From single-family suburbs to emergent villages: a gentle densification revolution
Further reading
The teams at Villes Vivantes have spent over 100,000 hours testing real-life prototypes of gentle densification operations, working with dozens of municipalities and more than 10,000 homeowner-led projects in France.
Here are key insights from this work and a roadmap for transforming suburban neighborhoods into a network of vibrant and robust villages.
Villes Vivantes
Modeling the evolution of a neighborhood through gentle densification processes BIMBY and BUNTI over 20 years, at a rate of 1% annual change in the existing housing stock.
1. Scale matters
Gentle densification works best when the perimeter is as broad as possible — within the buildable zones defined by local urban planning documents (PLU in France).It rarely works under a top-down, funnel-like logic where urbanists try to select the one right block or the one good neighborhood.
2. Villages are more than a shape
They are mental models — useful for aligning visions across stakeholders — but their value lies more in their process than their form. Gentle densification is easy to evaluate ex post, but hard to visualize beforehand. The “village” metaphor helps bridge that gap, especially in countries like France where it is a deep and shared cultural reference.
3. Planning rules must evolve
Most zoning regulations either massively forbid or massively allow densification — but rarely guide it wisely. A successful operation starts with a detailed, creative audit and rewriting of planning rules for suburban areas.
4. New professions and skills must emerge
A new kind of multi-skilled professional who supports homeowners in shaping and delivering their own projects — someone who understands the many facets of the gentle densification process: architecture, real estate, law, urban fabric, and the social dynamics of neighborhoods.
5. We can achieve urban coherence incrementaly, without big projects.
Just because small, individual projects aren’t merged into one big masterplan doesn’t mean urban or ecological coherence is lost. Quite the opposite.
Villages outperform subdivisions because they are accumulations of resident-led, personalized projects — each improving the urban fabric incrementally, one step at a time.