Intelligent densification is on everyone’s lips and at the heart of the development and urban planning strategies of municipalities and the government. And for good reason ! Promoting neighborhoods on a human scale where everything can be done on foot, by bike or by public transport, it has undeniable positive effects on human health, the reduction of GHGs, the strengthening of the feeling of belonging, the formation of a tighter social fabric, while limiting urban sprawl. As we are hit doubly hard by the climate crisis and the collapse of biodiversity, it is a necessary lever for the ecological transition.
What if, in doing so, despite our good faith, we were creating a proverbial monster that could, in the long term, deepen and accelerate these crises?
This era of turbulence, which constitutes the greatest challenge that humanity has ever known, has its roots in the integration of an anthropocentric paradigm which is based on the perception that the human being is external to the environment, separate and independent, even superior to Nature, which justifies and legitimizes its impact of exploitation and destruction.
However, to change our impact on ecosystems in a structuring and lasting way, it is urgent to change… our relationship with Living Things. Traditionally, rural people have developed a connection (or even a resonance) with Nature that is eminently more evident than in the city. Accelerated densification could accelerate the profound disconnection of urban residents with this same Nature, and potentially sabotage our transition efforts by feeding the degenerative paradigm.
Fortunately, there is a path that combines the advantages of densification while promoting a rich relationship with Living things: biophilic planning and architecture. The biophilic vision of the city inserts Nature everywhere: trees, flowers, waterways integrated into the urban fabric and buildings, all year round. It is the material incarnation of a biophilic society for which the presence of other living beings (plants or animals) is immensely more important than their exploitation, which has a loving relationship with its territory and for whom the absence of Nature would amount to making us cut off from a primordial part of ourselves, recognizing that contact with Nature is not just a leisure or a moment of well-being, but a fundamental need. It is finally a lever to accelerate our regenerative impact on Earth.