Great news from the Ministry of Environment and Housing. They have released data about the construction of dwellings in France, and the data show the construction of dwellings in the Paris Region has increased markedly since we've entered the 2010s, and in 2015 they reached their maximum ever since 1989 (start of dwelling construction statistics)!
After many years of insufficient construction of dwellings, well below the regional objectives (the objective from 1995 to 2010 was 53,000 new dwellings per year, but only 42,800 were built per year), the regional and national authorities have finally decided to get their act together and put in place proactive policies to enable the construction of more dwellings. These policies are part of the Greater Paris ("Grand Paris") project launched under Sarkozy which reversed decades of national and regional efforts to limit the growth of Paris (very similar to the post-WW2 British policies trying to limit the growth of London; both cities were seen as too big and as a liability for the rest of the country). Contrary to a popular cliché both within France and outside, since the collapse of the 2nd Empire in 1870 the French national authorities have consistently opposed the growth of Paris, and if Paris grew nonetheless that was despite and against the wishes of the national authorities. The result of this opposition to Paris's growth was of course the lack of planning in the banlieue which grew haphazardly without a masterplan and with a subpar urban layout and low quality housing (not a general rule, as there are some very wealthy and high-quality suburbs, but still true for a great part of the banlieue).
The realization that a global city was actually an asset for a country and that the global economy was more and more becoming an economy of global cities came about 15 years later in France than in the UK. That's why it is not until the late 2000s that the French authorities finally woke up to the fact that they needed to ditch all the policies artificially constraining the growth of Paris, and promote and foster its development in every possible way. This is a complete change of paradigm for France, returning to the situation that prevailed under Haussmann and the 2nd Empire, and the effect of this change will take time to materialize but it should be portentous.
The Greater Paris project is multi-layered: it entails the construction of more than 200 km/125 miles of underground rapid subways (the so-called 'Grand Paris Express') to make transportation in the inner suburbs faster and easier, but it also entails the creation of a unified metropolitan authority covering unfortunately only Paris and the inner suburbs (the 'Métropole du Grand Paris', whose small territory is now criticized on all sides), and, perhaps even more importantly, the construction of many new dwellings to make up for the current shortage and welcome more inhabitants in the metropolis. This last point, often overlooked by the media, is a real Copernican revolution in France. As recently as 1994, the Paris Region authorities said this in their white paper about the growth of the region:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paris Region in 1994
If it is spared gigantism and excessive concentration, which is the objective of this white paper, the Paris Region will be able to benefit from a better allocation of immaterial resources, men and activities.
Limiting population growth to reach only 11.8 million in 2015 instead of 13 million, as the current unchecked trend would have it, requires reining in on new urbanization, limiting the creation of new offices (requirement of an administrative "agrément" to set up new offices), and respecting the balance job/dwelling.
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What a change in 20 years! In 2010 the French Parliament, bypassing the conservative Socialist regional authorities (which lost power in December 2015), passed a so-called 'Greater Paris Act' which set a much more ambitious objective of 70,000 new dwellings per year. Provisions were also made to allow the public entity in charge of building the Grand Paris Express subway to exercise eminent domain (expropriate) within a radius of 400 meters around the future stations of the Grand Paris Express to build lots of dwellings there. Regulations are also being relaxed, loans made easier, and public properties turned over to developers (such as the large tracts of land owned by the national railway company SNCF). Now for the 1st time in 145 years we have authorities both at the regional and above all national level who contemplate a rising population for Paris as a positive thing.
This map shows the new housing potential around each future station of the Grand Paris Express subway lines. The Atelier International du Grand Paris ("Greater Paris International Workshop", which was created by Sarkozy and resembles the Architekten-Ausschuß Groß-Berlin created by architects in 1906 to turn Berlin into a Greater Berlin) estimates that the circles around each station could house 2.5 million new inhabitants. The percentages indicate how many of these 2.5 million each circle could accommodate (by demolishing after exercising eminent domain and densifying, dark blue, or by building on currently unbuilt land, light blue).
Back in 2010, many people (especially in the construction sector), including myself, thought that 70,000 new dwellings per year was unachievable. Yet it seems the measures adopted are starting to bear fruit. In 2015, the record number of 64,800 dwellings were started, and figures from the 1st quarter of 2016 show that the numbers are rising still, with 66,800 dwellings started in the 12 months from April 2015 to March 2016.
We're now back at levels of construction unseen since the 1980s, and very close to the Parliament's objective of 70,000 new dwellings per year. And the numbers will probably rise further in the coming years, considering that tens of thousands of dwellings are going to be built around the métro stations of the Grand Paris Express. Only last week the businesses of the Paris Region officially asked the government to raise the objective of construction further to 90,000 new dwellings per year. :nuts:
This, of course, should boost population growth in the Paris Region, so we can expect higher population growth rates than has been the case in recent years. Typically it takes 3 years for dwellings to be completed. Based on observations from other parts of France, like Haute-Garonne (Toulouse) and Gironde (Bordeaux), a rise in the number of dwellings started leads to higher population growth 3 years later.
Between Jan. 2004 and Jan. 2010, 44,600 new dwellings were started per year in the Paris Region. The population of the Paris Region between Jan. 2007 and Jan. 2013 grew by +0.51% per year. Then from Jan. 2010 to Jan. 2015, 55,600 new dwellings were started per year, and in 2015 64,800 were started like I said. We don't know yet by how much the population of the Paris Region has grown after Jan. 2013 (the results of the yearly January census are unveiled only 3 years after the census), but most likely this increase in construction has led to a population growth rate higher than +0.51%, especially considering that France's net migration is finally starting to rise (in 2012, Metropolitan France's net migration was +90,831, whereas INSEE previously thought it would be only +45,000).
For an idea of what we can expect, back in the 1980s when construction of dwellings in the Paris Region was at the same level as in 2015, the population growth rate of the region was in the +0.70%/+0.80% range. If construction rises further and reaches 90,000 per year which is now the desired objective of the regional businesses, that means we could pretty well reach growth rates of +1.0% per year, which have been unseen in the Paris Region since the end of the economic boom in 1974. Quite a turnaround!
Some recent pictures of large housing projects in the Paris Region: