Urban Times and Public Policies

The residential spread, the growing breaking up of activity, leisure, daily life and women sustainable employment desynchronize more or less collective and individual social times since the services society dawn. A part of these dysfunctional aspects, which in general belong to the private sphere, is put on the public sphere that therefore must set up different measures aiming at the combination of professional and family lives. Thus Time public policies were created (first in Italy, and then in the Netherlands, Spain, Finland and France) for the last ten years. They are mostly implemented by local authorities via Time Offices and sometimes supported by States. These public structures try to identify constraints which certain people and users categories have to cope with. They suggest solutions that are built in partnership with stakeholders and address public services access, a new mobility offer design and the organisation of work places. This article introduces a typology with concrete examples of these solutions. But Time policies go beyond these necessary adjustments. And they support the ambition of a new society project in which time geography has its place by: their trend to a reduction of inequality; the new relationships to set up between genders; a better affinity between status taken on successively (and sometimes simultaneously) by individuals and populations; and more recently by taking into account differentiated uses in public spaces.