Can urban greening come to the rescue of life in cities?
The summer of 2022 has sadly left its mark on the history of France. Some people see it as the clear consequences, others hear alarm bells ringing... With an unprecedented drought, repeated dramatic fires and record temperatures, France, like other countries around the world, is overheating! This fact highlights the vital and indeed health-giving role played by urban greening.
“De-gendering” cities: a new criterion of attractiveness?
Cities are made by men and for men: they have historically been planned and designed to reflect the traditional role of the male gender. This is a considerable problem since all genders should have equity in sharing the public space.
Building schools in modular wood
Interview with Marina Da Silva Carvalhais, R&D projects and Wood Construction Innovations (WeWood).
Flax: A fibre of the future for construction?
Resistant, light, efficient, ecological… Flax is used in construction on land and even on the sea! In 2022, the Netherlands inaugurated the world’s first linen bridge. A navigator used it to build the hull of his boat… Can this plant material really meet the needs of urban construction?
Is digitalisation the key to building differently
Attracting talent, mitigating climate change, and improving productivity: These are the construction sector's three main challenges. BIM and various digital tools offer useful solutions, but these are not enough.
What if your sites were supplied via rivers instead of roads?
Faced with the current energy situation, we must urgently find alternative solutions that will enable us to change the ways we produce and transport our materials. Among the solutions considered, one of the priorities – particularly for the industrial sector – is to find means of transport that are more energy-efficient and less harmful to local residents. Focus on river transport.
New challenges in public space
Today, public spaces are facing new challenges – societal, environmental, political, technological and economic – and must deal with the uncertainty of a changing world. How can public spaces be designed to meet the various expectations of society while also being able to adapt to future developments?
Free public transport: issues and positions of the key players in the debate
The issue of free public transport was widely debated in France’s 2020 municipal elections. Its presence on the headlines of many campaign documents demonstrates the political, environmental and societal nature of the issue. Several issues arise from the implementation of such a public policy. We examine the positions of the key stakeholders in the debate.
How do you design green roofs?
Green roofs are on the up and up. And for good reason! They have many environmental, economic and social benefits. In addition to their aesthetic appeal, they can promote biodiversity, improve the insulation of buildings and retain rainwater. Recent research conducted by ecologists is improving our understanding of the conditions under which rooftop vegetation thrives and develops, and assessing the quality of ecosystem services provided by different types of roofs. We consider the factors behind the design choices for such ecosystems.
What kind of governance is appropriate for a convivial city?
At the request of Bouygues Construction and La République des Hyper Voisins, six students from the École Urbaine at Sciences Po Paris worked for nine months on creating conviviality in urban areas. The proposed exploration strategy is to create the conditions for conviviality by introducing a professionally-structured form of citizen action on a micro-local scale. Explore their recommendations for the forms of governance that are most conducive to the emergence of convivial spaces, based on eleven areas of investigation in France and Switzerland.
How do players in US construction innovate?
Interview with Viviane André, an analyst at Winnovation, a Bouygues Group subsidiary.
Should we build higher and higher to fight against land artificialisation?
The fight against urban sprawl and land artificialisation is a national priority that is pushing those in the building sector to look for solutions to make cities denser. One of these solutions is to build ever taller buildings. A controversial issue.
The French Towns Adopting Sustainable Construction Charters
Many towns and cities are looking for a way to remodel their urban planning to give them resilience in the face of climate issues. One such solution is to rally the stakeholders in an area - residents, companies and local authorities - to move towards housing solutions that are innovative, sustainable and accessible to all: that is the cited goal of the ‘sustainable construction charters’ emerging around France.
How much will the ecological transition cost the construction industry?
In the last segment of its sixth activity report, the GIEC specifies very clearly that on the economic level, the ecological transition will prove less expensive for the global economy than if we do nothing. Several sectors are highly exposed to this issue, in particular transport, energy and construction. But acting, how much will it cost? The subject is a complex one but initial estimates are starting to be seen.
