“I would like to live there”: prospective action-research on the well-being of future residents of a social housing programme in Ruelle-sur-Touvre (Charente)

In order to design and execute housing operations which comply with numerous regulatory requirements, meet the as-yet-unknown expectations of the future occupants, ensure their local integration, and take into account ecological and social issues, architects cannot work in isolation. This multidimensional challenge which is well known to urban design and planning professionals was the guiding thread of a collaboration between an architect and environmental health researchers. Prospective action-research was initiated in February 2024, with the intention of monitoring a programme to construct 54 apartments to house older people and young professionals within a wider urban planning operation in Ruelle-Sur-Touvre (Charente). The aim of this action-research, which received the support of the social housing provider leading the project, was to explore questions relating to well-being and quality of life by investigating the experience of living. It included working sessions involving a group made up of employees of the social housing body, local authority officers, and local civic actors, as well as the team responsible for implementing the project. This article focuses on epistemic and methodological decisions that were made during the process in order to promote knowledge-sharing and collective (social) learning among participants. Based on examples, we examine the meaning and consequences of themes such as living together and preserving biodiversity, both of which were ambitions expressed in the initial documents. We discuss the benefits of this experimentation (which is still ongoing), and its the way it addresses lived experience, as opposed to a functional-based approach (sleeping, eating, leisure), in urban design and planning projects within a given territory, particularly through approaches to health promotion through urban planning.