Even one of the world's most compelling—and mythologized—cities needs a powerful new story to move forward. It is not enough to be a cultural magnet and a mecca of luxury. Paris aspires to become a planetary benchmark for ecological transformation and adaptation to global warming. That is why its municipal council approved an ambitious project on June 5, the "local bioclimatic urban plan", a detailed roadmap for the next twenty years.
As the mayor, the socialist Anne Hidalgo, said in the public presentation of the initiative, "Paris does not start from a blank page." The French capital, in fact, has been with a clear philosophy for 15 years –although not always to the taste of the residents– of marginalizing the private car, promoting bicycles and aggressive vegetation. The coalition of lefts (socialists, communists and environmentalists) that governs it intends to press the accelerator in that direction.
The last few summers have definitely activated all the alarms. There have been periods of very intense, unbearable heat waves. Between July 11 and 21 of last year, mortality increased 21% above usual. Hospital emergencies were saturated.
In 1885, shortly before the Eiffel Tower was erected, the average temperature in Paris was 10.7ºC. In 2010 it had already risen to 13ºC. It is estimated that in 2085 it can reach 14.5ºC. Experts think that there will be heat peaks of 50ºC, a temperature typical today of the deserts of Arizona or Arabia.
Faced with these troubling prospects, those responsible in Paris believe that action must be taken without delay on multiple fronts. It is a colossal challenge for a very dense city. The capital loses population each year –more than 10,000 people– due to 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 sweltering 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 participated. Some 50,000 proposals have been made. The project may be modified and improved until its final approval, in the second semester of 2024.
The ecological acceleration in Paris goes hand in hand with the preparation for the 2024 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. They want them to be the greenest in history, with bicycles playing a leading role. “We want to make these Games a showcase for the bicycle,” Transport Minister Clément Beaune, one of the ministers most in tune with President Emmanuel Macron, told Le Parisien a few days ago. The Paris region has been one of the places in Europe with the fastest expansion of bike lanes. The Olympic appointment is an excuse to complete the network.
The Parisian authorities are determined to fulfill the commitment to make it a carbon-neutral city by the year 2050. The change in appearance should be drastic, with up to 40% of the surface planted with vegetation. This will include squares today with intense traffic, such as l'Étoile -with the Arc de Triomphe in the center-, which will be partly transformed into a garden. The goal of having ten square meters of green space per inhabitant is pursued, the recommended ratio to guarantee 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 of adding more cement, but rather the contrary. The idea is a metamorphosis. An example is offices. As a consequence of the covid, 20% of the space dedicated to them is unoccupied. This offers an opportunity to transform them into homes, preferably social, after having carried out insulation works that better protect them from heat and improve energy efficiency.
Bioclimatic Paris will require the massive planting of trees – there were 25,000 between November 2022 and April 2023 – and the creation of artificial shady areas. Ten new urban parks are planned, one of them 25 hectares, between Porte de la Chapelle and Porte de la Villette, bordering the périphérique, the ring road, in the northwest, in one of the most socially degraded areas, the epicenter of traffic of crack.
Among the actions that are already being carried out are the installation of new public fountains, up to 1,200, some only for the summer and with atomizers. The City Council speaks of "islets of freshness", the shelters to which residents can go to resist the high temperatures.
Experimental tests of cool roof systems are also being carried out to ease the life of the occupants of the upper floors. The company Roofscapes, a startup founded by young French engineers trained in the United States, has designed a kind of planters that could be installed on the classic sloping zinc roofs of Paris to reduce the temperature inside buildings and contribute to biodiversity. Its inventors have been inspired by the altane in Venice, wooden terraces that centuries ago were installed on the roofs of the city of canals.
For Hidalgo and his team, the ecological transformation would be lame without a very strong social accent. For this reason, they promise that public or social housing will go from 25% today to 40% in 2035. It is not easy to make a policy that retains the popular classes when Paris is today, partly as a consequence of Brexit, the largest focus of investment of Europe. Hidalgo's number two – and his dauphin –, Emmanuel Grégoire, expressed it this way: “We must protect Parisians from the drifts of the market”. The climate and the high cost of living are, therefore, the most urgent challenges of the City of Light
