For the past 20 years, cities across France have been setting up a Bureau des Temps, or a Time Bureau. This office essentially organizes usage according to the needs of urban residents and responds to the evolution of lifestyles. With the covid-19 pandemic, one of their new objectives is to respond to the widespread increase of working from home, reorganizing the city and its services according to this way of working.
Their mysterious-sounding name certainly spurs curiosity, but France's Bureaux des Temps, or Time Bureaus, are not secret organizations. They are offices working on time-based policies within cities. Today, almost every city hall has a department that organizes usage according to the population's needs: from commuting to daily activities, modes of transport, congestion and more.
Time Bureaus aim to improve quality of life in cities by responding to changes in lifestyles, gender relations and the transformation of working hours. It's a management approach based on the concept of chrono-urbanism.
These delegations in town and city halls and local councils have existed since the early 2000s in France. They are in line with the time-related policies developed in Italy in the 1990s, or the more recent approach to managing daily timings in the Netherlands.
Rennes was the first French city to experiment with this kind of time policy. In 2003, one of the first missions of the city's bureau was to shift the start of school classes a quarter of an hour later to reduce crowding on public transport.
Later, Paris, Lille, Lyon and Montpellier set up similar offices.
Adapting to the challenges of hybrid working
The widespread switch to teleworking during the covid-19 pandemic and the resulting hybrid work schedules have set new objectives for these offices. Work patterns have been disrupted. So how can times be organized and synchronized when employees can alternate between home and the office during the week, or move to third places?
According to information provided by the Rennes Bureau des Temps, the department has, for example, brought together the community's various players on the subject of coworking spaces. They wish to open up these work spaces to other professionals, beyond the self-employed.
