Despite the major changes occurring in the Île-de-France region (a renewed planning scheme, Grand Paris project, new territorial division), the outer suburbs and their inhabitants still do not raise a particular interest from the public authorities. Their lifestyle would confirm upheld stereotypes about this part of the region, as characterized by residents occupying a detached house, a closed garden and owning a personal car. This thesis aims at exploring the complexity hidden beyond the all-embracing designation of “outer suburbs”. Many research studies focus on this kind of territory but examine pre-defined perimeters as a starting-point to understand social practices. On the contrary, this thesis considers observing the way of life is fertile, even more from the point of view of those who directly experience it, meaning the inhabitants. In contrast, this thesis considers observing the inhabitants’ way of life, therefore considering the point of view of those who directly experience the territory, offers a much richer material. Instead of starting from institutional or statistical perimeters to analyze practices and representations, we will try to understand how inhabitants build the spatial translations of their needs and wishes, considering the specific available resources around them, and then analyze these newly-defined areas. We will explore the specific process they undertake and the spatial results of these process. The inhabitants we investigated live in a specific area called Centre Essonne-Seine-Orge, where this thesis was carried out with the Agence d’urbanisme et de développement Essonne-Seine-Orge. This thesis more particularly deals with consumer practices, images that are associated to them and the specific areas people reach to shop. This outlook is metonymical: we investigate one part of their ways of life to understand it as a whole. Limitation and constraint are frequently used as an interpretative framework to analyze the ways of life of inhabitants of outer suburbs. They are thought to live “sub”-ways of life, to deal with territorial flaws. During our inquiry, we did not encounter any of the submissive and frustrated characters we had anticipated. The inhabitants are, on the contrary, able to find their own ways of escaping from the clichés, twisting the expected uses of their territory and developing the new skills and knowledge needed to build a way of life that allows them to reach a satisfying existential balance