Paris is a city of 2 million people; otherwise, imagine this was Boston

In Boston, je pleure.

Wider still and wider
Paris’s ambitious plans to get bigger

… Strictly defined as the area inside the périphérique, Paris is tiny. It is home to just over 2m people, fewer than Addis Ababa. Its area is an eighth as big as Berlin’s. But going beyond the ring-road to the suburbs, the total built-up area has a population of 10m. Many of these people travel to work in the city, yet live far beyond the remit of Paris’s mayor and police. The heavily Muslim estates of the banlieues, where joblessness is high, are even more cut off.

Nicolas Sarkozy launched an ambitious plan for Greater Paris last spring. Having invited ten teams of architects to imagine a city fit for the 21st century, he embraced many of their ideas, setting out a vision of an ecological city, inspired by architects and artists as much as by engineers, as a place of “beauty” and “happiness”. He wanted a city to “rival London, New York, Tokyo or Shanghai”. He did not rule out the construction of more skyscrapers. And he promised a unifying city. “Greater Paris will cease being an agglomeration and become a city”, he declared, “the day that we no longer speak of the banlieues.”

Eight months later, parliament has passed a law to create Greater Paris. Piloted through by Christian Blanc, a former Air France boss, it is less grand, and mostly about transport. The idea is to build a 130km super-metro, in a loop around outer Paris (see map), by 2017. With 40 stations, and at a cost of €21 billion ($32 billion), it will link the airports with the business centres, such as La Défense, and some banlieues. Each station, with land around it developed by a centrally run Greater Paris corporation, is to be an economic hub.

The government says this is only a first step. A rethinking of boundaries may follow, though it would be politically explosive. Nobody expects a single unitary mayor, nor police force, for Greater Paris. But the super-metro, say officials, should boost the city’s fringe. La Défense will now be linked directly to the airports. Rents in Europe’s biggest business district, with over 150% more office space than London’s Canary Wharf, have held up well in the recession. Vacancy rates in the third quarter of 2009, according to LaSalle, a property investor, were just 4%, compared with 8% for Greater Paris overall. More skyscrapers are in the works. “Greater Paris will be revolutionary,” says Philippe Chaix, head of La Défense development corporation. “It will change our image on the world stage.” …

Source: The Economist, 5 December 2009

Also see, the New York Times

Photo courtesy architect Brenac et Gonzalez

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