Optimistic.

In an age of eco-anxiety and doomsday fears, it can seem quite difficult to get excited about “urban development.” In the halls of architecture and urban planning schools, within architectural firms and construction companies, the anxiety is palpable and enthusiasm for the profession is waning… How can we continue to build when we know that the construction sector accounts for 43% of France’s annual energy consumption and generates 23% of greenhouse gas emissions (source: Ministry of Ecological Transition)? How can we reconcile the housing shortage, the social imperative of providing housing for all that is adapted to the conditions of tomorrow, and the need to refocus efforts on existing buildings, while limiting new construction as much as possible? How can we continue to develop and preserve the economic attractiveness of regions, given that urban sprawl is eating away at fertile land—which serves as both a biodiversity reserve, a space for food sovereignty, and a carbon sink?

Building always has an impact, and urbanization is always devastating. The equation is therefore difficult, even paralyzing. Yet the worst thing would be to give up, and inaction is not an option.

But a different perspective on the times ahead is possible. The constraints imposed on us must be an opportunity to re-enchant our professions.

By embracing the lens of adaptation, urban stakeholders have a new mission: to bring about positive transformation. Their actions can contribute to the restoration of cities and regions: restoring a disrupted water cycle, renaturalizing barren land, revitalizing a waterway, re-establishing broken ecological corridors, rehabilitating a building to give it a second, better-suited life, while accounting for the carbon footprint it represents.

Today, every impact assessment (mandatory for urban projects) must outline the measures that will compensate for what a project alters; tomorrow, we can hope to design and implement projects where the projected state will be better than the existing one, and thus will not require compensatory measures.

Optimism is not blindness or naivety. It is the expressed determination to succeed in doing better and the essential foundation of commitment.