- 17 Mar 2009 20:55
#1837363
Politics and architecture are utterly entwined in Paris, with its fascinating history of social revolution during the Second Empire and the work of Napoleon and Haussmann to shape the Paris we now see today. It is a lesser know fact that Paris still had slums on its environs until the early 1980s and that this can be traced back to the days of Haussmann when there was no attempt to rehouse the poor - with private industry more interested in the profuts available from the luxury housing market. The city divided between the comfortable west and the impoverished east; the impoverished pockets gradually becoming more geographically concentrated and hence more visible. Bourgeois reformers thus had to come into contact with an alien culture, something they themselves had created but seemingly had no answer for. Fearing incubators of sedition if the poor were housed in the centre of Paris, the poor were pushed to the outskirts and working class housing was to be a moralising agent; to guarnatee bourgeois virtues and social and political order for a scared Napoleon and Haussman. It was social control under the mantle of social reform.
Which makes me wonder about Sarkozy proposals; urban space has such an impact on our lives - far more than some people realise. Whilst Sarkozy is to be applauded for attempting such a huge reorganisation of urban space since Haussmann - I doubt very much that today's compeletey atomised Paris can withhold such an assault on her fragile make-up.
The Guardian wrote:After the Pompidou, can Rogers transform the secret, shabby, divided side of Paris?
Ten of the world's most renowned architects present their strategies for a dramatic overhaul of the world's most visited city
Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
The Guardian, Thursday 12 March 2009
It's the world's most visited city, a tourist dream of grand, historical buildings and cobbled charm. But Paris's secret shame has always been the horror lurking behind its peripherique ring road - the moat that protects the city's 2 million people from at least 6 million others who live outside in high-rise, ethnic ghettoes or suburban sprawl, choked by dismal public transport and shabby green space.
Now Nicolas Sarkozy wants to answer the critics who call him a cultural philistine by plunging into his new love for architecture and creating a Greater Paris that would be world's most environmentally friendly and boldly designed metropolis.
When the president invited 10 of the world's most renowned architects to the Elysée last year and lauded architecture as art that the citizen "does not need a ticket for", Paris sat waiting for him to announce his own grand building project, along the lines of François Mitterrand's glass pyramid in the Louvre.
Today as architects including London-based Richard Rogers, as well as French prizewinners Jean Nouvel and Christian de Portzamparc, present their various strategies for Grand Paris, it is clear that the president is aiming higher than Mitterrand's isolated architectural gems.
He wants to style himself as patron of the most ambitious urban overhaul since Baron Haussmann dramatically changed the face of Paris in the mid-19th century when he carved out wide boulevards and the Champs Elysée.
But the Greater Paris project to reunite Paris's centre with its neglected outskirts is steeped in controversy as local and national politicians fight over its boundaries, budget, population and new identity before the architectural debate has begun.
In an exclusive preview of their strategy, Richard Rogers's group told the Guardian yesterday that the biggest challenge was Paris's "enormous disparity" and the "staggering psychological barrier" between the core of the city and the world beyond the ring-road.
"I don't know any other big city where the heart is so detached from its arm and legs," Rogers said at the start of the project.
His team of architects, who have worked with the London School of Economics and French sociologists, will today propose a bold plan to unite Paris's disparate communities, beginning by covering over the railway lines that "carve up" the city and creating a vast network of lush parks above the tracks.
Mike Davies, director of the project, said: "The train lines going into Gare du Nord and Gare de l'Est are currently canyons of void." He proposed creating "a continuous green space, a green network" miles long that would link the centre of Paris to its deprived north-eastern outskirts. Underneath it, a separate, hidden layer would contain the mechanics of renewable technologies aimed at launching Paris into a low carbon future.
The Rogers proposals also call for state intervention to completely overhaul areas such as Clichy-sous-Bois, which exploded in urban riots in 2005. Davies described the high-rises as "separate blocks in space", plonked down in isolation with no identity, city fabric, or village life around them.
"The great unwritten and unsaid is that residents tend to be similar ethnic origin. It's not a mixed system," he said. "Monoculture is one of Paris's biggest problems."
The plans seek to bring in new, mixed populations to the poor high-rises and the business district La Defence, extend high-speed train lines, create a new metropolitan transport system and cut the myriad layers of local government.
Rogers, who changed the face of Paris in the 1970s when he co-designed the Pompidou centre, will present one of 10 competing strategies that go on show to the public next month. But the question remains whether Sarkozy will act on the various proposals and launch Paris's biggest overhaul in centuries. "It has to be at the highest level of modern design," Davies said. "Ordinariness won't draw people there."
Other ideas to be unveiled today include the architect Roland Castro's plan to build a New York-style central park on Paris's infamous drab housing projects of La Courneuve, and Christian de Portzamparc's concept for a high-speed elevated train that would run along the ring road.
Politics and architecture are utterly entwined in Paris, with its fascinating history of social revolution during the Second Empire and the work of Napoleon and Haussmann to shape the Paris we now see today. It is a lesser know fact that Paris still had slums on its environs until the early 1980s and that this can be traced back to the days of Haussmann when there was no attempt to rehouse the poor - with private industry more interested in the profuts available from the luxury housing market. The city divided between the comfortable west and the impoverished east; the impoverished pockets gradually becoming more geographically concentrated and hence more visible. Bourgeois reformers thus had to come into contact with an alien culture, something they themselves had created but seemingly had no answer for. Fearing incubators of sedition if the poor were housed in the centre of Paris, the poor were pushed to the outskirts and working class housing was to be a moralising agent; to guarnatee bourgeois virtues and social and political order for a scared Napoleon and Haussman. It was social control under the mantle of social reform.
Which makes me wonder about Sarkozy proposals; urban space has such an impact on our lives - far more than some people realise. Whilst Sarkozy is to be applauded for attempting such a huge reorganisation of urban space since Haussmann - I doubt very much that today's compeletey atomised Paris can withhold such an assault on her fragile make-up.
- By Pants-of-dog
- By Fasces
- By Tainari88