PARIS | Full Summary of Projects

[mousquet]

An interesting project to the Nanterre side of la Défense noticed by piéton, there would be 282 housing units in there, market rate + student housing.







Design by Louis Paillard.

Yeah, it's not exactly that luxury condo tower of your wet dreams yet, but it'll surely be good to make the spot feel more lived in.
Of course I hope the materials are neat enough, too, so that the massing doesn't feel outrageous.

[New Brisavoine]

It's done! The Constitutional Council of France has just approved in its entirety the bill creating the Greater Paris Metropolis!! The bill should now be signed by the president in the coming days (perhaps before the end of the week) and become law.

The Greater Paris Metropolis (Métropole du Grand Paris in French) will officially come into existence on January 1, 2016. It will absorb at least 124 presently independent communes (which will remain in existence, but will be under the authority of the Greater Paris Metropolis), with a population of at least 6.7 million inhabitants. Some more communes can join before the autumn of 2014, so we will know the exact territory and population of the Greater Paris Metropolis only next autumn, but the figures I'm giving here are the minimum figures (if no other commune joined).

It's the greatest day in the administrative history of Paris since the act of 1859 which enlarged the city of Paris by absorbing the then suburbs of the city!

This map shows the minimum extent possible of the Greater Paris Metropolis (more communes may join before the autumn of 2014), with its 124 communes. In green are parks, woods, and airports. In pale yellow are built-up and industrial areas.



Satellite view showing the north-western border of the Greater Paris Metropolis (minimum extent). As you can see, many dense suburbs are still lying beyond the borders of the future Greater Paris Metropolis:

[mousquet]

Holy crap... Whatever, it needs to extend further west. Hopefully suburban mayors don't bullcrap. They're no Gallic chieftains owning their tiny tribes, goddammit!

[FMIII]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

There was a long article in the New York Times today written by the departing NYT correspondent in Paris:

For some reason my comment to the article was not approved by the New York Times. Go figure... So here it is:

Apparently, a liberal news outlet like the New York Times can't stand criticism.

If you are David J from Toronto then you are wrong

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/tr...ewanted=2&_r=1

[FMIII]

Originally Posted by hughesnick312

The problem is the height of the towers, they are all similar height, not that tall, so when you look at the cluster it looks like a square wall of high rises with little height variations or peaks.

I strongly agree and we are far from what they promised us with La Defense 2012... And if I could strangle people at the Epad, I would. There is almost no place to build something in La Defense and they can not come up with something better than 3 new towers of about the same height and who are lost in a forest of guess what? = same height towers...

I really don't know why they spend so much on design for hidden towers...

They should start thinking bigger (if it's not too late) because soon there will be no place left to build some real towers...

Besides, it is really sad that we have to wait for a stubborn Russian (thankfully) to get something big done in this area.

[FMIII]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

This map shows the minimum extent possible of the Greater Paris Metropolis (more communes may join before the autumn of 2014), with its 124 communes. In green are parks, woods, and airports. In pale yellow are built-up and industrial areas.

It's a good day and I hope it will help to improve interconnexion between the city and its close suburb.

Unfortunately, as shown on the map and explained in the legend, the biggest problem of Paris is its lack of green spaces and non urbanised area. Besides, the new "grand Paris" density of population is twice that of Madrid or Greater London. Even though comparison is tough because they don't cover the exact same area, it is still the highest in Europe.

Hence, the development of the "Grand Paris" will be quite difficult. How to develop a modern conurbation in an area with a very high density of population? This, at least, is a serious brake for a massive development of modern apartment towers (outside of Paris). As much as I love skyscrapers, the conurbation would become unlievable (especially the traffic) if we add too much density to an already almost over-populated area.

In a perfect world, the best thing to do would be to tear down existing buildings (outside of Paris) and to build higher towers surrounded by green spaces. In that case, we would add a bit of density while creating breathing places. But given the general negative attitude toward highrise in France, That is unlikely to happen.

