform the ways in which the city-centre is represented. The Food Lab will highlight the culinary richness of Marseille, which is linked in large measure to its cultural diversity. This food-centred strategy will also assume the task of implanting the living lab in the socio-cultural fabric of La Canebière. Beyond these thematic orientations, the living lab will be deployed in various spaces within La Canebière: in the public space, in the digital space (with the installation of a collaborative web platform), and, before long, in a locale of its own. A portion of the vacant spaces in La Canebière (about 20,000 m2) will also be put to use for the temporary housing of creative and digital activities, as well as for experimentation with the projects of the living lab.

22This description of the urban living lab project in Marseille illustrates the objective of Third Places to redirect and implant technological and digital innovations in a diversity of urban, social and cultural configurations. To do this, they derive inspiration notably from the work of the economist É. Von Hippel (2005), according to whom it is the applications of technological innovations that create their economic, social or indeed cultural value. In this perspective, society should be able, not only to redirect the innovations, but also to co-produce them, so as to generate some richer and more original than those initially imagined by those who conceived them – a hypothesis integrated by numerous Third Places which deploy mechanisms enabling them to have an impact on the co-production of digital cities.

1.3. Co-producing the digital city

23The traditional methods of urban production (diagnostics, scenarios, discussion workshops, etc.) increase the quantity of knowledge within public institutions. Nevertheless, the conditions of appropriation of this knowledge by the internal services of communities and the informal participants in urban experience (the inhabitants and other users of cities) appear difficult to evaluate objectively. It is not certain that increasing the quantity of knowledge within the institutions automatically increases the quality of urban policies and their capacity for action.

  • 20 Doctoral students, designers, urbanists, cultural mediators, young people from the École de la Deux (...)

24Faced with this fact, a certain number of Third Places are experimenting with new methods and tools, in order to encourage co-production of the cities of tomorrow. This is the case, for example, with the living lab put in place by La Casemate during the exposition EXPERIMENTA. In 2014 and 2015, La Casemate organised creativity tours encouraging visitors to become inspired by the prototypes of EXPERIMENTA to co-create scenarios of urban development. In 2014, the theme of the tour dealt with the management of sound in the city of Grenoble. Sound in the city is often considered a nuisance. Municipalities establish strategies for diminishing the intensity of sound: anti-noise barriers, sound-absorbent materials, planting greenery to dampen the sound of motorways or urban boulevards. The entire point of this creativity excursion was to invert this perspective and consider sound no longer as a nuisance but as an asset, a source of energy capable of inspiring new ways of producing cities. Thus 19 scenarios were imagined by the 80 participants: spaces for playful sound creation, devices involving real-time interaction of sounds in the city, prototypes for capturing sound to turn it into sources of thermic or luminous energy, etc. In the following year, 2015, forty or so persons participated in creativity workshops on the theme of billposting in the city. The experiment was centred on the Grenoble railway station. The participants imagined a collection of devices for innovative billposting in that space: digitalisation of the façade of the station, interactive urban equipment diffusing sound-notices concerning cultural events in Genoble, 3D orientation screens, urban mobile applications for free expression, etc. We might also mention the Parcours Innovation organised by La Casemate in 2013, in partnership with the MINATEC Ideas Lab-CEA. This workshop, entitled ‘Ville 4.0 / Des capteurs dans la ville, pourquoi faire ?’ (sensors in the city – to do what?) , encouraged fifteen or so young people, from 18 to 28 years old,20 to consider the uses of sensors in the city. To stimulate their imagination, different sequences were developed, notably a phase of technological immersion in the spaces of the CEA, a period of free observation of the city in the form of photo-journalism, a creativity session composed of script-writing workshops and a light-painting evening organised by the artist Jadikan, and finally a session of model prototyping, which took place within the fab lab of La Casemate. These various occasions allowed the participants to raise questions about the scope and limits of sensors in the city, while imagining development scenarios as interactive urban maps enabling the real-time collection of information on the state of the city.

25Throughout these different activities and creativity workshops established by La Casemate, the point has been to test the methods of open innovation in order to encourage the casual actors of urban production (inhabitants, users, students, artists, etc.) to participate actively in thinking about and conceiving the cities of tomorrow. Certainly, the propositions made by the participates cannot replace in-depth urban-planning studies. But they outline interrogations, ideas and oblique views that the collectivities cannot ignore. Moreover, living lab methods make it possible to encourage interactions between actors of diverse professions. Now, it is often from these sessions of interaction and informal encounters that the most innovative ideas emerge.

  • 21 Three hundred persons are presently connected to the ‘smart citizen’ network of sensors.
  • 22 Le Medialab Prado, situated in the heart of Madrid in the neighbourhood of Lettres, close to the Mu (...)

26The experimentations conducted within the Third Places go as far as to incite citizens to participate in the production of urban data. Take, for example, the Smart Citizen kit developed by the fab lab of Barcelona. This kit is composed of sensors and an open source electronic system mounted on an Arduino map. It permits each citizen who has it in his possession to fill in a collaborative map of the state of a city: pollution, humidity, temperature, traffic flow, etc.21 Thus, citizens are not simply subjected to the major digital actors and reduced to passive consumers of data or ‘beta-testers’ of new urban services. They themselves become sensors of their environment; they play a proactive role. The connections of private homes also become as many contributors to the construction of a tool in service to the public interest. From this one can gather the scope of this instrument of collective vigilance and bottom-up analysis of the state of a city. Let us conclude this series of examples with the digital façade (la Fachada digital) of Media Lab Prado in Madrid.22 One of the facades of the Media Lab is composed of an interactive screen which enables the diffusion, in real time, of information on studies, workshops, and varied experiments, so that the inhabitants of Madrid may be informed about programming, while having, in turn, the possibility of publishing content of a cultural and artistic kind (photos, images, videos, etc.) or related to life in the area. Through this digital screen, the Media Lab Prado pursues a fundamental consideration of the data which citizens may exchange thanks to the different screens set up in the city. This consideration has to do both with the contents of the data and their mode of representation, in connection with contemporary research on data visualisation.

