Thinking about the future of suburban areas
Assens © EPFL / LAST / O. Wavre
As part of a training cycle entitled "Metropolitan urban planning in the face of ecological and social emergencies", the Agence d’Urbanisme Clermont Massif central (AUCM) recently interviewed Judith Drouilles about her doctoral thesis carried out within the Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies (LAST). Through her comparison with the Swiss situation, her research work provides additional insight into the French situation and thus helps to support the reflections of elected officials and technicians in the field.
Judith Drouilles is an architect and a graduate of the Paris School of Urban Planning. Today, as part of her professional activities, she applies the approach developed in her doctoral thesis at the Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies under the direction of Professor Emmanuel Rey.
Realized with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) within the framework of the LIVING PERIPHERIES research project, the doctoral thesis questions the future of residential neighborhoods in the urban periphery in the Swiss context.
In a transition context, the future of peri-urban neighborhoods of single-family houses represents a real challenge. Due to their low density and high dependence on motorized private transport, their current situation conflicts with climate protection objectives and raises multiple questions for their future development. In this context, the prospective work carried out here proposes a series of five alternative futures by 2050.
In addition to two underlying evolutions predicting a perpetuation of the zone villas model, the research develops three exploratory evolution scenarios of the neighborhoods according to topics such as soft densification, urbanity, or landscape integration. The scenarios feasibility is tested through their implementation in an existing peri-urban neighborhood, typical of the urban region of Lausanne.