Guide to Regreening Cities
Focus on planting initiatives to regreen cities including urban canopies to provide plant life without digging, planters with automatic watering or rainwater harvesting systems, “oasis” schoolyards, and urban mini-forests.
Tackling traffic congestion in cities
Tackling traffic congestion has always been a major challenge for local authorities. Many different approaches have been attempted, including adding lanes, removing lanes and multimodal transport.
Towards a more “ecosystemic” energy performance of buildings
Controlling energy consumption has become an environmental, social and economic necessity, due to the numerous impacts on the biosphere and society as a whole: climate change, depletion of natural resources, deterioration of health, etc.
You will also like...
Top of the month
-
What are the expectations of the French public in terms of quality of life and ecological transition?
As the 3rd survey* carried out by the Observatory of Uses and Representations of Territories confirms, living in the city increasingly appears to be an oxymoron, and the desire to migrate is intensifying among the hyper-urban population. This is a powerful trend, and the pandemic seems to have accentuated the discontent, intensified the search for a new work/life balance, and even in certain cases to have created conditions that are more conducive to turning these desires into reality.
-
Bouygues Construction goes down the path of artificial intelligence
April 2018 – Cédric Vilani, a deputy of the La République en marche (LREM) party in Essonne, publishes a reference document on artificial intelligence. It namely gives a few indications on the consequences of artificial intelligence development on the construction sector. At Bouygues Construction, are we ready?
-
Materials sorting: the circular economy in action!
“Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed.” These famous words from Lavoisier became the motto of Brézillon which opened a contaminated soil transit, sorting and recovery platform in February.
-
Energy renovation – the driving force behind new uses
While improving energy performance is essential during a renovation project, it is not the sole objective of project managers. Of equal importance are the key features aimed at incorporating different uses within a building. Issues such as planning, digitalisation, occupation of space, quality of life at work, etc. also need to be fully addressed.
-
Foresight: understanding and responding to future challenges
As a responsible, committed company, Bouygues Construction must be able to quickly adapt to changes in the world and in our society. What is this all about? Anticipating usage to fully respond to both current and future needs and trends: in technology, the environment, demographics, society and the economy. To help in this daily challenge, Bouygues Construction has a team that is dedicated to foresight. But what does foresight mean in concrete terms?
-
Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau: a bridge over the Pacific
The longest sea bridge in the world. After nine years of construction, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge was officially opened today.
-
When cities overheat
Urban overheating is becoming a recurring phenomenon, resulting from the cumulative effect of climate change and the Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon. Climate change is leading to an increase in the intensity and duration of heat waves (hot air masses causing high temperatures for several consecutive days) in different parts of the world. These meteorological phenomena themselves reinforce the UHI, a climatic effect causing a difference in temperature between the centre of urban areas and outlying or natural areas, which can be greater than 10 °C during heat waves. The effect is even more pronounced at night, when the heat stored by artificialised land and buildings is released into the air, keeping the temperature high. Faced with the various consequences (social, environmental, economic) and climate projections, local and regional authorities are now faced with the need to adapt their cities in order to combat this phenomenon. Below is an overview of the challenges and solutions.
-
Paris 2024: building a legacy for the region
While the tradition of building Olympic villages dates to 1924, when the last Paris Games were held, it was not until 2003 that the legacy dimension of the Games appeared in the Olympic Charter. SOLIDEO, the delivery authority for all the permanent works of the coming Paris Olympic Games, has put this idea of a reduced or positive long-term impact at the heart of its plans to prepare for the post-Olympic period, for example by favouring renovation over new construction. While some developments have already been strongly criticised, can the 2024 Olympics be a new model for Olympic urban planning? How can we work to build a shared and positive legacy of this event for cities?
-
Two years later, the hamlet of Les Noés in Val-de-Reuil remains a benchmark eco-neighbourhood in Normandy.
For some people, living in the countryside is synonymous with isolation and loneliness. The hamlet of Les Noés in Val-de-Reuil (Eure) proves the contrary: this environmentally friendly eco-neighbourhood promotes the individual and collective well-being of its residents on a daily basis.