2. Third Spaces and construction of the material infrastructure of cities

27Other kinds of Third Place experimentation aim to intervene in the co-production of the material infrastructure of cities: urban amenities, public spaces and equipment, intelligent networks (water, gas, electricity). Recognition of this capacity for co-production of the material infrastructure of cities is not new. Urban sociology long ago demonstrated that city-dwellers and those passing through participate in the transformation of cities, if only by making use of them: physical occupation of places, visible marking of spaces (for example, through graffiti), redirection of usage, etc. (Clavel, 2002). But this takes on a unprecedented dimension with the new technologies and the experimentations of a certain number of Third Places.

2.1. The right to city infrastructures

28The notion of a right to the city was developed in the Fordist context of post-war France. This notion asserted, for certain marginalised social groups, a right to equal access to urban resources and services. More broadly, it manifested a recognition of a higher form of rights: ‘droit à la liberté, à l’individualisation dans la socialisation, à l’habitat et à l’habiter. Le droit à l’œuvre (à l’activité participante) et le droit à l’appropriation (bien distinct du droit à la propriété)’ (the right to liberty, to individualisation within socialisation, to habitat and habitation. The right to the work (to the participating activity) and the right to appropriation – quite distinct from the right to property) (Lefèbvre, 1968 : 140). In its political dimension, the right to the city pursued the objective of the co-production of urban development by all the social groups composing the City.

29The notion of right to the city is today seeing a renewal of interest (Mitchell, 2003; Harvey, 2008; Mayer, 2009; Andrej, 2010). Its conceptual scope interests a number of those responsible for Third Places, who base themselves on the new techniques of digital production to reinterpret this right and claim a ‘droit à l’infrastructure des villes’ (right to the infrastructure of cities) (Corsín, 2014). This newly emergent right is not limited to defending equal access to the resources and spaces of the city, or the inhabitants’ participation in political debates on the future of the urban agglomeration: it concerns the very infrastructure of the cities, the urban ‘hardware’ (Harvey, 2008). The point is to co-produce – beyond their social, educative or cultural life – the public space of cities, their equipment and other urban infrastructures. In the Third Places studied, one finds the same will to act on the infrastructures and to rehabilitate the figure of the ‘tinkerer’ or ‘fiddler’ belonging to the sphere of hackers and digital artists: ‘Le fab lab doit permettre aux citoyens de prendre conscience du fait qu’ils peuvent agir directement sur leur ville (…). L’utilisation des outils de prototypage rapide doit aussi faciliter l’expression des capacités créatives de chacun’ (The fab lap should allow citizens to become aware of the fact that they can act directly on their city (…). Using the tools of rapid prototyping should also facilitate the expression of each person’s creative capacities) (Jordi Reyes, responsible for the ‘Athénée de fabrication’ of Les Corts, Barcelona).

2.2. Acting on vacant public spaces and equipment

30This claim to a right to the infrastructure of cities can be especially observed in Spain, and notably in cities like Barcelona and Madrid, which stand out as pioneers in this field. There one observes a proliferation of places of experimentation emerging in the empty spaces of the city.

  • 23 Since 2008, Madrid has seen the creation of more than 200 co-working spaces, the great majority of (...)

31Madrid has witnessed the emergence over the last several years of ‘Laboratorios ciudadanos’. These places of citizen innovation have developed in the vacant spaces of the city, the economic crisis having left a significant number of public spaces deserted. These Third Places have not been the object of a planning strategy. Rather, they have sprung up from the spontaneous initiative of ordinary citizens and collectives (often highly qualified), working in the fields of collaborative economy, digital resources, urban ecology or social urbanism. These ‘Laboratorios ciudadanos’ today constitute the basis for experimentation with new modes of producing the city, founded on collaboration, citizen participation and co-production of public spaces and services. Twenty or so ‘Laboratorios ciudadanos’ have emerged in this way, such as La Tabacalera, Esta es une plaza, Patio Maravillas, and El Campo de la Cebada. One may also mention the network of community gardens (La Red de huertos urbanos), as well as a certain number of coworking spaces involved in urban and social life, such as Utopic_US, Impact Hub Madrid, Garaje Madrid, La Industrial and Puesto En Construcción (PEC).23 Each Citizen Laboratory tends to specialise in a particular field, such as agriculture and urban ecology, social and cultural integration, collaborative art or the digital economy. Obviously, these fields are not exclusive, and it not unusual to see these ‘Laboratorios ciudadanos’ combine these different areas of competence.

Figure 2: Location of Citizen Laboratories in the city-centre of Madrid

Figure 2: Location of Citizen Laboratories in the city-centre of Madrid

Source : Raphaël Besson (Villes Innovations), 2016.

  • 24 Constructed thanks to crowd-funding financing of over 6,000 € on the platform Goteo.org.