The first answer that we have for the moment is that they plan to build a "super-subway" surrounding the new area in order to avoid transversal traffic and hence, loosens the circulation of people.

Indeed, it will be very interesting to see how the Grand Paris will develop itself and if it is capable of doing so in a modern way while avoiding all the problem facing any overcrowded area.

It is a real big challenge for the conurbation.

[hughesnick312]

A Super subway joining the conurbation together sound like an interesting idea

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by FMIII

Hence, the development of the "Grand Paris" will be quite difficult. How to develop a modern conurbation in an area with a very high density of population? This, at least, is a serious brake for a massive development of modern apartment towers (outside of Paris). As much as I love skyscrapers, the conurbation would become unlievable (especially the traffic) if we add too much density to an already almost over-populated area.

Judging from NYC, there is still room for growth for the inner suburbs of Paris. They could accommodate at least another million people.

[mousquet]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

Judging from NYC, there is still room for growth for the inner suburbs of Paris. They could accommodate at least another million people.

They can easily accommodate many more. I live Maisons-Alfort just south of the Vincennes woods, neighboring Central Paris, the density is still less than 10k/km² here. Wait... According to Wiki, it was 9901 inhab/km² in 2011, rather low given Maisons-Alfort's central location in the metro area. I say we can easily do better, and I guess most suburbs joining this Grand Paris thing are pretty much in the same condition.

The thing is Central Paris is indeed kind of a dusty museum populated by annoying NIMBYs who love way too much feeling "exclusive", huh? The inner suburbs are not like that and have a brighter future.

@FMIII You're not aware of what's possible. You say you love NYC, do you even know the density over there is greater than that of Paris? And if those so exclusive, so very Central Parisians act as NIMBYs up into our suburbs, I swear they'll face violence.

[FMIII]

Originally Posted by mousquet

@FMIII You're not aware of what's possible. You say you love NYC, do you even know the density over there is greater than that of Paris? And if those so exclusive, so very Central Parisians act as NIMBYs up into our suburbs, I swear they'll face violence.

Firstly, I do love NYC but that doesn't imply that I don't appreciate my conurbation.

Secondly, I am all in favor of skyscrapers in the conurbation. And that is why I am so dissapointed by La Defense's lack of audacity in particular and the lack of highrise apartment towers in general. So please, avoid talking about "violence", we are more civilized than that (I hope )

Thirdly, I will use the word "Paris" to talk about the conurbation shown on the map.

That being said, let's go back to the matter of density of population.Yes, as the map shows it, the population density of NYC and Paris is about the same (while we almost have no highrises...) But that is not exactly true, because the square meter number of the NYC area written on the map doesn't take into accounts the blue part of it. The real area of NYC is 1214,4 km2 not 634,1 km2. Indeed, NYC has a lower density of population than Paris. Because even though you can not build on water, rivers (as green spaces but to a lesser extent) can be used as entertainment places and have a positive impact on pollution (Paris has a higher rate of pollution than NYC)

There is also the problem of traffic: New York is a "modern city" and it has a much better street grids to ease traffic than Paris. Besides, Manhattan lacks parking spaces (they can not dig as low as Paris because of NYC's granite ground) hence people have taken the habit to rely much more on subway and taxis to commute. And they can do it because it works 24 hours a day (no strike allowed) and it covers the entire city while in the case of Paris, its almost only the "inner city" which has such a system. The RER isn't enough to compensate.

As you can see, while Paris has no highrises, it is, at least, already as overcrowed as NY and it has a much less efficient transport system. That is why I compared Paris to Madrid and London. They are much more similar in term of building zone, street networks and mass transit system, than NYC. And in Europe, Paris is already the most over-populated area by 2 to 1.

