Our territory is the unique framework for a shared future: it is therefore together, from citizens to ministers to architects, that the decisions that concern it must be considered and taken in the interest of the greatest number.
In this collective, everyone must express their skills, expectations and needs while finding the balance essential to the survival of the whole.
As an architect and urban planner, I have formed over the years some convictions which have been refined with the evolution of lifestyles, travel, production and consumption.
The growing appetite and the environmental need to promote short circuits for construction and consumption must encourage land conservation to maintain our common heritage in the long term. This also allows nature to be given its rightful place to improve our living environment and lower urban temperatures.
The city is the only living organism capable of rejuvenating.
The suburban city increases transport time, wasted time which impacts the quality of life. This horizontally extended city is a challenge for the institutions that run it, particularly in terms of community facilities, roads and transport, and maintenance. This challenge is all the more difficult to meet as public finances are constrained and citizens are asking the legitimate question of the effectiveness of public spending.
Faced with these challenges, we have an incredible opportunity: the city is the only living organism capable of rejuvenating. The solution to our difficulties therefore lies in the superposition of uses and the densification of the city on itself. Floor space in the city is rare and will become more and more so. The neighborhoods of the future must be a series of layers skillfully stacking personal and professional functions and uses without friction or nuisance. With this principle, we can reconquer buildings that are losing momentum.
This is the case for commercial wastelands, which are always very well served by transport. They are built flat. We can therefore superimpose housing floors, factory spaces for crafts, living spaces for our seniors and free up natural spaces and agricultural land on the ground serving this human group in a short circuit.
“Architecture is also an art”
We must produce the city where it is needed and ensure that public action provides positive incentives for those involved in construction. First and foremost by affirming that the response to environmental and quality of life challenges is not to stop building, but to do it better.
The regulatory and economic imperative sometimes makes us lose sight of what is essential. Architecture is also an art. More than a juxtaposition of gestures, the history and fabric of the city is a context that must be taken into account. The beauty and technical and environmental quality of buildings are not superfluous fads. They are essential to the enjoyment of the city by its users, and therefore essential to its success.
Likewise, all users must find their place. The shortage of social housing, which unbalances the scale of access to housing, must lead to helping social landlords by reducing the obstacles, some of which are quite recent, to the production of housing. We must also produce housing where it is in demand.
The city of tomorrow will be what we choose to make it
To this end, regulatory measures must be reoriented so that the advantage of tax optimization is a characteristic of housing production rather than its main objective, by directing these measures towards areas in tension.
The city of tomorrow will be what we choose to make of it through our decisions and our uses. Let us bet that with reflection and courage, it will be more sustainable for all, more efficient for its administration and more pleasant for all its inhabitants.