32One of the spaces emblematic of this effort is the Campo de la Cebada, situated close to the Plaza Mayor in the heart of Madrid. This space came into being in October 2010, when the city decided to demolish the sports complex in the La Latina district. The inhabitants and associations of the neighbourhood got together at that point to create a self-managed space open to popular, social and cultural initiatives. They are currently fighting against the privatisation of this space and the imminent arrival of a large commercial and leisure centre. They claim a right to the free appropriation – but, what is more, a right to the co-production –of public space. For years, the Campo de la Cebada has been working for the construction of urban amenities, shared sports fields and, just recently, for the completion of a geodesic dome 14 metres in diameter by 7 metres high24 to house various cultural and social events. Since then, the Campo de la Cebada has seen a significant development of projects, as much in the social domain (systems of service exchange) as in the arts (street art, photography, poetry and theatre workshops), sports (development of basketball courts and playing spaces), and culture, with the organisation of open-air festivals of music and cinema. Le Campo de la Cebada also serves as a basis for the development of collective gardens and co-constructed urban amenities. The benches, spectator stands and basketball hoops have all been produced thanks to the intervention of collectives of architects, inhabitants and engineers. They have used the tools and free licences of Madrid fab labs to construct modulable equipment made from recycled materials.

33The totality of the activities of the Campo de La Cebada are self-governing, by way of regular meetings which bring together the collectives of the neighbourhood (inhabitants, business people, associations, etc.). The citizen laboratories are thus neither conceived nor managed by small groups uniting a few elected officials or experts. Their mode of functioning is structured on the model of a multi-blade propeller, whose objective is to unite as many researchers, citizens and entrepreneurs as officials of local administrations (Hafkesbrink and Schroll, 2011). One of the primary objectives of the Campo de la Cebada is ‘que n’importe quel individu (habitant, commerçant, expert, technicien de la ville) se sente concerné et impliqué par le fonctionnement du lieu’ (that any individual – inhabitant, business-person, expert, city technician – should feel concerned by, and involved in, the functioning of the place). According to the urbanist Manuel Pascual, of the collective Zuloark, the point is to ‘éviter de construire un ghetto de personnes idéologiquement proches, partageant une vision du monde homogène’ (avoid constructing a ghetto of persons close in ideology, sharing a homogeneous vision of the world). For the urbanist Domenico Di Siena, the ‘Laboratorios ciudadanos’ are in reality ‘lieux de forte inclusion sociale. Ils ne sont ni des lieux institutionnels, ni des espaces de contre-culture, altermondialistes, figés dans des concepts « puristes » et par conséquent excluants. Ils ont progressivement abandonné leur caractère underground, pour permettre une participation citoyenne la plus large possible’ (places of strong social inclusion. They are neither institutional places nor spaces of counter-culture, anti-globalism, locked in ‘purist’ concepts and consequently exclusive. They have progressively abandoned their underground character to allow for the broadest possible citizen participation). One sector of civil society has thus appropriated these spaces to make them into tools in the service of ‘problèmes concrets, des défis, des demandes et des aspirations qui se manifestent dans les différents quartiers de la ville’ (concrete problems, challenges, question and aspirations which appear in the different districts of the city) (Mangada, 2015).

  • 25 Since 2013, the association Plateau Urbain has been giving new life to vacant office building in th (...)

34This process of deployment of Third Places in the empty spaces of cities is also seen in France. This is the case, for example, with the urban living lab project in Marseille. A portion of the empty spaces of the Canebière perimeter (approximately 20 000 m2) is slated to be mobilised for the temporary housing of associative, cultural and digital activities, as well as the experimentation of living lab projects. But it is especially the ‘Grands Voisins’ Third Place that currently incarnates in France the possibilities offered by the temporary management of vacant spaces – as it happens the former Saint-Vincent-de-Paul hospital in Paris (a site of 3.4 hectares). In anticipation of the reconversion of the hospital into a future eco-neighbourhood, the associations Aurore, Yes We Camp and Plateau Urbain25 have come together to assure the temporary revival and management of this space. The site is now occupied by 600 persons needing resettlement (250 households of migrant workers and 350 emergency shelters operated by Aurore) and 180 structures (associations, artisans, crafts-people and social entrepreneurs). This represents more than a thousand workers on the site every day. The structures rent their offices for 200 € per m2 annually. Also to be found are a recycling centre, a volunteer bar, a football field, communal gardens, an aquaponic greenhouse a school of midwifery, a chicken-coop and a number of beehives. The site thus creates employment for the people housed there: ‘Certaines personnes sont employées en cuisine à la Lingerie (…), d’autres travaillent pour l’association Carton plein, qui récolte et recycle de vieux cartons’ (Some persons are employed to prepare food in the laundry (…), others work for the association ‘Carton plein’, which collects and recycles old cartons) (William Dufourcq, site director for the association Aurore). The experiment of ‘Grands Voisins’ will come to an end in December 2017, when work will begin on construction of the future eco-neighbourhood.

35In these examples, Third Places temporarily managing vacant spaces have found solutions where the collectivities were often powerless. Moreover, the condition of transition, vacancy, and the ephemeral character of the projects makes it possible to ‘mobiliser et de libérer les énergies. Les porteurs de projet s’installent dans des temps records, en moins de deux jours. Cette contrainte temporelle permet également de proposer des loyers au prix des charges, et de mobiliser les énergies bénévoles’ (mobilise and liberate energies. The initiators of the project install themselves in record time, in less than two days. This temporal constraint also makes it possible to propose rents at the level of expenses, and to mobilise volunteer energies) (Paul Citron, Development Director of Plateau Urbain). Considering these characteristics, one understands why the experiments of revival and temporary management of unused public spaces and equipment constitute privileged strategies for the deployment of Third Spaces at the city level.

