With the economic growth experienced by our country since the last 10/15 years, more and more people have begun to ask themselves the question of urban extension and demographic management of the population.
Indeed, although relocation dynamics in the archipelagos were initiated by the government, the fact remains that, sociologically historically, Tahiti remains the most populated island.
Faced with this growing constraint and pressure, it was necessary to propose solutions to enable the population to find housing without generating too much population density. In fact, too much density is often linked to important socio-economic problems.
The fact is that the geographical reality greatly limits the possibilities of expansion: wedged between sea and mountain, the urbanization of the island has always been a big problem and it is not the traffic jams of the first decades of the 2000s that will tell us opposite!
That is why in 2020, the government lifted the ban on high-rise buildings (IGH) to allow buildings to build more than R + 6 as it was for a long time the case.
While this may have helped to free space, more professional than residential that said, the fact remains that it does not help to decongest the capital. And the development of the peninsula quickly found itself facing the same issue of super-density between sea and mountains.
That is why, some time ago, the government thought about the possibility of exploiting the interior plateaus of the island of Tahiti. These areas have a lot of advantages: a relatively flat surface that facilitates the settlement of more or less urbanized communities at lower cost than on mountain or hilly sections.
However, there is of course the inevitable question of the environmental impact of these new settlements. It is no longer accepted by the population that any urban developments import too much the local environment.
A competition has been launched locally and internationally to seek ideas for low-cost housing projects. The competition, launched a year and a half ago, saw the important participation of new companies working to colonize the planet Mars.
Indeed, the challenges, although on different planets, are similar in challenge: environmental stress, need for self-sufficient sets, comfort and safety in modular elements easily scalable and movable.
The challenge is big but the innovation that will come out will be even more effective!
And what a beautiful allegory that the Pacific islands benefit from extra-planetary settlement technologies, bringing us back to the time when the Polynesians, on their double canoes, set out to conquer an "other world" by colonizing the ocean at one time where navigation was in its infancy.