Feasibility of Concept Y

State of the project

First results: end of 2013

Research program theme: ACTION - Receptive spaces and access: what sustainable mobility policies should we develop?

Shopping centres : new centralities in French peri-urban areas. A sustainable development model that relies on existing structures and innovative collective practices.

As part of an invitation to tender issued in 2011, the Groupement des Autorités Responsables de Transport (GART), a grouping of French public transport authorities, asked urban development practitioners to reflect on the shape of mobilities in 2020. Concept Y, put forward by Etienne Habera and Clément Jacquemaire, advocated intervening in peri-urban areas around French cities. Journeys and transport costs are both increasing, yet mobility in such areas are eluded in the local transport authorities’ planning process.

Concept Y raises the question of sustainable development in the periphery of major cities. Given the extent of urban sprawl, how can sustainable mobility be provided for everyone? Concept Y starts from the hypothesis that to complete the energy transition, technical solutions and social innovation need to go hand in hand.

Concept Y suggests building on the potential of existing shopping centres, enabling them to become centres for various activities, in order to provide solutions through the organising and sharing of mobility practices in peri-urban areas. Rather than enduring the hardship of commuting to work from the peripheries to the city centre, Concept Y suggests creating an intermediary node, one that could offer renewed mobility alternatives. Located near the main car routes, shopping centres are visited by large numbers of people living in peri-urban areas. The deployment of teleworking centres and car sharing points means that daily travel needs could become a shared exercise, thanks to new and innovative practices within a space that had hitherto been mono-usage.

As a way of supporting a more qualitative development of tomorrow’s mobilities, Concept Y places a question mark over a previous conception of progress. If, before, progress was all about travelling faster and further, perhaps today it’s about being able to choose to travel together and for a shorter time?

Putting into practice an ambitious experiment

Since the start of 2013, the Mobile Lives Forum has been involved in a feasibility study with Etienne Habera and Clement Jacquemaire to test the possibility of introducing a teleworking facility and a car sharing point at a shopping centre. How feasible is such a project? First and foremost, it would require the support of all the major actors in peri-urban areas: residents, in particular, but also the local authorities, businesses and developers. The key issue during the first phase of the experiment is to bring all these actors together and to agree on the future of their territory. An initial study yielded a list of sites that would most benefit from the project, and proposed business plans for developers and companies interested in providing teleworking facilities on these sites. After reviewing the results of the study, Mobile Lives Forum will consider the possibility of financing the experiment.

For more information: agence-odonata.fr/concept-y

Mobility

For the Mobile Lives Forum, mobility is understood as the process of how individuals travel across distances in order to deploy through time and space the activities that make up their lifestyles. These travel practices are embedded in socio-technical systems, produced by transport and communication industries and techniques, and by normative discourses on these practices, with considerable social, environmental and spatial impacts.

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Car sharing

Car sharing is the pooling of one or several vehicles for different trips at different times. Three types of car sharing exist: commercial car sharing, peer-to-peer car sharing and “informal” sharing between individuals.

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Teleworking

The remote performance of a salaried activity outside of the company’s premises, at home or in a third place during normal working hours and requiring access to telecommunication tools.

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