2.3. Reintroducing sites of production in the heart of cities

  • 26 Citizens may, under the supervision of a mediator, appropriate the tools of the fab lab. 3D models (...)

36Other Third Places use the potential of fab labs and their digital machines (3D printers, laser cutters, vinyl cutters, digital millers) to reintroduce production tools in the heart of cities. This is one of the goals of the Fab City project, whose ultimate intention is that inhabitants of Barcelona should produce by themselves ‘de l’énergie, des aliments, des biens et des connaissances, dans des quartiers autosuffisants’ (energy, food, goods and skills in self-sufficient neighbourhoods) (Tomás Diez, Director of Fab Lab of Barcelona). This project is promoted by the Fab Lab of Barcelona, the IAAC (Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia) and the city of Barcelona. It aims at creating fifteen ‘micro-usines de proximité’ (neighbourhood micro-factories) based on the potential of the fab labs.26 The characteristics of these factories (materials, machines, spatial configurations) will be adapted to suit the needs and aspirations of the different neighbourhoods of Barcelona. Each fab lab will be oriented thematically towards socio-economic, cultural, urban or environmental issues and will benefit from specific expertise (fabrication, repair, training, recycling, urban renewal, research, etc.). For Tomás Diez, the Fab City will be composed of a collection of ‘laboratoires de fabrication numérique reliés entre eux pour échanger des connaissances et résoudre des problèmes d’éclairage public, d’environnement, d’alimentation, de production énergétique (…), de transport’ (digital fabrication laboratories connected with each other to exchange knowledge and resolve problems of public illumination, environment, food supply, energy production (…), transport) (Diez, 2013).

37This description of the Fab City may seem somewhat futurist. But the project is not starting from scratch and has seen some precedents, with the construction of the Fab Lab House. Developed in 2010 by the IAAC and the fab lab of Barcelona, this ecological solar-powered house received a prize at the Solar Decathlon, an international university competition. This self-sufficient dwelling was constructed entirely of wood, using a large digital milling machine. Since then, the Fab Lab House has become an icon of eco-construction and the possibilities offered by the techniques of digital fabrication.

38The Fab City has already created a number of fab labs, re-baptised in Catalan ‘Ateneus de Fabricació’. Four public Athenaeums currently exist in Barcelona. The first was constructed in 2005, prior to the arrival of the project. Located in the district of Poblenou, this fab lab is one of the oldest and best equipped in the world. The second was created in the north-western part of the city, in the rich district of Les Corts. It is installed in the former spinning-mill ‘Benet i Campabadal’. It includes a large library and has social inclusion as its theme. A third fab lab has been developed in the suburbs, in the disadvantaged neighbourhood of Nou Barris. It has employment as its thematic specialty. A final Athenaeum, the Fàbrica del Sol, is in the course of development in the ancient centre of Barcelona (la Ciutat Vella). It occupies two storeys of the special education school, Sant Joan de la Creu, and it specialises in the theme of sustainable development.

39Beyond the creation of the Ateneus de Fabricació, the Fab City has indirectly stimulated the emergence of new fab labs in Barcelona. Especially worthy of mention is Valldaura Self Sufficient Labs, located above the city of Barcelona in a 130 hectare park, the Parc Métropolitain Collserola. This metropolitan green centre benefits from a preserved natural heritage, with remarkable fauna, flora and architectural patrimony. Valldaura was also acquired by the IAAC in 2010, with the objective of relying on its natural potential to co-produce prototypes linked to the self-sufficient city. Its activity is structured around three labs: the Energy Lab (production of energy), the Green Fab Lab (production of goods) and the Food Lab (production of food). Supported by the Spanish ministries, the Université polytechnique de Catalogne and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Valldaura is currently developing a series of prototypes (organic batteries, micro organic architecture, photovoltaic organic signs, solar ovens, connected registry hives, etc.) intended for testing in the heart of the city of Barcelona.

3. Towards an urban policy of Third Places?

40This description of French and Spanish Third Place projects allows us better to understand their role in the production of contemporary cities. But it also shows us the great heterogeneity of Third Places, which differ in their size, mode of functioning, economic model, space, actors and the functions they accommodate. Moreover, these experiments oscillate between an alternative and militant posture (‘changing the world’) and a more economic logic, founded on the issue of adaptation to the mutations of the economy and digital resources.

41This diverse character of Third Places raises pointed questions for those engaged in urbanism. What public policy should be put in place to accompany multifunctional and intermediary spaces, often operating with horizontal modes of organisation? Are the methods and tools of urbanism adapted – that is, sufficiently flexible – to engaging a policy of Third Places? Is an urban policy possible, let alone desirable, without taking the risk of institutionalising Third Places and detracting from their bottom-up, interwoven and inclusive character? What is the proper role of the collectivity in deploying an urban strategy of Third Places?

