French People’s Housing Aspirations as Revealed by the Covid-19 Pandemic

The Covid-19 health crisis and successive lockdown measures have accelerated changes in French people’s lifestyles, consumption practices and relations to work and family, while heightening their appreciation of free time and the private sphere. Research shows that French people are now eager to spend time in their personal spaces and remain in their homes to devote themselves to their favorite hobbies, undertake DIY projects, sew or read. In France, where detached housing has been historically widespread, single-family houses with gardens appear to be the housing type that is the best adapted to these ongoing evolutions, and to what could be understood as a real anthropological shift in French people’s ways of life. The health crisis has also revealed the figure of the “total dweller”, which is worth analyzing in order to grasp French people’s passion for single-family houses.