area 103 | Paris

After Amsterdam, Berlin and London, after Beijing and Shanghai in the issue titled China Overview, Tokyo and Barcelona, and the last, complex and debated study on Moscow, Area continues its constant research on the city, accompanying every issue by a synthetic itinerary of contemporary architecture, and every year by a monographic work on the transformations and issues characterizing the conditions of urban life, which this year centres on Paris. It is significant to note that issue number 100, Changing cities, presented at the Urban Centre in Milan, centred on this theme and confirmed the interest in the debate on the future of cities, manifested by examples and study cases, key words and comparisons, which may be projected in their entirety on the French city, perhaps comprehensively, the ‘city of cities’.

aerial view

Paris, in fact, even if we only consider data and numbers, proves to be exemplary and at the same time extraordinary. Its central area, measuring 105.5 kilometres, is according to the census of 1999 inhabited by 2,125,246 inhabitants, a figure which has only increased by 20,000 after twenty years and which on the whole coincides with the population of the city in the late Nineteenth century, since it boasted just above 2,269,000 citizens in 1881. This indicates that, in spite of the great traveaux and the politics aimed at monumentalizing the city launched and backed by Mitterand for more than twenty years, which we may consider to have been concluded with the recent opening of the vegetal walls of the Musée du Quai Branly designed by Jean Nouvel, the urban “essence” has not, unlike its image and exceptional appeal, changed all that much. Matters are different if we consider the petite couronne or the inner belt of city outskirts, consisting of the city and the three departments which form a ring around it: Seine-Saint-Denis with its 236 square km, Val-de-la-Marne of 245 km2. and Huts-de-Seine of 176 km2, which form a total area of 762.4 square kilometres which is today inhabited by more than 6,200,000 persons. But the departments into which the region of the Ile-de-France is divided, introduced with the administrative reform of 1965, of which Paris is regional capital, are eight in number: another three, Val-d‘Oise, Yvelines and Essonne, define the perimeter of the grande couronne while all of them, excepting the eastern department of Seine-et-Marne which alone represents half of the regional territory, form the Parisienne region, i.e. the metropolitan area of Greater Paris which covers, between suburbs and satellite towns, an area of more than 14,518 square kilometres inhabited by more than 11,500,000 persons. This is the largest metropolitan area in Europe, at least comparable in size to those of London or Moscow, served by two main airports, that of Orly to the south and the international Charles De Gaulle in the nearby Roissy-en France, by a third airport located in Beauvais, 70 km north of Paris, used by low-cost companies and charter flights, in addition to another small airport at Le Bourget reserved for private flights, through which a total of 45,3 million passengers and more than 850,000 tons of goods transit every year. The city is, as we know, served by an extraordinary subway system formed of 14 lines with more than 250 km of tracks, interconnected with a system of regional local trains referred to as the RER (Réseau Express Régional). Moreover, Paris is the most important national and international railway junction and destination of all bullet trains, which form a network departing from 6 large terminuses. Three motorways and 23 national roads also reach the city, but in spite of this Paris, with the exception of its 20 municipal arrondissement, numbered progressively from the centre outwards in a spiral formation, fails to form, together with its metropolitan area, a recognizable whole, an entity endowed with an own distinct identity and composition, rather than the banal sum of particular identities and cases. The reasons are probably to be found in the urban strategies of the Villes Nouvelles, which have dominated town planning decisions and debate in the early Seventies, and the Schéma Directeur of the Region has certainly fallen short of achieving a global strategy of management and transformation of the territory; it is equally certain that regulations aimed at decentralization have favoured the development of contradictory and juxtaposed local politics. This is witnessed by the interviews and the positions expressed by Renzo Piano and Jean Nouvel in the dialogue staged especially for this issue of Area, edited with great dedication by Stefano Fera. It is proven by the recent consultation – which was still ongoing when this issue was being prepared – on the future of Metropolitan Paris launched by Nicolas Sarkozy, the Ministry of Culture and Communication. ”Le Grand Pari de l‘agglomération parisienne” saw ten team led by Christian de Portzamparc, Yves Lion, Roland Castro, Antoine Grumbach, Djamel Klouche, Richard Rogers, MVRDV, Finn Geipel, Bernardo Secchi in order to address two main themes: ”The metropolis of the XXI century post-Kyoto” and ”The diagnostics prospect of Parisian agglomerations”.