3.1. Urban-planning tools in the face of the bottom-up and diffuse nature of Third Places

42The dynamic of Third Places today runs up against the rigidities of a planning-oriented urbanism, often developed step-by-step according to thematic and functional divisions. The interwoven and endogenous characteristics of Third Places call in question, to begin with, the policies of urban innovation applied in the 2000s. Those policies had a tendency to plan urban creativity according to sectors of some hundreds of hectares: neighbourhoods of innovation and creation, or technological districts. The ambition was to erect totemic and ‘spectacular’ architectural works, able, on the one hand, to attract and organise close associations between creative workers and, on the other hand, to play an active role in the process of producing innovations (Besson, 2012).

43Contrary to the planning model, Third Places create themselves in a diffuse way on the scale of cities and not according to centres implanted in sites of several hundred hectares. They develop according to a logic of interweaving in the empty spaces of the city. The process is apparent in Madrid and Barcelona, with the development of citizen laboratories and Athenaeums of fabrication, but also in cities like Paris, Lyons and Marseille, where the Third Places oriented towards urban questions are now innumerable. As a result, these actions call urban policies into question. The collectivities wonder what spatial strategy to adapt. Should they implement a multi-site strategy to accompany Third Places, intervene only in public space or concentrate the actors and initiatives in a ‘totemic place’? How to introduce the element of chance and anticipate uses as yet unknown in urban planning documents? How to ‘make do with’ rather than ‘think of the place for’ collectives already present and organised?

44A last problematic concerns valorising the production of creativity workshops. As far as we know, none of the urban development scenarios imagined in the framework of the La Casemate Living Lab has had an impact on the existing urban fabric and the treatment of issues related to sound and billposting in the city. Hence, the question arises of the procedures which would permit connection of the ideas emanating from living lab activities with urban projects and strategic planning documents (SCOT, PLU, PLH, etc.).

3.2. Social implantation and change of scale

45Often, Third Places develop in the context of an urbanism which some term ‘tactical’, indeed ‘marginal’ (Revista Papers, 2014; Aguirre Such, 2015). Such urbanism unfolds for the most part in the empty spaces of the city and in the framework of ephemeral workshops. These experiments make it possible to generate new ideas and respond to local problems. But their capacity to affect the urban fabric and the socio-economic structure of cities nevertheless remains limited. A project for a city cannot emerge from the adding together of isolated, marginal and often ephemeral experiments (Marrades, 2014).

46The Third Places which we have observed do not have sufficient technical and financial capacity to deploy their prototypes on the scale of cities and, therefore, to respond to urban issues of greater magnitude (Gascó Hernández, 2015). One thinks notably of the sensors of the ‘Smart citizen’ programme. In 2014, only 600 sensors had been deployed across European cities (Balestrini et al., 2014). Moreover, the development of these sensors raises numerous technical problems and takes place essentially within the community of innovators and fabricators (ibid.). Equally to the point are the creative workshops of the TUBA or La Casemate Living Lab. Such experimentations involve at most a hundred or so persons, while requiring a substantial quantity of resources – financial, material and human (mediators).

47Moreover, the development of Third Places reveals practical difficulties in creating links with the local socio-economic fabric. These problems of implantation are evident with the Ateneus de Fabricació, and this despite their original intentions. For Tomás Diez, ‘s’il existe à Barcelone un véritable écosystème autour de la fabrication numérique, les rapports entre les communautés de “makers” et le tissu social des quartiers sont encore insuffisants’ (even if there exists in Barcelona a veritable eco-system centred on digital fabrication, relations between the communities of makers and the social structure of the neighbourhoods are still insufficient). During the creation of the fabrication Athenaeum Ciutat Meridiana, the inhabitants of the underprivileged neighbourhood of Nou Barris opposed the project. Suffering severely from the economic crisis, they pushed for opening a cooperative food bank. The fab lab was essentially ‘perçu comme un espace réservé aux makers et à une élite maîtrisant les nouveaux outils du numérique’ (perceived as a space reserved for the makers and an elite mastering the new digital tools) (Gascó Hernández, 2015). As for the TUBA Living Lab, it is currently very much oriented toward start-ups and the economic world. Activities mobilising citizens for experimentation and evaluations on site are still rare. Other Third Places are faced with difficulties in integrating enterprises and universities in their operation. Certainly, there exist ‘temporary proximities’, situations and projects in which heterogenous knowledge and expertise are produced and brought together. But these initiatives still largely evolve in parallel with the economic and innovatory systems in place (clusters, technopoles, research laboratories). Now, according to the economist Raphaël Suire, the implantation of Third Places in territorial eco-systems strongly influences their performance and their capacity to innovate (Suire, 2015). Neither are Third Places exempt from inducing a certain number of negative external social effects. Through their productions, they participate in a dynamic of symbolic revalorisation of degraded urban spaces. In so doing, they indirectly accompany a broader process of gentrification, relegating to the margins those in socially disadvantaged categories.

48In the face of these difficulties of social implantation encountered by Third Spaces and the deployment on a larger scale of their productions and experimentations, a certain number of collectivities are asking questions. How can civil society, in its greater diversity, appropriate such spaces to make them tools in the service of ‘problèmes concrets, des défis, des demandes et des aspirations qui se manifestent dans les différents quartiers de la ville’ (concrete problems, challenges, questions and aspirations which appear in the different neighbourhoods of the city) (Mangada, 2015)? What urban policy to adopt in order better to diffuse and distribute the initiatives and projects of the Third Spaces?

