Présence des cadres et distribution résidentielle des actifs dans les principales villes françaises

Works on the residential geography of active people in large towns have especially stressed the opposition between homes of active people and more intellectual professions and workmen’s and employees’ homes. This is where the concentration of executives is the highest—this phenomenon had been studied the most in the metropolis. In France, academic articles have naturally been dominated by works about Paris. Recently, some research has reintroduced intermediate professions and renewed examination of the dualism of the economy. The social and economic capacity of these active people to disperse quite widely within the Parisian agglomeration has reduced the conventional pattern of an opposition between the well-to-do quarter and the working-class neighbourhood. But what about the situation in the provinces—in towns where there are almost a million people? Do these provinces emulate the Parisian spatial model—which is still dominated by a certain social segregation of well-to-do classes—or are their residential areas more socially diverse? This article attempts to answer this question through a comparison of the 2009 social geography of households in which the householder is an active individual in one of the seven largest metropolises in France (Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, and Bordeaux). This comparative approach and the focus given to intermediate professions reveal much greater social diversity in the provinces, despite little variation within the cities