Hence Paris won't be able to withstand a population growth if it doesn't:

- Increase its subway coverage and hours of operation
- Discourage people to use their cars
- Create green spaces to reduce or at least contain pollution level
- Create another business district in the east part of the conurbation

We are living there my friends so I do hope that our politicians are up to the job and that they will implement the necessary changes. Otherwise, even though I love skyscrapers, I don't want to live in an unliveable place.

[New Brisavoine]

Copy of the message I posted in the Demographics of Europe thread in answer to Lear.

Originally Posted by Lear

What will be the size of it, in terms of sqkm ?
And is their really a political reorganization ?
A Greater Paris Parliament so to speak....?

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

Minimum size: 762 km²
Maximum size: 1,158 km²
Exact size will be known by the Autumn of next year.

There will be a metropolitan council (conseil de la métropole du Grand Paris) made up of representatives from the communes (each commune will have from 1 to 5 representatives in the council, depending on the size of their population, except the City of Paris which will have 90 councilors in the council; in total the metropolitan council will be made up of 337 councilors at its minimum extent, i.e. 124 communes).

Above the metropolitan council there will be the president of the Greater Paris metropolitan council (président du conseil de la métropole du Grand Paris). He will be a little bit what the Mayor of London is to Greater London. Unlike in London, he won't be elected by the citizens but instead he will be elected by the councilors in the metropolitan council, who themselves won't be elected but will be appointed by the municipal councils of the communes, who are elected by the citizens in the municipal elections.

As you can see, it's a very undemocratic organization for a structure that will manage the urban issues of 7 million people. The deputies in the National Assembly voted in favor of having half of the metropolitan councilors elected directly by the citizens in 2020 (there will be municipal elections in 2014 and 2020), but the Senators rejected it. After a complicated back and forth, I see that the latest version of the bill which should be signed by the president in the coming days says that the government must present a report to the parliament regarding the direct election of the metropolitan councilors by 2015, and a law organizing the direct election of the metropolitan councilors must be passed in parliament before Jan. 1, 2017.

At this point it is unclear how many of the metropolitan councilors will be directly elected by the citizens from 2020 onwards (half of them? all of them?). It will probably be a matter of debate until the end of 2016. What's certain is from Jan. 1, 2016 to the municipal elections in March 2020, the metropolitan council of Greater Paris will be made up of unelected councilors appointed by the municipal councils of the communes making up the Greater Paris Metropolis, with the City of Paris sending 90 councilors to the metropolitan council (all of them from the majority party I suppose, so if the Socialist-Green-Communist coalition wins the municipal elections of the City of Paris in March 2014 by 50.01%, the 90 representatives of the City of Paris from Jan. 1, 2016 to March 2020 will nonetheless be 100% Socialist-Green-Communist).

To make things even worse, it is unclear at this point whether the Mayor of Paris could also be President of the Greater Paris metropolitan council. The recently passed law banning politicians from holding 2 executive offices at the same time seems to indicate that he/she couldn't. So we would end up with 3 different persons representing Paris: the Mayor of the City of Paris (probably Socialist Anne Hidalgo), the President of the Greater Paris metropolitan council (either Socialist Jean-Marie Le Guen or Socialist Claude Bartolone, as things are shaping up), and the President of the Paris Region (Île-de-France) regional council, currently Socialist Jean-Paul Huchon, but perhaps center-right Valérie Pécresse after the regional elections in 2015. Valérie Pécresse, by the way, the center-right opposition leader in the regional council, is opposed to the Greater Paris Metropolis. She says it's the Paris Region that should be the metropolitan structure for Paris.

French politics.

[mousquet]

Thanks as always, Brisavoine.

@FMIII

Manhattan is more dense, population wise than Central Paris. I'm quite sure about it, having checked on figures pretty recently yet. I understand that you're linking pollution to density. Why? Pollution is only related to cars, or I'd rather say dirty industries and their nasty lobbies. As many as they may be within a narrow area, people don't necessarily pollute a lot. Hell, even cars shouldn't pollute anymore yet.