49One of the responses advanced by the collectivities for deploying an urban strategy on a large scale and over the long term is to develop platforms for creating networks of Third Places and urban innovations. These networks are constituted on the level of cities and their peripheries on the model of the network Echosciences, initiated by La Casemate, the city and the agglomeration of Grenoble. This network makes it possible to render visible and bring together an ensemble of cultural, scientific and creative actors in the Grenoble agglomeration. The facility is based on the contribution and the participation of its members (amateurs and professionals). A Community ‘Grenoble, Ville de demain’ (city of tomorrow) has recently been created on Echosciences in order to accompany the participative actions of the city of Grenoble. The Media Lab Prado of Madrid has also put in place, in collaboration with SEGIB (Secretaria General Iberoamericana), a network of citizen laboratories. This network is complemented by an interactive map enumerating citizen initiatives on the scale of Madrid (Los Madriles), initiated by the space Intermediæ de Matadero. The point of these networks is to facilitate access to the engineering skills of the project (information, equipment, resources, knowledge...), and thus to favour bottom-up and partnership approaches. Such platforms for network creation also make it possible to render the Third Places visible and to connect them with other actors and initiatives.

  • 27 See the projects Fab Lab House, Heliocell, Endesa World Fab Condenser, Pavilion (www.iaacblog.com).

50In this effort to implement a change of scale, certain collectives go as far as accompanying the development of itinerant Third Places. Thus, the Minatec Ideas Lab of Grenoble is developing, in partnership with La Casemate, a Mobility Village project. La Fabulerie of Marseille has created a Fab’mobile, ‘ une sorte de kit-méthode capable de stimuler l’appropriation d’usages numériques innovants’ (a sort of ready-made method able to stimulate the appropriation of innovative digital applications) (Axelle Benaich, Directrice de La Fabulerie). The École d’Architecture de Lyon (l’ENSAL), for its part, is developing its Ack’Lab, a Third Place constructed using containers and conceived as a tool for diffusing architectural culture. Finally, the Fab Lab and the IAAC of Barcelona have been developing, for several years already, a collection of itinerant eco-constructed structures designed to be implanted in the different neighbourhoods of the city in response to temporary events.27

3.3. Diversity and fragility of the Third Place economic model

  • 28 If the development of the Smart Citizen kit was realised in open source, with software downloadable (...)

51Observation of the French and Spanish Third Places has shown us a variety of economic models. In the cases of La Casemate and the Athénées de fabrication, the economic models are still largely dependent on initial public funding. But they are tending to diversify, as illustrated by the fab lab of Poblenou, which now receives income from educational programmes, memberships, rental of spaces and the sale of products and services. The fab lab has especially benefited from revenue deriving from the commercialisation of the Fab Lab House ad the Smart Citizen kit.28 The economic model of the citizen laboratories is rather different from that of the fabrication Athenaeums, since only the Campo de la Cebada has benefited from public grants, the city of Madrid having provided a subvention of 40,000 € to the project at its inception. Apart from this exception, the operational model of the Laboratorios ciudadanos depends essentially on a logic of donations and cooperation and exchange of services. It is engaged in the sharing economy and counts on the participation of citizens, associations and collectives (Colectivo cultural C4C, La Colmena que dice, Los Cantamañanas, Zuloark, Basurama). From time to time, the crowd-funding provided by the platform goteo.org permits the financing of projects (urban amenities and geodesic dome of the Campo de La Cebada, Smart Citizens kits). Other revenues may come from European project competitions or from prizes, such as, for example, ‘Ars Electronica’, won by the Campo de la Cebada (with a value of 10,000 €). The economic model of TUBÀ relies on the subscriptions of the partners, the rental of co-working offices and meeting and creativity rooms, as well as grants from the metropolis of Lyons and the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes region (about 25 % of overall funding). As for the Grands Voisins Third Place, it benefits from the provision by the mayoralties of Paris and the 14th Arrondissement of the spaces of the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul hospital, in exchange for maintaining the site and keeping it secure. Besides this offer of space, the economic model of the Grands Voisins functions essentially by way of the subventions of the association Aurore for furnishing emergency shelter and the contributions to management costs made by the organisms that occupy the site.

  • 29 It is especially complicated to take the measure of the external effects produced by Third Places o (...)

52This rapid glance at the economic models of Third Places shows us that there is no ‘miracle recipe’ for the perennial economic success of Third Places. The economic models fluctuate between a private merchant model and a free public model, as with the Citizen Laboratories, which function essentially thanks to the broad participation and volunteer contributions of their members. These economic models are also hybrid, and function on the basis of different sources of financing: services provided, revenues associated with the use of spaces (contributions, rental of rooms and machines, special events…) and revenues linked to subventions, calls for projects, crowd-funding, memberships and contributions. The actors are therefore accustomed to searching and adapting, in the face of a phenomenon relatively recent and changing. If this diversity of Third Place economic models is not problematic in itself, it nevertheless raises the question of the type and level of intervention expected from the public sector. On the one hand, dependence on public financing must not be too great. Often, Third Places cease their activity as soon as the public subventions diminish or come to an end. On the other hand, the Third Places defend the idea of increased subventions, considering the positive external benefits they produce: low-cost revalorisation of run-down public spaces, access to cultural and leisure activities, access to training, initiation of renewed dialogue involving citizens, administrations, businesses, and researchers, the production of innovations and knowledge, real-estate revalorisation and improvement of the image of locales, etc.29 Certain Third Places perform an ensemble of missions and services which were traditionally provided by the collectivities. The citizen laboratories, for example, are able to respond to serious socio-economic situations and compensate for the deficiencies of donations, public funding and public spaces.

