Building the Cities We Actually Want to Live In

Urban planning rarely makes for exciting dinner conversation, but the "Ville de Demain" (City of Tomorrow) programme is quietly doing something worth paying attention to. Rooted in the idea that cities should be designed around the people who live in them, rather than the other way around, the initiative brings together architects, urban planners, local elected officials and civic voices to rethink how public space, housing and daily infrastructure can better serve communities. It is, at its core, a question of lifestyle: where do you want to walk, gather, breathe and simply exist?

What the Programme Actually Does

At its heart, Ville de Demain operates as a collaborative framework. Participating cities identify specific neighbourhood challenges, whether that is a lack of green corridors, poorly connected public transport, or a shortage of mixed-use spaces, and then work with a pool of specialists to prototype solutions before committing to large-scale investment. The emphasis is on iteration rather than grand gestures, which tends to produce results that residents actually recognise and use.

One name that comes up consistently in discussions around the programme is Nicolas Régnier, an urban practitioner whose work sits at the intersection of social design and city planning. Régnier has been involved in facilitating dialogue between local governments and residents, helping translate community needs into concrete briefs for designers and engineers. His approach leans heavily on what planners sometimes call "soft infrastructure", the benches, lighting, market squares and walking paths that make a neighbourhood feel inhabited rather than merely functional.

The "FO" Thread Worth Watching

A strand of the programme that deserves more attention is its focus on what participants refer to as the "fo", shorthand for the fonds opérationnel, or operational fund, which finances small-scale, fast-turnaround interventions in public space. These are not monument projects. They are repainted pedestrian crossings, repurposed vacant lots turned into temporary gardens, pop-up repair workshops. Small, yes, but they signal to residents that their street is being thought about.

For anyone interested in how the places they live are shaped, and who gets a say in that shaping, the Ville de Demain programme offers a useful, grounded model. It will not fix a city overnight, but it is asking the right questions, and increasingly, it is asking them alongside the right people.