Even one of the most attractive – and mythologized – cities in the world needs a powerful new narrative to move forward. It is not enough to be a cultural magnet and a mecca of luxury. Paris aspires to become a global benchmark for ecological transformation and adaptation to global warming. That’s why its municipal council approved an ambitious project on June 5, the “local bioclimatic urban plan”, a detailed road map for the next twenty years.
As the mayor, the socialist Anne Hidalgo, said during the public presentation of the initiative, “Paris does not start from a blank page”. The French capital, in fact, has had a clear philosophy for fifteen years – although not always to the liking of the residents – of marginalizing the private car, promoting the bicycle and aggressive revegetation. The coalition of leftists (socialists, communists and ecologists) that governs it intends to press the accelerator in this direction.
The last few summers have definitely set off all the alarms. There have been very intense, unbearable heatwave periods. Between July 11 and 21 last year, mortality increased by 21% above usual. Hospital emergency rooms were full.
In 1885, shortly before the Eiffel Tower was erected, the average temperature in Paris was 10.7 degrees Celsius. In 2010 it had already risen to 13 degrees. It is estimated that 14.5 can be reached in 2085. Experts think that there will be heat peaks of 50 degrees, a temperature typical today of the deserts of Arizona or Arabia.
As a result of these disturbing prospects, those in charge of Paris believe that action must be taken immediately on multiple fronts. It is a colossal challenge for a very dense city. The capital loses population every year – more than 10,000 people – because of the high price of housing and the inconveniences of the big city, such as noise, dirt and insecurity. The tendency to flee to less dense and greener suburbs, or even to small towns and villages in rural France – taking advantage of the telecommuting revolution – will be even greater if torrid temperatures become a recurring phenomenon.
The bioclimatic urban plan is the result of a very extensive public consultation in which political officials of all tendencies, specialists, citizen associations and companies have intervened. About 50,000 proposals have been made. The project can be modified and improved until it is definitively approved in the second semester of 2024.
The ecological acceleration in Paris is linked to the preparation of the Olympic and Paralympic Summer Games in 2024. They want them to be the greenest in history, with a stellar role for the bicycle.
“We want to make these Games a showcase for the bicycle”, declared a few days ago in Le Parisien the Minister of Transport, Clément Beaune, one of the ministers who is most in tune with President Emmanuel Macron. The Parisian region has been one of the places in Europe with the fastest expansion of cycle lanes. The Olympic appointment is an excuse to complete the network.
The Parisian authorities are determined to fulfill the commitment to be a carbon neutral city by the year 2050. The change in physiognomy should be drastic, with up to 40% of the surface revegetated. This will include squares that currently have heavy traffic, such as the Étoile – with the Arc de Triomf in the center -, which will be partially transformed into a garden. The goal is to have ten square meters of green space per inhabitant, the ratio recommended to guarantee the quality of life.
“Paris is not built, Paris is transformed”, warned the architect Dominique Alba, one of its authors, at the presentation of the plan. Except in some very specific places, there is no intention to add more cement, quite the opposite. The idea is a metamorphosis. An example is offices. As a result of covid, 20% of the office space is vacant. This offers an opportunity to transform them into housing, if possible social, after carrying out insulation works that better protect them from the heat and improve energy performance.
Bioclimatic Paris will require the massive planting of trees – there were 25,000 between November 2022 and April 2023 – and the creation of artificial shade areas. Ten new urban parks are planned, one of which is 25 hectares, between Port de la Chapelle and Port de la Villette, bordering the périphérique, the ring road, in the northeast, in some of the most socially degraded, epicenter of the crack traffic.
Among the actions that are already being carried out is the installation of new public fountains, up to 1,200, some only for the summer and with atomizers. The City Council talks about “islands of coolness”, shelters where residents can go to resist the high temperatures.
Experimental tests of cool roof systems are also being carried out to try to ease the lives of the occupants of the upper floors. Start-up Roofscapes, founded by young US-educated French engineers, has designed a kind of planter that could be installed on Paris’s classic pitched zinc roofs to reduce the buildings’ interior temperature and contribute to biodiversity . Its inventors were inspired by the altanes of Venice, wooden terraces that were installed on the roofs of the city of canals centuries ago.
For Hidalgo and his team, the ecological transformation would be lame without a strong social accent. That is why they promise that public or social housing will go from the current 25% to 40% in 2035. It is not easy to make a policy that retains the popular classes when Paris is today, partly as a result of Brexit, the focus of largest investment in Europe.
Hidalgo’s number two – and his dolphin -, Emmanuel Grégoire, put it this way: “We must protect Parisians from the drifts of the market”. The climate and the cost of living are, in this sense, the most urgent challenges of the city of light.
