Skyline : horizon sanitaire ?

The modernist project was based on a hygienist ethic: providing ventilation and sunlight for all homes. Today, urban planning strategies are more selective. Densification and urban sprawl are constraining the sites of capital reproduction in metropolitan areas. Residential towers are being revalued, along with access to the skyline from domestic spaces. A question from the 1960s is being revisited: is it healthier to live high-up in collective housing? This article seeks to answer this question on the basis of a field survey conducted in the new/old residential towers of the Lyon and Saint-Étienne metropolitan area. Health is analyzed as an interrelation between a body and the environment, as a set of exposures (light, weather, sounds, pollutants, wind, heat, etc.) that requires studying the positioning of the inhabitant, their housing, the tower, and its neighborhood, as well as the permeability of these different scales, from the window to the balcony, elevator, and stairs. Residents recognize the physiological and psychological benefits of ventilation and sunlight, but access to the horizon involves other, more invisible vulnerabilities. Polysensorial, the insulation problems that persist in the upper floors are considered symptomatic of a physicalist approach to urban planning, which is out of step with the intensification of biochemical dimensions of health from home.