Abstract
If we can say that each country has a culture, a climate, different conditions of production, which permit it to display its specificity, its “exception”, then due to globalization we can say accurately that levels of life will be homogenized, and we will be under the influence of a great explosion of images. The French experience merits being examined in all its richness. The approach of this study will display seven points of view: - The quantitative problem to which France has been confronted during the last forty year. - The financial problem, which evolved from help to “stone” to help to “human”. - The land problem and its tools, the zones to be urbanized in priority, then the zones of planned settlements, which permitted making a product from “earth”. -The problem of typologies: Collective premises, individual houses. -The problem of city planning from open planning to the realization of open or closed blocks. -The problem of construction techniques and their evolution in time. - The problem of architecture; architecture which is confined to the ideology of repetition towards a praise of diversity. Although the subject is wide, it permits us to understand better the ways which lead to the error and the ones which remain to be explored and to locate them. As a conclusion, a conviction: There is no conception of housing which may be an imaginary city concept. Talking about housing in an isolated manner means leaving the field to functionalism with all its destruction.
