Les tiers-lieux à l’ère du numérique : diffusion spatiale d’une utopie socio-économique

Appeared in the 1980s in the United States, the concept of third-place refers to new social spaces by which is built the cohesion of an urban society in transition. At the age of Internet and the knowledge economy, the third-place appears as a new workplace where communities are doing projects to build a new world. These third-places are coworking spaces, Fab Labs and other formats but the worldwide spatial diffusion of these concepts diverges the original model, although it is emerging. Sometimes flagship for the utopia of a collaborative economy, sometimes a more modest response to the lost of wage employment, the third-place is also imagined as a tool for territorial development. After a review of the literature, the article analyzes the third-places from the perspective of the spatial diffusion theory of innovation. Then we discuss, in particular through the example of the Nord-Pas de Calais Region, about the diffusion vectors and process of an economic and societal change brought by new uses of digital technologies.