Uh, there is violence in the suburbs. Potentially bad violence, I might add. If you think people who've lived the commieblock ghettos of the ceinture rouge for generations will act "civilized" when they're upset, you're way beyond hope.

Otherwise, you've got a point on the fact that highrises are not particularly effective in increasing density, unless maybe developing them in a dense pattern, which is what's been achieved in Manhattan. But even then, results are not as overwhelming as they seem to be. When you take a look at that amazing heady bulk of skyscrapers of Manhattan, you'd expect an even much greater density. So I guess for some technical reasons, possibly their large cores and large footprints, skyscrapers are not so density-efficient yet. But they are good to improve the urban landscape, to give it a dynamic feel, that's just as important. That Central Paris terribly lacks. If it wasn't for la Défense, the overall skyline of greater Paris would make the entire world laugh their butts off. That's not admissible. There are actually 2 moderately high-rise clusters within the central city, Beaugrenelle in the 15th arrondissement and Olympiades + surroundings in the 13th. All towers in both of them are of the same height of more or less 300 feet and their developments have been blocked for at least 30 years or whatever ridiculous. Sad, really. I call it NIMBY land. They didn't even understand yet what was necessary to make Montparnasse finally attractive. That's why these whole post-war developments look like aging badly today.

In short, Central Paris is stupidly screwing themselves for now. I think renewal will have to come from those suburbs of Grand Paris...

Bon, overall, I agree on what you say, especially on that transit strategy.
That's fine.

[hughesnick312]

You can't expect people to want to put up skyscrapers in central paris. London builds skyscrapers in the centre of the city because we had some empty bombed out sites that were destroyed in World War Two, if London had been preserved like paris, we wouldn't be building towers there either

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by mousquet

Manhattan is more dense, population wise than Central Paris. I'm quite sure about it, having checked on figures pretty recently yet.

On Jan. 1, 2011, Manhattan had 1,584,000 inhabitants living on 55.5 km² of land (excluding Randall's Island, Roosevelt Island, Governors Island, Ellis Island, and Liberty Island), which means a population density of 28,534 inh. per km², whereas Central Paris had 2,249,975 inhabitants living on 87 km² of land (excluding Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes), which means a population density of 25,864 inh. per km².

Brooklyn, Queens, and Bronx had 6,162,50 inhabitants living on 573.5 km² of land, which means a population density of 10,744 inh. per km², whereas the 104 communes around Central Paris (see my map) had 4,399,389 inhabitants living on 530.5 km² of land, which means a population density of 8,292 inh. per km².

With the same population density as Manhattan, Central Paris (the 20 arrondissements) could accommodate 230,000 more people. With the same density as Brooklyn, Queens, and Bronx, the 104 communes around Central Paris could accommodate 1.3 million more people.

[FMIII]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

On Jan. 1, 2011, Manhattan had 1,584,000 inhabitants living on 55.5 km² of land (excluding Randall's Island, Roosevelt Island, Governors Island, Ellis Island, and Liberty Island), which means a population density of 28,534 inh. per km², whereas Central Paris had 2,249,975 inhabitants living on 87 km² of land (excluding Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes), which means a population density of 25,864 inh. per km².

Brooklyn, Queens, and Bronx had 6,162,50 inhabitants living on 573.5 km² of land, which means a population density of 10,744 inh. per km², whereas the 104 communes around Central Paris (see my map) had 4,399,389 inhabitants living on 530.5 km² of land, which means a population density of 8,292 inh. per km².

With the same population density as Manhattan, Central Paris (the 20 arrondissements) could accommodate 230,000 more people. With the same density as Brooklyn, Queens, and Bronx, the 104 communes around Central Paris could accommodate 1.3 million more people.

