About Villes Vivantes
Villes Vivantes is the French operator of organic urbanism.
Our mission?
To ensure that finding a home where we need to live, in a living environment that suits us, is no longer a feat.
That the city, the neighbourhood, the area we live in, and our everyday journeys, come naturally.
That the house with a garden becomes accessible to everyone once again. Without urban sprawl.
Our method?
Organic urbanism: the art of making cities, and villages, plot by plot, with their residents. But also: with nature.
One project after another.
In a distributed, incremental and coordinated way.
Yesterday, the future of cities hinged on a few large projects that were heavy, costly and fragile. Today, the future is being built from thousands of micro-projects that adapt and transform the existing city, led by residents themselves, but also by property dealers and developers.
It is to steer, channel and orchestrate this profusion of initiatives, alongside local authorities, that Villes Vivantes has developed new expertise, new methods and new know-how: organic urbanism.
Since 2013, our teams have been developing a first practical application of it: gentle densification, with four operating models now tested and rolled out across France:
✼ BIMBY: multiplying houses and gardens,
✼ BUNTI: reconfiguring and greening existing buildings,
✼ BAMBA: reviving the art of the tailor-made housing development, adapted to each person’s project,
✼ BRAMBLE: strategic intensification, plot by plot.
In 13 years, Villes Vivantes has invested €8 million of its own funds in R&D to prototype these gentle densification operations and build 2 new professions:
✼ the incremental architect,
✼ and the flow urbanist.
Our teams now operate from our bases in Bordeaux, Paris, Lyon, Toulouse and Rennes.
Since 2013, they have supported 12,000 residents leading 16,000 gentle densification projects.
Every year, across France, they support:
✼ dozens of local authorities in drawing up and implementing development strategies for their areas,
✼ 1,500 people leading gentle densification projects.
Our next step: to increase the volume of our operations tenfold and support 15,000 people leading gentle densification projects every year.
Our story
In 2010, David Miet’s uncle and aunt decided to have a small single-level house built for his grandmother at the bottom of their garden in Montreuil, on the edge of Paris. The goal was achieved: on the one hand, avoiding a retirement home. But also, allowing her to enjoy her grandchildren without encroaching on the parents’ space…
At the same time, we discovered that other residents were getting busy too:
✼ some were selling part of their garden as a building plot, to pay for their children’s education, or for renovation work;
✼ others, planning ahead for old age, were adding a bedroom and a bathroom at street level, dividing the house, and renting out the upper floor;
✼ others still were moving into their own garden: they had a single-level house built there and sold the original house to young people, who would renovate it…
In 2013, David Miet and Thomas Hanss founded Villes Vivantes to turn these few pioneering projects into a great organic shift.
The aim: to finally resolve the twin crisis of housing and urban sprawl, against a backdrop of increasingly constrained public finances.
In 2016, the first BIMBY gentle densification operation was launched with the city of Périgueux.
In 2017, Amandine Hernandez, Denis Caraire and Paul Lempérière joined the adventure as co-founding partners.
In 2017, 2018 and 2019, other pioneering areas followed suit: Le Creusot Montceau, the Vosges Centrales, the Pays de Vitré…
Over the months, the teams of incremental architects grew, became more structured and gained experience.
In 2021, as the health crisis came to an end, the first BIMBY BUNTI gentle densification operation, in Périgueux, proved a success: 250 housing projects led by private individuals were authorised over 5 years of operation.
Also in 2021, sales of the plots in the first BAMBA operation were launched in Clermont-Ferrand, at the foot of the volcanoes.
In 2024, a thousand professionals, researchers and students from all over the world took part in the 1st ORGANIC CITIES conference, organised by Villes Vivantes, the OFCE (a French economic research centre attached to Sciences Po) and Sciences Po Paris.
In 2025, Villes Vivantes’ urban planners passed the milestone of 200 local authorities supported across France in drawing up their housing and area development strategies.
In 2026, a new municipal term begins, with renewed political ambitions, against a backdrop of a housing crisis more acute than ever but also of budgetary scarcity: an ideal tipping point to move from R&D to the large-scale roll-out of gentle densification, and to structure the growth of Villes Vivantes.
Would you like to contribute to the next chapter of the adventure? Let’s talk.