Why | To promote an alternative way of densifying in Lille Metropolis
What | Selection, analyse, presentation
Where | Lille Metropolis, France

Many houses built since the seventies in Lille Metropolis are the ones located in the middle of their garden. This typology created urban sprawl and is harmful consequences: rural and natural spaces reduced, traffic jams, sleepy and insecure areas… In the same time many surveys shows that a house is what French people prefer. They like to be independent and to have privacy. They like to have a garden and their own gateway.

A consensus could be find in building more townhouses, that do not consume much space but that also offer the independence people like. This typology is also traditional in Lille’s region. For the bourgeois, the worker of the shopkeeper, this type of house, narrow, high and deep, has been massively built until the middle of the 20th century. Cities of Lille’s metropolis have been created by townhouses, like in many cities of North-West Europe.

This is to promote this interesting and dense typology that an illustrated booklet has been started. Good local examples of townhouses are selected, described and analysed to inspire real estate developers, city counsellors, inhabitants and architects of the region.