As I mentioned in my previous post, it would make a huge difference if you would take into account NYC's rivers in your calculation. Believe me, it makes a huge difference when there are large empty spaces with fresh air in a conurbation. I am not sure NYC would be liveable without that. If you add the difference of the transportation system (the street grid of NY can not be applied to Paris), your calculation, while mathematically correct, would create an unliveable monster.

I agree that The "great Paris" has to replace urgently its commie blocks and has to build highrises but not at the cost of adding density. Highrises should be built only to increase green spaces.

[FMIII]

Originally Posted by mousquet

Uh, there is violence in the suburbs. Potentially bad violence, I might add. If you think people who've lived the commieblock ghettos of the ceinture rouge for generations will act "civilized" when they're upset, you're way beyond hope.

I am a middle class man and I don't live in a bubble. Believe me, the suburb of Paris need jobs and hope more than new landscapes if you want to avoid riots. As long as France won't be able to bring that to them, no matter what you build, you'll always have violence. And the more density, the more need for jobs. Given the state of the French economy, if you really want to avoid despair which leads to riots, you should be all in favor for a negative growth of population, not stacking more people with no jobs in the same place...

Originally Posted by mousquet

Otherwise, you've got a point on the fact that highrises are not particularly effective in increasing density, unless maybe developing them in a dense pattern, which is what's been achieved in Manhattan. But even then, results are not as overwhelming as they seem to be. When you take a look at that amazing heady bulk of skyscrapers of Manhattan, you'd expect an even much greater density. So I guess for some technical reasons, possibly their large cores and large footprints, skyscrapers are not so density-efficient yet.

You are right about the density of Manhattan, it is only about only 25% higher than Paris "intra murros" even though it is about 35% covered with highrises, From what I have witnessed there, I think that there are two main reasons for that: apartments are bigger and, regarding skyscrapers, two third of them are office and Hotels towers.

Originally Posted by mousquet

But they are good to improve the urban landscape, to give it a dynamic feel, that's just as important. That Central Paris terribly lacks. If it wasn't for la Défense, the overall skyline of greater Paris would make the entire world laugh their butts off. That's not admissible. There are actually 2 moderately high-rise clusters within the central city, Beaugrenelle in the 15th arrondissement and Olympiades + surroundings in the 13th. All towers in both of them are of the same height of more or less 300 feet and their developments have been blocked for at least 30 years or whatever ridiculous. Sad, really. I call it NIMBY land. They didn't even understand yet what was necessary to make Montparnasse finally attractive. That's why these whole post-war developments look like aging badly today.

In short, Central Paris is stupidly screwing themselves for now. I think renewal will have to come from those suburbs of Grand Paris...

Bon, overall, I agree on what you say, especially on that transit strategy.
That's fine.

I strongly agree on that part.

But, again, as much as I love Skyscrapers, it would be a great mistake to add too much density to the "great Paris" area. And, worse, even though we would agree on everyting, we are not the decision makers...

[FMIII]

Originally Posted by hughesnick312

You can't expect people to want to put up skyscrapers in central paris. London builds skyscrapers in the centre of the city because we had some empty bombed out sites that were destroyed in World War Two, if London had been preserved like paris, we wouldn't be building towers there either

I strongly agree. The Blitz is the main reason for that. As the saying goes (no joke intended) "There is a silver line in every cloud'. At least for those who love skyscrapers and modern buildings and didn't suffer from the bombings.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by FMIII

As I mentioned in my previous post, it would make a huge difference if you would take into account NYC's rivers in your calculation. Believe me, it makes a huge difference when there are large empty spaces with fresh air in a conurbation. I am not sure NYC would be liveable without that. If you add the difference of the transportation system (the street grid of NY can not be applied to Paris), your calculation, while mathematically correct, would create an unliveable monster.

Well the inner suburbs are almost entirely surrounded by large woods and forests, so it's a bit like the rivers and sea channels of NYC. I'm not sure that it would be so very different from Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens if the inner suburbs of Paris had 1.3 million more inhabitants.