  • 30 To obtain resources from the success of projects of innovation is still rare. Some cases, however, (...)

53A final dilemma of the economic model of Third Places concerns the status of goods and services produced within these spaces. The nature of these goods (indivisibility, non-competitivity, non-excludability) makes them resemble public property and hence not reducible to the status of merchandise (Moulier-Boutang, 2008). The collaborative nature of the knowledge, software and services which derive from Third Places renders especially difficult their financial participation in projects (in the form of royalties, for example),30 while the imposition of constraining rules governing intellectual property would have the consequence of diminishing the collaborative dynamics essential to the functioning of Third Spaces.

Conclusion

54Analysis of the French and Spanish Third Places opens real perspectives for considering the production of contemporary cities. Nevertheless, formalising an urban policy for Third Places raises numerous questions.

55A public policy for Third Places cannot exist without initiating a process of innovation and transformation within the public institutions themselves. The phenomenon of Third Places necessitates increased competence on the part of collectivities with respect to the modes of governance and the methods of moderating and co-producing projects. This implies breaking with the logics of silos and implementing networks of services with built-in monitoring of the dimensions, at once social, economic and cultural, of these interstitial spaces. A Third Place policy also requires recognition by the public actor of the importance of a culture favouring experimentation and the right to error. It must establish a framework which authorises feeling one’s way, learning by trial and error, as well as the manifestation of ephemeral and unplanned uses and practices.

  • 31 The Third Places which arre overseen by the collectivities and which open and close according to of (...)
  • 32 Following the example of the Appels à Manifestation d’Intérêt (AMI) or the Calls for Projects such (...)

56One of the major issues consists in introducing greater flexibility into the tools and documents of urbanism. An urban policy of Third Places must affirm less a strategy of top-down planning than a method of stimulating activity able to create the conditions of emergence for these Third Spaces.31 The collectivity must be less an entity which ‘commande, que celle qui fixe une direction et stimule, observe, met en relation, oriente, conseille, arbitre’ (directs, than one which establishes a direction and stimulates, observes, makes connections, orients, counsels, arbitrates) (Kaplan et Marcou, 2008). Consequently, an urban policy for Third Places is a policy which makes possible and creates the conditions of serendipity and the unexpected (Vivant, 2009). The point is to accompany bottom-up dynamics through the development of digital tools, of platforms for network creation and of policies of temporary management of vacant spaces, as well as the launching of open calls for projects.32 Another issue is to introduce greater liberty for the actors in charge of urban conception and a greater capacity for openness to the ideas and productions coming from users and citizen initiatives. To this end, it seems essential to intervene in planning documents, and specifically in the Plans Locaux d’Urbanisme (PLU), documents enforceable against third persons (FING, 2016).

57Further still, an urban polity of Third Places should multiply points of contact with urban society, with living activity. The development of Hackers Spaces, fab laps, info labs and living labs should be conceived as a strategy for the diffusion of social spaces of production and creativity in the heart of cities. These spaces should progressively concern everyone and go beyond the circles of researchers, experimenters, artists or activist citizens. They should lead to a progressive change in the mentality of the city’s residents, elected officials and technicians. The collectivities will thus be encouraged to consider these places as so many spaces of inspiration for imagining urban policies in phase with the needs, aspirations and productions of the general population.

58Finally, putting in place an urban policy of Third Places presupposes implementing a biopolitics for cities (Baudouin, 2006) – a biopolitics which would be committed, well beyond questions of urban morphology and planning, to problematics linked to the production and valorisation of social life. The potential risks, therefore, are numerous, notably in terms of deviations in the direction of technically or economically driven initiatives. But the perspective of a biopolitics also opens up real opportunities for considering our urban eco-systems and renewed forms of democratic organisation of the City.

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Notes

1 We refer here to immersive technologies, RFID systems, sensors, enhanced reality tools, contactless techniqus, 3D representation, etc.

2 The Masdar Project in Abou-Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) or New Songdo City in South Corea.

3 22@Urban Lab (Barcelona), Campus de l’innovation (Grenoble), innovation sector (Montréal, Boston), Distrito Tecnológico (Buenos Aires), etc.

4 Antoine Burret defines Third Spaces as ‘des lieux de partage, de socialisation, mais aussi d’innovation et d’entreprenariat’ (places of sharing, socialization, but also of innovation and entrepreneurship) (Burret, 2015).

5 It is notable that since 2012, Third Places have also been developing in peri-urban and rural areas (Perche, Verdon, Orne, Haut-Jura, southern Ardèche, as well as Aquitaine).

6 Definition of the European Union, 2009.

7 Fab labs (abbreviation for ‘fabrication laboratory’) are defined by the FING (Fondation Internet Nouvelle Génération) as ‘plate-formes ouvertes de création et de prototypage d’objets physiques, "intelligents" ou non’ (open platforms of creation and prototyping of physical objects, “intelligent” or not) (Eychenne, 2012).

8 With 360 spaces identified in 2015 for more than 10,000 co-workers, co-working spaces represent the most important category of Third Places in France (source: Bureau à Partager, La Fonderie).

9 Recently, enterprises such as Leroy Merlin, Renault, Airbus, Safran, Air Liquide and Alcatel-Lucent have developed their own fab labs or living labs, on the model of Renault’s Creative People Lab.

