From Greater London to the ‘Grand Paris’.
Pierre Testard
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L’ambition et l’orgueil architecturaux et urbanistiques sont souvent démesurés. Les chefs d’Etat aiment à se réaliser dans la pierre et le béton. On voit bien pourquoi. Il reste à savoir si les habitants, les citoyennes et les citoyens se retrouvent dans ces formulations du pouvoir. Deux formes de jugement peuvent, à beaucoup d’égard, nuancer les ferveurs du pouvoir : celle de l’opinion publique lorsqu’elle se constitue en moment de discussion et de débat ; celle des “étrangers” qui impose une distance avec ce que l’on prétend faire. Voici, de Londres, une autre approche des ambitions présidentielles françaises. Un échange interculturel fructueux pour les uns et les autres.
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Imagine all the over-ground railway networks of Paris covered by green corridors and large public spaces connecting the different areas of Paris. For Mike Davies, member of Rogers Stirk Harbour& Partners- the only British group of architects solicited by the French government to reflect on the possibilities of transforming Paris’s urban landscape- this would open up the centre of Paris to its periphery.[1] It would put an end to the striking segregation which divides the city from its suburbs. This proposal is the result of a global reflection launched by the State on the idea of a ‘Grand Paris’ which would extend the limits of the city beyond the circular ring road which surrounds it, and include the 7 million people who live in the suburbs. On the 29th April, the President Nicolas Sarkozy gave a speech revealing his political and architectural ambitions.[2] He highlighted the importance for the ten groups of architect-planners consulted on the question to work together to define the outline of an urban revolution for Paris. Interestingly enough, the avowed goal of this project is to make the Parisian agglomeration an economic hub with much more appeal for investors and a space of well-being for all its inhabitants. Through a huge effort on transports, housing and economic development, by 2022, Paris is to become a huge metropolis capable of rivalling with London or Berlin as a sustainable and beautiful city at the avant-garde of modernity. Yet, one may ask what it is cities are competing for?
For Londoners used to the endless train journeys through Greater London, and for tourists charmed by the local ‘quartier’ life retained by certain Parisian neighbourhoods, this project may seem either ludicrous or irrelevant. The government’s plan, despite its unclear contours, focuses on three main points:
- A massive effort will be made for the development of transports. Plans include the construction of a peripheral tube linking the gates of Paris.
- 70000 houses per year will be constructed to expand the living space around Paris
- 10 special economic zones will be sustained, such as a biotechnological valley in the plateau of Saclay.
However, there is no evident link between these announcements. The train which should circle Paris is meant to link the principal zones of development around Paris. One wonders what other less economically reliable areas will become. Jonathan Glancey recalls that an ambitious large-scale plan aiming at giving Paris more interconnectedness and economic attractiveness has to be matched by a particular attention to the creation and nurturing of education and jobs.[3] Indeed, there is little sense facilitating mobility and top-down economic competitiveness if the people involved do not feel these urban transformations take into account their specific lifestyles and social well-being. The projects exposed by the different groups of planners, sociologists and architects include ideas on the best ways to attain a harmonious ‘vivre-ensemble’. Roland Castro’s proposal, for instance, insists on a right of urbanity for citizens and the poetic dimension of the metropolis of the twenty-first century insofar as its landscape must be strewn with symbolic monuments which elevate its perspectives.[4] Nonetheless, this type of idea was absent from the President’s speech. It would be problematic to reduce an ambitious plan to its exterior urban expression: efficient transports and iconic buildings do not improve social well-being. Rather, it is where these transports lead one to, and what these buildings represent, which determines the health of a city. Indeed, the paradigm of space and openness, rooted in the nineteenth century haussmanian revolution, fails to recognize that the more space there is between buildings and neighbourhoods, the more people are drawn apart. Therefore, a large-scale plan can only be sustained with small-scale equivalent plans on a local level enabling ‘quartier’ life to develop. “Plans on anything like a big scale will need the involvement of many different people and sectors of Parisian society if they are to have a chance of working. They need to be matched by hundreds of small plans that will allow the streets of Paris from the Marais to Marne-la-Vallée to flourish in a way that is all their own.”[5]
Indeed, a danger regularly pointed out consists in pursuing the process of destruction of local specificities in the name of a hypothetical modernity.[6] This argumentation led to the erection of the ‘Tour Montparnasse’, the destruction of the market of ‘Les Halles’ in the heart of Paris, the development of arterial roads, and the marginalisation of the poor in daunting rectangular buildings in the suburbs. In a sense, the will to resolve the disparities between centre and periphery through large-scale transportation plans comes down to consider the cause of the problem as its effect. Moreover, the insistence placed upon the idea of a post-Kyoto city tends to conceal social difficulties under the pretence of environmental consciousness. In a sense, even Le Corbusier’s ideal plan to erase half of the city centre “with high-quality, high-rise apartment blocks set in a new urban parkland” integrated a more social perspective of Paris.[7] Urban planners have consistently been torn apart between the fear of destroying older supposedly authentic neighbourhoods and a desire to keep up with modernity. However, these aesthetic and abstract notions exclude the social aspects of urban life. The categories of beauty and sustainability are useful to nuance objectives of productivity and self-reliance. But they neglect the justice and harmony which bind the components of a society together.
