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Concept imagined by Oldenburg (1989) to criticize the urban sprawl in the United-States, a third place is defined as a space of sociability outside the framework of the family or the professional settings. Economy is not at the core of these "third places for public life”: the deal is the future of democracy. Twenty years later, the concept of third place designates collaborative spaces where new work practices (coworking, makerspace…) are initiated by local users thanks to digital technologies. This conceptual shift increased when third places became objects of public interest. In France, local, regional and even national policies sustain the spread of third places to transform citizens' initiatives into collaborative resources for local development and so to reduce territorial inequalities. The article deals with a research question rarely addressed, that is to say the co-production of these policies at different scales. A multi-scalar analysis of these policies and of networks of actors pleads for an inter-territorial circulation of the notion of third place, the definition of which varies according to the type of policy and the scale of action. While the values and practices of third places (openness) and public action (control) oppose each other, a "frame of sociotechnical reference" common to these two worlds emerges from the co-construction of an innovative national policy in the framework of a partnership governance, in contradiction with a State trend to centralization. In France, the enlargement of what is defined by policies as a third place echoes to the definition of Oldenburg: new places where informal public life in a chosen proximity fosters the emergence of social innovations in a transitional era. This political dimension of third places is in contradiction with international academic literature on the economic dimension of collaborative workspaces.

The extension of local development policies in favor of support for Third-places (TL) questions their ability to fit into the socio-economic dynamics of the territories. Many affirm their desire to bring people together in a particular place conducive to the emergence of collaborative projects, while others explicitly state that they are thought of in phase with the economic dynamics of their territories. Today, even if invested in all territories, the TL object seems to respond to a certain economic model in lack of certainty and continues to spread throughout France. Our contribution provides analysis keys and contributes to the scientific valuation of an applied-research mission, sponsored by the Action Logement group (between 2019 and 2021). First, it presents a state of the art of this “object” under the prism of the existing literature of TL and regional sciences. Then, in a second step, we apply an ASR method in the employment zones (ZE) of fifteen Normandy territories, with the objective of promoting TL on the one hand and economic revitalization on the other, identified by the plan inter-ministerial « Action Cœur de Ville » (ACV). We cross our results at the level of the regional labeling system « Third places in Normandy » (TLN) in order to question this problem of articulation. We propose 3 case studies or dialogues between the territories and the Norman TL. One of the main results concerns the lack of visibility or use cases by all the actors in the territory.

The spatial diffusion of coworking spaces (CWs) raises the question of the possible contributions of these new places to non-metropolitan cities. In the same time, the urban effects and relationship between ECW and urban planning are little studied in the scientific literature. The aim of this article is to move beyond the imaginary worlds created by the new workspaces to look at territorial dynamics. Are CWs able to contribute to the architectural, economic and social resilience of intermediate or peripheral territories? What roles do the different actors of coworking – creators-managers, users and local authorities – play in this possible urban revitalization? Our research hypothesis is that the emergence of these new places can contribute to the revitalization of territories (cities and neighbourhoods…) outside the metropolis in three main ways, but that at the same time this contribution remains marginal and proportional to the size and age of the CWs. Based on case studies mainly from the Centre-Val de Loire region, we try to understand the role and possible transformative effects of CWs as new urban objects. Three approaches for this revitalization are explored : rehabilitation of buildings and brownfields ; contribution to the development of the local economic environment and finally the social and community links generated by the presence of a CWs. In terms of brownfield redevelopment, the size of the agglomeration has an impact on the management of the project. In addition, the economic and community links between the ECW and the surrounding area take forms that contribute directly to the renewal and development of the area. Research findings could make it possible to include the medium-time factor in order to analyse how the founders and managers of the ECW project themselves onto the area, and how dialogue with the urban authorities is established.

Coworking spaces have spread outside the major urban centers where they have been less studied, despite the hopes for territorial development placed in them. From a theoretical point of view, coworking spaces are understood by combining three dimensions (territorial, collaborative and individual) of entrepreneurship. The paper is based on an international survey. Our results show that entrepreneurs who attend coworking spaces outside metro areas highly appreciate primarily a working environment that combines residential amenities with access to digital resources and therefore makes it possible to find a better balance between quality of life and professional imperatives. However their links with the local business environment remain modest, as do the relationships with the local authorities. This paradoxical weak territorial embeddedness can be explained by the career path of these entrepreneurs, who rarely originate from the area where they are located and already had a network of contacts outside. As a result, the impact of their establishment on local development and the potential for territorial renewal based on the attraction of entrepreneurs by coworking spaces is significant but should not be overestimated outside the metropolis.

The progressing digitization of the economy, following the development of mobile technologies, has led to significant changes in the operations of businesses and has resulted in the emergence of new, flexible forms of work. Completely new business models are being created, based on mobile technologies, e.g. coworking is gaining in popularity within the so-called sharing economy (Durante, Turvani, 2018). In practice, each coworking space gives its own definition, as there are significant differences in the services offered, the space, the number of users, the business model, the work culture, the institutional goals, the values and participation in social movements (Parrino, 2013). In agglomerations and large cities, coworking space is developing dynamically and is no longer a new phenomenon. It is becoming more and more popular in small towns and rural areas (Krauss, Tremblay, 2020; Konecka-Szydłowska, Czupich, 2022). The aim of the article is to identify and present coworking as a third workplace in suburbia. To this end, an attempt has been made to provide answers to the questions about 1/ The specificity of coworking space outside big cities, 2/ If local conditions largely affect the emergence of a third workplace (the example of the village of Dąbrówka), 3/ The operations of Parkova Coworking, located in the village of Dąbrówka in the Poznań agglomeration. In order to clarify the interplay between local conditions and the possibilities for coworking in suburbia, the following research hypothesis was put forward: the operation of Parkova Coworking as a third workplace in suburbia is based on a compulsory symbiosis.

The emergence of Third Places is a rapid and recent phenomenon although the concept was born in the United States more than thirty years ago. It is part of a long historical process of appearance of localized production systems either of Italian inspiration (Industrial districts) or of American inspiration (with the model of clusters). These structures, born in the 1970s and 1980s, constitute a first territorial turning point. The emergence of Third Places in large numbers, carries strong stakes and follows the cumulation of several factors with a global dimension (acceleration of the climate crisis, financial crisis of 2008, health crisis since 2019). These events inaugurate, after a period of deepening globalisation, a second territorial turning point. The first turning point was dominated by the "industrial district" or "local productive system" form, the second one seems to be inaugurated around a similar but not identical form of systemic integration, production and consumption, of the "Third Places" type, which appears as the most recent “avatar” of territorial development. The article shows that the Walloon industry, very dependent on the declining Fordist model, has not really taken the first but with the realization of the framework program « Creative Wallonia » program is now engaged in this second environmental and societal turning point.