Anthropology of dwelling could find in the ethnography of so-called « villes nouvelles » a fertile ground for the rediscovery of a field of research somewhat forgotten since the death of the French sociologist Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe. Our article shows that the residential attachment is developed in a more or less happy adjustment of the aspirations for a better living to an urban and architectural reality that is sometimes far from the founding utopias. By committing themselves to defend their new homes, the pioneers of the villes nouvelles wrote a page of its history, still reminiscent of the neighbourly relations.