In fact, the project of a ‘Grand Paris’ is part of a larger plan to recompose the regional pattern of France and of its capital. The ‘Comité pour la réforme des collectivités locales’ suggested that the territory of Paris should be merged in a greater ensemble including the departments of Seine-et-Marne, Val-de-Marne and Hauts-de-Seine by 2014.[8] The metropolis hence created would include 6 million inhabitants. Such an institutional reform would induce the creation of an independent urban community closing off the ‘Grand Paris’ from the rest of the Ile-de-France region in more than one way. Beyond the political motivations of a presidential majority wanting to conquer a city and a region governed by the Socialist Party, there is no apparent coherence between the institutional and urbanistic projects of a ‘Grand Paris.’ In this perspective, the plan put forward by Rogers Stirk Harbour& Partners advocates a restructuring of boroughs into larger areas with 50 or 60 mayors in total, as opposed to the current 1000 mayors present throughout the suburbs. [9] It supposes that because French mayors have actual powers- as opposed to British ones- it makes more sense to encourage common policies on a larger scale. This directly counters the politics of proximity traditionally applied in Parisian suburbs, especially in the North. It also shuns the fact that new towns built around Paris in the 1960s and 1970s were not “planned to be self-contained (unlike the British new towns), but depended on the centre for employment and were, on the whole, architecturally unfortunate.”[10] In this sense, education and employment must be encouraged for any institutional, economic, housing and ecological projects to be fruitful.
Thus, British views on the ‘Grand Paris’ tend to stress the tension between glimpses of utopia present in the architectural programs presented to the French President and the difficulties of thinking urban restructuration along with social reform. The idea of a ‘Grand Paris’ seems to express a faith in the city as a space of modern innovation. However, this full-fledged devotion to the myth of modernity overlooks the specificities of the Parisian agglomeration. The scale of Paris must be great merely because it must replicate the scheme of huge metropolises more attractive for investors and entrepreneurs than for dwellers. Extension and mobility seem to prime over connectedness and harmonisation. In this perspective, plans for a Parisian Central Park or a Grand Central Station in Aubervilliers on the model of New York betray a conception of modernity steeped in a full-fledged admiration for economic success as emodied by the United States. The program of the ‘Grand Paris’ relies on a conception of the relation between transportation and economic development. Yet, it seems that utopia could easily become megalomania if symbols and infrastructures were privileged to the detriment of recomposing social networks and opportunities.
[1] Christopher Sell, ‘Paris is full of huge canyons’, The Architect’s Journal, 19 March 2009; c.f.www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/daily-news/paris-is-full-of-huge-canyons/1995505.article
[2] This speech was given for the inauguration of the exhibition ‘Grand Pari(s)’, open until the 22nd November 2009, at the ‘Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine’ in Paris. C.f. www.legrandparis.culture.gouv.fr
[3] Jonathan Glancey, ‘Paris should beware these grand architectural designs’, www.guardian.co.uk, 18 March 2009
[4] C.f. www.legrandparis.culture.gouv.fr/documents/CASTRO_Livret_chantier_1.pdf
[5] Jonathan Glancey, ‘Paris should beware these grand architectural designs’, www.guardian.co.uk, 18 March 2009
[6] Ibid ; Agnès Poirier, ‘Croydon in the spring: Le Grand Paris urgently needs reshaping. But is the south London super-suburb the right model?’, The Guardian, Comment& Debate, 25 September 2008, c.f. http://agnespoirier.com/articles.asp?language=fr&Encours=25; Peggy Hollinger, ‘Sarkozy unveils grand plan to transform Paris’, Financial Times, 30 April 2009, c.f. www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0ea272bc-351f-11de-940a-00144feabdc0.html
[7] Jonathan Glancey, op.cit.
