Why Paris Will No Longer Grow Beyond 37 M In Height

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Why Paris Will No Longer Grow Beyond 37 M In Height


June 5th, 2023

Read More: https://euro.dayfr.com/trends/325100.html

This is an old debate, which is taking a radical turn. With the new local urban plan, which must be voted on Monday by the Council of Paris, the city will limit the height of buildings that can be built. While the current regulations authorize constructions of up to 180 m on the outskirts of the city, no new project can now exceed 37 m.

- The maximum height of 37 meters authorized in places dates back to the 1970s, a time when building was rampant. In 2010, new regulations pierced this ceiling, authorizing residential towers of a maximum of 50 meters and office towers up to 180 meters in height, in places. “We said to ourselves that Paris was old-fashioned, that we had to do big towers, in a context of competition with the City [londonienne]and while the Strauss-Kahnian socialist left dominates, ”explains Emile Meunier, elected ecologist who fought for this new PLU. --- If the new text marks the end of tall buildings – a “180 degree turn” according to Bernard Landau, honorary architect voyer of the City of Paris – it nevertheless authorizes more elevations than before, for streets whose width is greater than 12 meters, within the limit of 37 meters in height and for building housing only.

- Possible elevations but a limited height, this is the compromise found by the majority, which made it possible to bring everyone together. The environmental group had been asking for years that the height be limited, a real “obsession” for their detractors, which has ecological reasons, according to Emile Meunier. The consultations carried out by the environmental group would show that above 30 m, it would be more complicated to make bioclimatic architecture. At this height, explains the elected representative, “you consume a lot more energy both in the design of the building and in its life as a building. The higher a building is, the more people and fluids are moved and the surface in contact with the air is also greater”. A conception shared by Bernard Landau, who affirms that “very tall buildings consume more energy, their carbon footprint is less good”. But not by everyone.

- “Tall buildings involve more material and require greater energy consumption to raise and lower fluids, people… But to be more fair, we should compare comparable objects: if we compare a building 60 m high compared to a 30 m building, obviously more material is needed for the 60 m building, but in fact it must be compared to two 30 m buildings, and then from the point of view of the footprint, or infrastructure necessary for the supply of these objects for example, we understand that the comparison is complicated”, considers Franck Boutté, for whom “there are a lot of fantasies on the question of height” and “no scientific study serious about it.” --- Other reasons explain the choice of ecologists. “Paris is already full as an egg, it is out of the question to densify it, Parisians can’t take it anymore. It is the densest city in Europe from the point of view of people and buildings, you have to know how to say stop.

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I don't like the environmentalists of the Paris city hall, regarding them as the most radical nimbys you could think of, worldwide.
They are grumpy and act as trolls at any kind of projects that would stand out, anyhow.
There's nothing much interesting in those people. If only they were honest to themselves, they would leave for the deep Amazon rainforest and leave us alone over here in the big city.
I certainly wouldn't miss them and they could be more helpful to communities over there.

That being said, the fact that the inner city has been overpopulated is undeniable. The central city is actually losing population at the moment, cause its old urban configuration cannot comfortably accomodate over 2 million dwellers, especially when it includes a lot of office room too.
Room is just unaffaordable in there. You have to be relatively better off to raise a whole family within Central Paris, which draws the regular middle class away.

It is up to the much smaller municipalities of the inner ring in the urban area to grow bigger now.
There is no 37 m limit on the outskirts of the central city. Once you get to the inner "suburban" municipalities (that are nothing suburban compared to American suburbia), regulation and zoning may be quite different, depending on locations.
In particular, you'll never see any 37m-bounded area around la Défense, that would be completely nonsensical.