What future for peri-urban neighborhoods of individual houses?
With the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies (LAST) will study, within the framework of a research project entitled LIVING PERIPHERIES, the potential evolution of peri-urban individual houses neighborhoods. As part of one of the research axes of the laboratory focusing on sustainable neighborhoods, this research project will not only provide a specific proactive vision for the evolution of this type of sectors, but also a multi-criteria approach to support decision processes.
Despite a context characterized by a general shift towards urban densification, countless peri-urban individual houses continue to be built each year in Switzerland, as in most European countries. However, these low density constructions situated in single function neighborhoods far from public transport appear to be in contradiction with most of the principles of sustainability.
What will happen to these vast peri-urban areas ? Some of them will be doomed to remain dormant by a mismatch to societal changes, particularly related to the attractiveness found by regenerated cities, reducing the size of households, the emergence of a long-life society or increased costs incurred by mobility? Is it possible to develop specific strategies to anticipate this risk and move from being a burden to that of resources for the sustainability of the built environment? In this perspective, how can one compare, in a multi-criteria manner, the different strategies of possible transformation?
To answer these questions, the research project LIVING PERIPHERIES aims to go beyond the only critical analysis of existing neighborhoods, by evaluating the possibilities of transforming these particular sectors. Various strategies will be tested - by concrete projects at urban and architectural scales - on several representative sites and evaluated in a multidimensional manner in order to compare their potential and their limitations at environmental, sociocultural and economic levels. Thus, the research will provide not only a proactive vision but also a novel specifically tailored multi-criteria decision-support method for the evolution of these vast peri-urban areas.