[8] www.reformedescollectiviteslocales.fr/actualites/index.php?id=75, proposition N°18
[9] Christopher Sell, ‘Paris is full of huge canyons’, The Architect’s Journal, 19 March 2009; c.f.www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/daily-news/paris-is-full-of-huge-canyons/1995505.article
[10] Joseph Rykwert, ‘Why Sarkozy's Paris doesn't cut the mustard’, The Architect’s Journal, 18 February 2009; c.f. www.architectsjournal.co.uk/the-critics/why-sarkozys-paris-doesnt-cut-the-mustard/1990524.article
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Imagine all the over-ground railway networks of Paris covered by green corridors and large public spaces connecting the different areas of Paris. For Mike Davies, member of Rogers Stirk Harbour& Partners- the only British group of architects solicited by the French government to reflect on the possibilities of transforming Paris’s urban landscape- this would open up the centre of Paris to its periphery.[1] It would put an end to the striking segregation which divides the city from its suburbs. This proposal is the result of a global reflection launched by the State on the idea of a ‘Grand Paris’ which would extend the limits of the city beyond the circular ring road which surrounds it, and include the 7 million people who live in the suburbs. On the 29th April, the President Nicolas Sarkozy gave a speech revealing his political and architectural ambitions.[2] He highlighted the importance for the ten groups of architect-planners consulted on the question to work together to define the outline of an urban revolution for Paris. Interestingly enough, the avowed goal of this project is to make the Parisian agglomeration an economic hub with much more appeal for investors and a space of well-being for all its inhabitants. Through a huge effort on transports, housing and economic development, by 2022, Paris is to become a huge metropolis capable of rivalling with London or Berlin as a sustainable and beautiful city at the avant-garde of modernity. Yet, one may ask what it is cities are competing for?
For Londoners used to the endless train journeys through Greater London, and for tourists charmed by the local ‘quartier’ life retained by certain Parisian neighbourhoods, this project may seem either ludicrous or irrelevant. The government’s plan, despite its unclear contours, focuses on three main points:
- A massive effort will be made for the development of transports. Plans include the construction of a peripheral tube linking the gates of Paris.
- 70000 houses per year will be constructed to expand the living space around Paris
- 10 special economic zones will be sustained, such as a biotechnological valley in the plateau of Saclay.
However, there is no evident link between these announcements. The train which should circle Paris is meant to link the principal zones of development around Paris. One wonders what other less economically reliable areas will become. Jonathan Glancey recalls that an ambitious large-scale plan aiming at giving Paris more interconnectedness and economic attractiveness has to be matched by a particular attention to the creation and nurturing of education and jobs.[3] Indeed, there is little sense facilitating mobility and top-down economic competitiveness if the people involved do not feel these urban transformations take into account their specific lifestyles and social well-being. The projects exposed by the different groups of planners, sociologists and architects include ideas on the best ways to attain a harmonious ‘vivre-ensemble’. Roland Castro’s proposal, for instance, insists on a right of urbanity for citizens and the poetic dimension of the metropolis of the twenty-first century insofar as its landscape must be strewn with symbolic monuments which elevate its perspectives.[4] Nonetheless, this type of idea was absent from the President’s speech. It would be problematic to reduce an ambitious plan to its exterior urban expression: efficient transports and iconic buildings do not improve social well-being. Rather, it is where these transports lead one to, and what these buildings represent, which determines the health of a city. Indeed, the paradigm of space and openness, rooted in the nineteenth century haussmanian revolution, fails to recognize that the more space there is between buildings and neighbourhoods, the more people are drawn apart. Therefore, a large-scale plan can only be sustained with small-scale equivalent plans on a local level enabling ‘quartier’ life to develop. “Plans on anything like a big scale will need the involvement of many different people and sectors of Parisian society if they are to have a chance of working. They need to be matched by hundreds of small plans that will allow the streets of Paris from the Marais to Marne-la-Vallée to flourish in a way that is all their own.”[5]
Indeed, a danger regularly pointed out consists in pursuing the process of destruction of local specificities in the name of a hypothetical modernity.[6] This argumentation led to the erection of the ‘Tour Montparnasse’, the destruction of the market of ‘Les Halles’ in the heart of Paris, the development of arterial roads, and the marginalisation of the poor in daunting rectangular buildings in the suburbs. In a sense, the will to resolve the disparities between centre and periphery through large-scale transportation plans comes down to consider the cause of the problem as its effect. Moreover, the insistence placed upon the idea of a post-Kyoto city tends to conceal social difficulties under the pretence of environmental consciousness. In a sense, even Le Corbusier’s ideal plan to erase half of the city centre “with high-quality, high-rise apartment blocks set in a new urban parkland” integrated a more social perspective of Paris.[7] Urban planners have consistently been torn apart between the fear of destroying older supposedly authentic neighbourhoods and a desire to keep up with modernity. However, these aesthetic and abstract notions exclude the social aspects of urban life. The categories of beauty and sustainability are useful to nuance objectives of productivity and self-reliance. But they neglect the justice and harmony which bind the components of a society together.