By Ackteon at Flickr


By Antoine Grondeau at Survol de France


By Frédéric Peyrichoux at Survol de France

The issue of transports is another one. Due to the way the Métro of Paris was stupidly conceived in the 1890s (a small-capacity urban transit system limited to Central Paris only), I don't think it's ever possible to turn it into an efficient transportation system at the level of the inner suburbs, the way the NY subway more or less manages to do across the 4 boroughs of NYC (minus Staten Island). The creation of the RER in the 1960s unfortunately did not solve this big design error. The Métro will never be useful to carry people living deep into the inner suburbs when there are Métro stations every 200 meters or so, and it takes already half an hour to go to Boulogne-Billancourt which is bordering Central Paris.

In my opinion, only a massive investment in roads can solve the problem of transportation at the level of the inner suburbs. We need to massively enlarge the current freeway network. The projects that need immediate attention are numerous:

• widening the Périphérique (wherever it's possible) and above all the A86. These two beltways should have 12 lanes wherever it's possible.

• joining the A14 freeway to the Périphérique by building the long-awaited tunnel under Neuilly-sur-Seine

• joining the A15 freeway to the Périphérique through Clichy (partly in a tunnel), something that should have been done more than 10 years ago already but was inexplicably shelved by the government

• probably adding 2 or 3 more freeways in the inner suburbs, to complete the freeway grid (these will probably have to be mostly built in tunnels, given the massive opposition to any new urban freeway project these days, but Barcelona shows that it's possible to build a complete network of underground freeways through a very dense urban area)

• the idea of a north-south and east-west underground crossing of Central Paris via at least four 4-lane tunnels should be debated again (it was shelved 20 years ago). These two tunnels would cost a lot, but they would greatly alleviate traffic on the Périphérique, especially if the Périphérique is at the same time enlarged.

Of course I realize that all these ideas run against the Socialist consensus in favor of public transportation and against "capitalist" private car transportation. Neither the Greens nor the Socialists like the freedom that cars have brought us. They would like us all to cram into non-air conditioned tin cans bearing the logo of the RATP. Sorry but that dreadful collectivist vision of society is not mine.

[New Brisavoine]

For the pleasure of the eyes, a great view of Paris taken from the (eastern) inner suburbs, courtesy of the Communist (!) departmental council of
Val-de-Marne. The photographer stood exactly 17.5 km (10.9 miles) as the crow flies from the skyscrapers of La Défense (you can see them on the
distant horizon in the very large version of the view)

This view shows some of the woods and forests that surround the inner suburbs on many sides.

LARGE:



VERY LARGE:

http://cdt94.tourinsoft.com/upload/b...nes--1--01.jpg

[Minato Ku]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

The issue of transports is another one. Due to the way the Métro of Paris was stupidly conceived in the 1890s (a small-capacity urban transit system limited to Central Paris only), I don't think it's ever possible to turn it into an efficient transportation system at the level of the inner suburbs, the way the NY subway more or less manages to do across the 4 boroughs of NYC (minus Staten Island). The creation of the RER in the 1960s unfortunately did not solve this big design error. The Métro will never be useful to carry people living deep into the inner suburbs when there are Métro stations every 200 meters or so, and it takes already half an hour to go to Boulogne-Billancourt which is bordering Central Paris.

Already if we build most of the Grand Paris Express subway, we could increase the density of many area around the new lines.
A big overhaul the bus network in suburbs would also increase the transportation capacity.
I don't think that the public transportation network is really an issue for 1.3 million more people.

In my opinion, the road system may be more problematic.
Many secondary roads are too small, we lack of wide Boulevard or Avenue in inner suburbs.
When I say wide, it means more than 2+2.

If I drew a 20km² square in the suburbs around Montrouge, where I live, there is only one road with more than 2+2 lanes excluding freeways.
This is the former national road N20 (now D920).
All the other main roads are 2+2 or often smaller.