The City at Home
Mobility and services

IVM is launching a new programme headed “The City at Home”. Mobility and services. The image of the city today is still one of individuals moving around to access urban amenities. At the same time, there are an ever growing number of forms of access to the different resources the city has to offer (health, information, culture, employment, consumption, etc.). Information and communication technologies play an essential role in these new options. Home services are changing, taking on new forms. New markets are emerging. What is the function of physical mobility in these new systems? Who are the new players? How do mobile urban workers organise their lives? What do consumers or users – urban, suburban or rural – require? What are the obstacles, constraints and problems involved in building an appropriate economic model?

Programme

In order to identify the issues, get a better idea of the changes happening, devise innovative systems and put together experiments, IVM will be running cycles of seminars combining researchers in various disciplines, representatives of community action groups and service providers, together with local businesses and public bodies involved in the sphere of urban services.

■ Inaugural working group session: programme summary (french version)
Paris - October 2009
■ “The city at home, to what extent?” programme summary
■ Sessions "The tools that help improve services": programme of the February 10, 2010 programme
■ March 31, 2010 programme
Paris, February and March 2010 
■ Session "Emergence":programme
Paris, May 2010
■ Session "In town like at home": programme
Paris, June 2010

Part of the future of mobility depends on the mobility of the service providers. The rise in individual mobility, the incessant time chasing of working people and the ageing of the population are generating a growth in demand for mobile services. However, home services are still in their infancy and mainly directed at vulnerable groups. In addition, as employees, the vast majority of home service providers are the least mobile of the socio-professional categories. 12% of shop and service employees today commute at least once a week, as compared with 36% of skilled workers. Whilst clearly on the rise, these mobility figures still have a long way to go. So will the car drivers of tomorrow be primarily individuals in the course of their work? This is already the case in office hours, in certain city centres, one day a week.

Emerging practices
Until now, most of the research has focused on home service itself or on the employer-employee relationship, and very little on the mobility aspect of the process. Yet the development of mobile services is dependent on improvements in this mobility. In addition, local authorities and in particular Departments wishing to develop their areas, are beginning to think in terms of providing certain amenities in mobile form across their entire territories. IVM is studying the needs of the recipients of these services, the emerging practices, the way the service providers manage their mobility, in order to understand the difficulties they encounter and potential areas for innovation.
This project – run in collaboration with numerous partners (associations, companies, local authorities, academics) – will be followed up by experiments.

The project team:

Frédéric de Coninck, scientific director.
Director of Research and Professor at France’s National School of Civil Engineering. His field of research at the Cities, Mobilities and Transportation Laboratory at the University of Paris East is the way in which changing work patterns and the spatiotemporal structure of modern services are transforming the individual’s relationship with space and time.

Isabelle Edessa, project manager
Member of IVM’s Steering Committee.