Abstract
In a context where building land is rare, how cities can produce new housing that answer both the environmental constraints (build in the already built urban envelopes) and the inhabitants desire to buy an affordable house?The "BIMBY" approach, meaning "Build In My Back Yard" and taking the opposing view to the "Not In My Back Yard" concept, creates an urban renewal process within suburban area. The initial hypothesis being that the densification of these districts can be the initiative of the residents needing an evolution of their house or plot.The owners’ projects, focusing on their house and their garden, could create a new home on an already built plot located in an already urbanised neighbourhood. For three years and a half, the Lab InVivo research group (in which I take part) has received more than 1 800 households, owners of a house, during concertation consultation BIMBY. More than half of these owners have drawn a project of a new house in their garden with or without division. In this conciliation dynamic, inhabitants become a decisive actor of the surburbs increasing in “welcoming a new neighbour in theirs garden”.This operational research is carried out in collaboration with the research department Villes Vivantes and the research laboratory In Vivo. It seeks to understand the impact of owners’ projects at large-scale individual housing estates through the participatory BIMBY process.Different stories are the starting point of a building project and their destination (for outsider, for close family, friend or for self-promoters) determines the plot development, district and the town.Therefore the second line of this research seeks to estimate the influence of individual consultation with a mediator architect on the evolution of the type and the architectural form of the projects drawn up by the inhabitants: by giving tools to the inhabitants to develop the best plan of property, the architect contributes to empower owners’ ideas and make them more appropriate. Then, this micro-projects densification could be more accepted by local residents.However, and this is the conclusion of our research, the pursuit of advice associated with an urban planning vision and zoning codes is essential to carry out an intensification project of suburb neighbourhood. The cross-analysis of the progress states 180 participants in eight French suburban areas and the development of the project ideas with the pursuit of the consultation gives us other perspectives on the accompanying stakes of the inhabitants in the direction of the suburbs soft densification.