One more trick in the bag
It’s almost done. There Paris city hall found a compromise within its composite majority to give birth to the revision of the PLU which will be presented during a municipal council in June. The main concession granted by the deputy town planning Emmanuel Gregoire to its turbulent ecologists will have been to sanctuary the ceiling of 37 m enacted by the POS (land use plan) of 1977. The year when a certain Jacques Chirac became the first mayor of Paris elected by universal suffrage.
The Parisian “greens” have therefore just brought down the last towers in the Bruneseau and Bercy-Charenton districts before they even come out of the ground. The last to burst the ceiling will be the Triangle tower and its 180 m erected from the Parc des Expositions, to the south of the capital.
Thus closes a (short) parenthesis half-opened by Jean Louis Missika in a momentum where the spirit of “start-up nation” hoped to irrigate the fabric of the city. A new era of lacy town planning is dawning where the environmental and social dimensions take precedence over economic considerations and the primary desire to further enhance its attractiveness.
The lace will have more or less fine stitches. In the knitting prepared by the municipal team, we find the point of pellets. Which turns to the point of contention. Eric Donnetwith a certain courage during our BIG UP event, became the vehement spokesperson for institutional investors who are as discreet as they are annoyed by what is experienced more as a police of uses.
If the weapon of height was certainly not the only and best response to avoid the Parisian exodus of many families, not sure that that of preemption was enough to reverse the curve. Especially with regard to the finances of the City and even if the related budget would have been doubled in the PLU project.
So what we will not gain in height, we will have to seek it in the widths. Paris can no longer play alone and its development must be thought of at least on the scale of the metropolis and in harmony with the region. A metro, however modern and automatic it may be, will not suffice. An overhaul of governance and a reduction in the administrative layering would be a necessary and salutary prerequisite if we want to prepare our cities for the climate challenge that is coming. Unless we are satisfied with a few postures.
