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Apur, The Parisian urban planning workshop on the scale of Paris and Greater Paris documents, deciphers, supports, illuminates, projects, explores and shares diversity.

Well-being in urban projects

International workshops to develop a methodology for Paris

How can well-being in cities be defined? What definitions do citizens give? What measures and tools have been put into place in other metropolises to address this dimension of urban development projects? Why should well-being be included in project assessment and what benefits are expected? When should it be measured and evaluated? Before project operations begin, while they are being implemented or once they've been delivered? In order to explore the issues linked to enhancing well-being in urban development, Apur brought together a panel of international experts and researchers, residents of the metropolis and a group of professionals and designers with the aim of defining the challenges and objectives of integrating well-being better into future urban projects in Grand Paris.

Icône de la catégorie Valorisation du bien-être dans l’aménagement urbain - Ateliers d’experts internationaux et d’habitants du Grand Paris (French version) Icône de la catégorie Well-being in urban projects - International workshops to develop a methodology for Paris
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Belleville Park, Paris 20th arrondissement © Sophie Robichon - City of Paris

Faced with the challenges of social, economic and ecological transitions and following on from several decades during which a trend of certain economic approaches raised questions about traditional indicators such as the GDP,  Apur undertook a task aimed at collectively reflecting on the proposal of a methodology for assessing the effects of urban development in a more global and cross-referenced manner. Conceived according to a multidisciplinary and iterative methodology, the series of workshops aimed to explore the concept of well-being in urban development. They began with issues of definition and a conceptual framework and gradually moved towards questions of assessment, operationalisation and the concrete realisation of urban projects and policies. Time was also provided for discussion and putting things into perspective.

Four workshops, which brought together about fifteen French and international researchers from various fields (public health, economics, urban planning and development, geography, socio-anthropology, behaviour sciences etc.) enabled a better understanding of the approaches and experiments carried out in diverse territorial contexts notably in Brussels, Clermont-Ferrand,  Copenhagen, Geneva, Grenoble, London, Lyon, Montreal and Rennes. The workshop focusing on the citizen-centred approach, with a panel of Grand Paris inhabitants who had previously participated in the consultation process about urban projects, contributed to the objective of having a cross-referenced and shared thought process. Each workshop thus shed specific light on issues, by questioning, completing or nuancing the information already given. In the light of the presentations and contributions and the questions and feedback on their experiences by professionals, designers and developers in Grand Paris (local authority representatives, urbanists, developers, architects, landscape architects etc.) a space for dialogue was opened up which brought forth the approach to Grand Paris. Organised on 12th February 2026, the feedback period provided the opportunity for a dozen or so lines of action to be established for the next steps in the process.

This publication brings together all the presentations, a summary of each workshop and a range of information and guidelines for reconsidering collectively, how to conceive, steer and evaluate development projects in Grand Paris from the angle of well-being, in all its human and environmental dimensions.

With the participation of : Jamie Anderson, University of Manchester / Agnès Bastin, Université Gustave Eiffel / Benjamin Cadranel, citydev.brussels / Daniel Florentin, École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées / Camille Gilloots, Université de Lausanne / Louise Kielgast, Agence Gehl / Christian Krekel, London School of Economics / Éloi Laurent, OFCE, École urbaine, Sciences Po – Stanford University / Évelyne de Leeuw, Université de Montréal / Anne Le Roy, Université Grenoble Alpes / Marie Llorente, MLL Conseil & Recherche / Flora Samuel, Cambridge University
and a panel of Grand Paris inhabitants.

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