In fact, the project of a ‘Grand Paris’ is part of a larger plan to recompose the regional pattern of France and of its capital. The ‘Comité pour la réforme des collectivités locales’ suggested that the territory of Paris should be merged in a greater ensemble including the departments of Seine-et-Marne, Val-de-Marne and Hauts-de-Seine by 2014.[8] The metropolis hence created would include 6 million inhabitants. Such an institutional reform would induce the creation of an independent urban community closing off the ‘Grand Paris’ from the rest of the Ile-de-France region in more than one way. Beyond the political motivations of a presidential majority wanting to conquer a city and a region governed by the Socialist Party, there is no apparent coherence between the institutional and urbanistic projects of a ‘Grand Paris.’ In this perspective, the plan put forward by Rogers Stirk Harbour& Partners advocates a restructuring of boroughs into larger areas with 50 or 60 mayors in total, as opposed to the current 1000 mayors present throughout the suburbs. [9] It supposes that because French mayors have actual powers- as opposed to British ones- it makes more sense to encourage common policies on a larger scale. This directly counters the politics of proximity traditionally applied in Parisian suburbs, especially in the North. It also shuns the fact that new towns built around Paris in the 1960s and 1970s were not “planned to be self-contained (unlike the British new towns), but depended on the centre for employment and were, on the whole, architecturally unfortunate.”[10] In this sense, education and employment must be encouraged for any institutional, economic, housing and ecological projects to be fruitful.
Thus, British views on the ‘Grand Paris’ tend to stress the tension between glimpses of utopia present in the architectural programs presented to the French President and the difficulties of thinking urban restructuration along with social reform. The idea of a ‘Grand Paris’ seems to express a faith in the city as a space of modern innovation. However, this full-fledged devotion to the myth of modernity overlooks the specificities of the Parisian agglomeration. The scale of Paris must be great merely because it must replicate the scheme of huge metropolises more attractive for investors and entrepreneurs than for dwellers. Extension and mobility seem to prime over connectedness and harmonisation. In this perspective, plans for a Parisian Central Park or a Grand Central Station in Aubervilliers on the model of New York betray a conception of modernity steeped in a full-fledged admiration for economic success as emodied by the United States. The program of the ‘Grand Paris’ relies on a conception of the relation between transportation and economic development. Yet, it seems that utopia could easily become megalomania if symbols and infrastructures were privileged to the detriment of recomposing social networks and opportunities.
[1] Christopher Sell, ‘Paris is full of huge canyons’, The Architect’s Journal, 19 March 2009; c.f.www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/daily-news/paris-is-full-of-huge-canyons/1995505.article
[2] This speech was given for the inauguration of the exhibition ‘Grand Pari(s)’, open until the 22nd November 2009, at the ‘Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine’ in Paris. C.f. www.legrandparis.culture.gouv.fr
[3] Jonathan Glancey, ‘Paris should beware these grand architectural designs’, www.guardian.co.uk, 18 March 2009
[4] C.f. www.legrandparis.culture.gouv.fr/documents/CASTRO_Livret_chantier_1.pdf
[5] Jonathan Glancey, ‘Paris should beware these grand architectural designs’, www.guardian.co.uk, 18 March 2009
[6] Ibid ; Agnès Poirier, ‘Croydon in the spring: Le Grand Paris urgently needs reshaping. But is the south London super-suburb the right model?’, The Guardian, Comment& Debate, 25 September 2008, c.f. http://agnespoirier.com/articles.asp?language=fr&Encours=25; Peggy Hollinger, ‘Sarkozy unveils grand plan to transform Paris’, Financial Times, 30 April 2009, c.f. www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0ea272bc-351f-11de-940a-00144feabdc0.html
[7] Jonathan Glancey, op.cit.
[8] www.reformedescollectiviteslocales.fr/actualites/index.php?id=75, proposition N°18
[9] Christopher Sell, ‘Paris is full of huge canyons’, The Architect’s Journal, 19 March 2009; c.f.www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/daily-news/paris-is-full-of-huge-canyons/1995505.article
[10] Joseph Rykwert, ‘Why Sarkozy's Paris doesn't cut the mustard’, The Architect’s Journal, 18 February 2009; c.f. www.architectsjournal.co.uk/the-critics/why-sarkozys-paris-doesnt-cut-the-mustard/1990524.article