10 La Casmate was the first Centre de Culture Scientifique, Technique et Industrielle (CCSTI) created in France (1979). Today it is part of the national network ‘Inmédiats’ (Innovation – Médiation – Territoires), Programme d’Investissement d’Avenir, which assembles six Centres de sciences régionaux (in Bordeaux, Rennes, Grenoble, Caen, Toulouse and Paris). Its objective is to reinforce equality of possibilities for access to sciences and techniques, especially for those from 15 to 25 years old, through experimentation with digital tools and cultural mediation.

11 This exposition bringing together arts, sciences and technologies sponsored by the Atelier Arts Sciences uniting the Hexagone de Meylan, the CEA and, since 2011, La Casemate. It is held every year during October at the Maison MINATEC in Grenoble and welcomes 5,000 visitors over 3 days.

12 Students in architectural school, in urbanism and in geography, pupils in ‘second-chance’ school, professionals in city-planning, elected officials and city-dwellers.

13 The prototypes were the fruit of collaborations between universities (Pôle supérieur de design, Villefontaine; École d’ingénieur Polytech of Grenoble), start-ups, research laboratories (CEA), and enterprises such as Orange Lab.

14 Statements recorded during the workshops of restitution and debate organised on 12 Octobre 2013. For further details, see Besson (2014a).

15 According to a recent study of the urbanism agency of the agglomeration of Marseille (AGAM, 2016).

16 In November 2014, the museums Arles Antique and Museon Arlaten opened their collections, remixed during 3 days and 2 nights by a diversified public (encoders, cultural mediators, curators, designers, amateurs, fiddlers, etc.).

17 Study conducted in 2016 by the firms Cultures Créatives and Villes Innovations on behalf of the Bouches du Rhône departmental council.

18 Secrétariat Général aux Affaires Régionales.

19 Involved here, for example, are interactive mobile applications, ‘smart glasses’ that enhance reality, innovative social networks, etc.

20 Doctoral students, designers, urbanists, cultural mediators, young people from the École de la Deuxième Chance.

21 Three hundred persons are presently connected to the ‘smart citizen’ network of sensors.

22 Le Medialab Prado, situated in the heart of Madrid in the neighbourhood of Lettres, close to the Museum of the Queen Sofia National Art Centre and the National Museum of the Prado, is a space oriented towards research and the co-production of digital innovations in the artistic, scientific, technological and social fields. This Third Place, created by the City of Madrid in 2000, is considered one of the most active and creative European centres with respect to digital culture.

23 Since 2008, Madrid has seen the creation of more than 200 co-working spaces, the great majority of which are not, however, considered ‘Laboratorios ciuadanos’.

24 Constructed thanks to crowd-funding financing of over 6,000 € on the platform Goteo.org.

25 Since 2013, the association Plateau Urbain has been giving new life to vacant office building in the Paris region (nearly 4 million m2) by promoting temporary occupations. The association puts the owners of empty buildings or sites in contact with initiators of projects (associations, young enterprises, artists).

26 Citizens may, under the supervision of a mediator, appropriate the tools of the fab lab. 3D models published in open source on the network of fab labs can be reproduced and adapted to different urban contexts, whether the projects are located in Singapore, Madrid or Buenos Aires. The machines of the fab labs possess the capacity of self-replication (notably the 3D printers).

27 See the projects Fab Lab House, Heliocell, Endesa World Fab Condenser, Pavilion (www.iaacblog.com).

28 If the development of the Smart Citizen kit was realised in open source, with software downloadable at no charge, the hardware, on the other hand, must be purchased. Thus the municipality of Amsterdam has recently acquired a hundred sensors, and this has enabled financing of part of the project.

29 It is especially complicated to take the measure of the external effects produced by Third Places on the territory – effects social, economic, cultural, environmental or cognitive. The lack of indicators constitutes a restraint when it comes to decisions about public financing.

30 To obtain resources from the success of projects of innovation is still rare. Some cases, however, do exist, such as the equity investment of the Fab Lab of Barcelona in the development of the ‘Fab Care’ in collaboration with HP Design jet and Open Source Vehicle.

31 The Third Places which arre overseen by the collectivities and which open and close according to office hours have little chance of lasting (Marie-Laure Cuvelier, founder of the Coopérative des Tiers Lieux. Localistis.info, « En Nouvelle-Aquitaine, les tiers lieux associatifs au service de l’aménagement du territoire », 6 octobre 2016).

32 Following the example of the Appels à Manifestation d’Intérêt (AMI) or the Calls for Projects such as ‘Réinventer Paris’, ‘Inventons la métropole’ or ‘Réinventer la Seine’.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1: Localisation of innovation actors in the Marseille city-centre
Crédits Source: Raphaël Besson (Villes Innovations) et Sylvia Andriantsimahavandy (Cultures Créatives), 2016.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/tem/docannexe/image/7947/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 232k
Titre Figure 2: Location of Citizen Laboratories in the city-centre of Madrid
Crédits Source : Raphaël Besson (Villes Innovations), 2016.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/tem/docannexe/image/7947/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 200k
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Raphaël Besson, « Rôle et limites des tiers-lieux dans la fabrique des villes contemporaines »Territoire en mouvement Revue de géographie et aménagement [En ligne], Florilège, mis en ligne le 09 novembre 2017, consulté le 10 novembre 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/tem/7947

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Auteur

Raphaël Besson

Directeur de Villes Innovations (Madrid, Grenoble)
Chercheur associé UMR PACTE (Grenoble)
r.besson@villes-innovations.com

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