Urban planning

The beginnings of the reflection on the housing needs of employees at the end of the nineteenth century, have highlighted the concept of hygiene. Are physicians who have the clearest in these matters, denouncing the slum in which they entered when they were called to treat the sick. It was Paris but also many of our working-class cities.

Hygiene preceded urbanism and the circles that have been created on the housing needs of very quickly led to research questions of location of settlements, the purity of the air. They are the ones who initiated Act Cornudet 1920 imposing an urban plan in the cities. Very quickly, the reflection engaged on how best to introduce more nature in the city. The concept of garden city was born to find successful applications in the 1930s. What are these personalities who then were the primary proponents of the Cofhuat after the war. We remain faithful to the messages they have sent to us. If the immensity of the needs as a result of the destruction of war and the return of the French of Algeria have to overcome partially implemented principles until there, we believe that the time has come to return to the sources.

We rely for this on the agencies planning and first the first of these, the IAU, Institute of management and planning of the Region île de France, Member of the Cofhuat.

Studies necessary for a strong reflection in these materials should involve large-scale work. The Cofhuat is not equipped for this but it has the ability to disseminate the findings of researchers from all disciplines on these topics in its networks.

We will continue this work in bringing us closer areas recently created to measure how the texts voted by Parliament and applicable in all France, are adapted or not to geographical realities. A first test was made, in this regard, about the ALUR law, well adapted to the needs of the Region île de France but negative in other parts of the territory where the increase in the price of land is caused first the tourist attractiveness. The social objective of the Act is then put in check, demand for construction and soaring prices come from the outside, the defense of the environment is compromised by new authorisations to build had nothing to do with the needs of the populations: Chamonix Valley and vicinity of Geneva, Mediterranean coast.

Our partnership with former the SCET and the Caisse des dépôts is essential here. Personalities living in the France agreed to be for us regional relays us missing. It is on them that are the reflections of land-use planning which are one of the major objects of our institution.

To elicit reflections on all these subjects, we wish to associate students of schools of architecture. Our first partnership in this regard lies with the special school of Architecture that strives to engage his students, french and foreign, in original research. The inhabitant of housing becoming one of the players in the construction and not, as too often in the past, a mere consumer of space. We also develop contacts on this subject with the Belleville school as well as with the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris.

It is therefore a very dense program that awaits us about these urban issues. We want to involve architects, not only the big names, the companies of BTP in the construction but also in services. We will seek contacts at these topics with the administrations of State to propose some legislative and regulatory changes that our work call their greeting.

Our belonging to the IFHP allows us to bring the French position from that of the other countries in Europe and the rest of the world. The work which we have knowledge abroad, also feed our reflection.