At the turn of the century, as the great housing issues – finding homes, building, living differently, reusing thealready built, dealing with crises and constraints – are becoming more acute, new problems have emerged, under thebroader question of sustainable development, and thus questioning the way cities are organised. Therefore, privatereal estate developers are approached over this question, which has become urgent in the wake of the 2007 GrenelleEnvironment conference. From then on, faced with the issues of sustainable development, private contributors tourban construction need to take several scales into account at the same time – housing lot, building, neighbourhood,city – in order to address the many components of sustainability. Private developers first dealt with buildings’energetic treatments and outer structure, but are gradually considering whole sustainable neighbourhoods andcities. This study has focused on fieldwork in two areas : the Ginko eco-neighbourhood in Bordeaux and theconverted Macdonald warehouse. These have enabled us to analyze an understudied area of reasearch, i.e. privatefunding of sustainable neighbourhoods. The birth of sustainable urbanism gives a second life to those two places.It is also an opportunity for private developers to work both in terms of sustainable development, and on the scaleof entire neighbourhoods. This dual aspect, resulting from interests common to public and private actors, enablesreal estate developers to take a truly active part in the rise of sustainable neighbourhoods.
Private developers and problems of urban sustainable development