Antje Burmeister et Olivier Klein introduisent les articles issus des travaux d’unatelier thématique du GdR Transpace qui s’est tenu entre 1998 et 1999. CeGdR fédère des recherches pluridisciplinaires autour de l'articulation entreles transports et l'espace. L’atelier sur le thème des interactions transport —espace au sein des systèmes de production a réuni des chercheurs issus dedifférentes disciplines en sciences sociales. Ils ont cherché à rassemblerdes travaux abordant les questions relatives au transport de biens, depersonnes et au-delà, d'informations à travers leur articulation aux activités deproduction. Mais ils ont surtout recherché des travaux présentant desapproches innovantes de la relation transport-espace avec l’objectif deconfronter les différentes représentations sous-jacentes.
The territory of a road freight transport company evolves in relation with the relationship environment it develops and the expertise it can offer. It is a more or less controlled territory in time and space. It is owned jointly by other companies - either partners or competitors - and shared by those firms established in the same place, located next to major principals. Audomarois, in northern France, is typically both a major industrial environment and the meeting-place of transport companies. Firms work there according to the relationships and markets secured with local industrialists. Besides, they develop a relationship (link) and expertise environment on different scales, which are essential to the durability of their activities. The territory of a road freight transport company epitomizes the very notion of territory ; unlimited by restrictive geographical boundaries, open to interaction - it actually results from and generates it -, it keeps ever changing ultimately, neither set locally nor lost globally. All in all, it is somehow the symbiosis between here and over there.
Main cities in France are now well linked. The development of the high speed road network took place in the context of the concentration of human activities in metropolitan areas. The next step is to spread this road network all over the French territory. This means that inter and intra-regional accessibility will be improved so that industrial districts will be connected. These industrial districts are typically characterised by technological externalities. Their efficiency is based both on tacit knowledge and learning by doing due to geographical and organisational proximity. Then, we focus here on the consequences the improvement of global accessibility may produce on the location of such industries.
This article aims to renew the debate about the links between transport infrastructure and economic development. It questions the traditional causality between these two elements. It begins with the different theoretical representations of economic development, and then try to develop the part of the transport inside the network’s framework. We consider that production is based on the coordination of the activities. The network is a particular mode of coordination, a specific organisational form that improves coordination. Infrastructures only support circulation, but they don’t determine it. Infrastructures are only the supports of an organisational mode of coordination based on circulation.
Metropolisation, namely households and activity concentration in the more developed cities, lead to a greatest spatial differentiation and space specialization in the urban area, which has great consequences particularly in the traffics growth. The analysis of the activities location in the urban area of Lyon highlights the emergence of peripheral employment poles, among which some, the more attractive and diversified, suggest a development towards a multi-functional polycentric urban organization.
The morphological and organisational study of road freight activities--notably parcel shipping which is the most elaborate form--enlightens the change in relations between industry and territory. The adaptation of parcel networks to market requirements is characterised by growing integration. Beyond just simple internal evolution within this sector, one may see in this logic the affirmation of a more and more reticulated productive system, where the notion of accessibility in terms of cost and deadline substitutes itself for that of distance.