Gwenaëlle d'Aboville

Born in 1981, Gwenaëlle d'Aboville is an urban planner with a master's degree in town planning from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and a DE architect with a diploma from ENSA Paris La Villette. She is a partner and director of the Ville Ouverte agency, which she founded in 2004.

Winner of the Palmarès des Jeunes Urbanistes in 2016, the agency has a team of 40 urban planners, architects, engineers and cartographers. The multidisciplinary team works on development projects, operational or regulatory urban planning, and urban or architectural programming. The agency is involved in regional projects, revitalising town and city centres, urban renewal and transforming public spaces.
It sees participation as a cross-cutting method for all its projects, in the service of a more sensitive form of urban planning that is concerned with inclusion. Gwenaëlle d'Aboville feeds this research through her publications in the journal Métropolitiques and her books Aménager sans exclure, faire la ville incluante (Le Moniteur, 2018).
A member of the IDHEAL (Institut des hautes études pour l'action dans le logement) advisory board, she works on the production and quality of housing. With Nicolas Binet, she published Réparer et construire la ville: pour un renouvellement de l'offre en logement (Le Moniteur, 2024).

She has taught at the Paris 1 master's programme in town and country planning and at the École d'Urbanisme de Paris, before taking part in post-master's training for the DSA in architecture and town and country planning at the École d'architecture de la ville & des territoires Paris-Est from 2018. She was recruited by the School in September 2020 as an associate lecturer. She is an associate researcher at the OCS laboratory (observatory of the suburban condition).