#parisnewtownplanning

[newtowntosmartcity]

Week 4 : Manifestations of Politics

Jesfae John (jmj2196)

The New Towns of Paris were conceived during a period of strong economic growth and at a time when the capital’s rapid rate of population increase seemed certain to continue (which wasn’t the case eventually), posing a delicate problem of accommodation in the centralized agglomeration because of its previous lack of effective urban planning.

The need for decentralization was recognized when a reappraisal of the existing planning strategies and the spread of suburban sprawl was undertaken in 1964-65. Coupled with the strong political backing of President DeGaulle and carefully crafted media campaigns (Images 1-3) , Paris’ villes nouvelles idea of creating something ‘different and new’ quickly became an appealing alternative to the tangled mess of the Paris suburbs, large areas of which had been overrun by towering blocks of low-income housing projects, more appropriately termed as grands ensembles. Up until then, the grands ensembles were widely regarded as the quintessential products of postwar French government policy in the areas of regional and urban planning.

Illustrations taken from ‘Une ville se lève à l'est’ , 1970.

These villes nouvelles sought to anchor their planning strategy around the fundamental issues of demographic and economic expansion, administrative organization and the quality of the urban environment (Image 4). The plan declared that the urban center should create the sense of a "real town" as opposed to the succession of ‘characterless dormitory suburbs' or the desert of the Grands Ensembles.

Under the expert supervision of Paul Delouvrier, appointed by President DeGaulle as the first head of the new regional planning and governmental unit of the Paris metropolitan area - Schema Directeur d’management et d’urbanisme (S.D.A.U), the regional planners used the new town concept to reorganize the city’s suburbs unlike its European counterparts. They intended to provide the residents with more of the necessities and advantages of daily life and program undifferentiated open spaces that weren’t designed to gather people together previously. Each of these new cities was to have an inter and intra city transportation system, an array of commercial, cultural and recreational activities, large public parks, comprehensive health and welfare services and educational institutions. They were also expected to experiment with ways to solve nagging urban problems as separation of pedestrian and auto traffic, waste disposal, water supply and soil conservation. Each new city would house as many as 500,000 people on about as much land as there is inside Paris. In a way, the team pulled threads from the American concept of New towns but dared to deviate by attempting to be innovative in their urban ideology of Parisian cities.   

A major social goal of these towns was to avoid the social catastrophe of the Grands-Ensembles. The multi-disciplinary team of professionals, on realizing the past deficient conditions and the related increase of youth violence gave utmost importance to spatial programming and animating posters. Delouvrier insisted that the new cities have a lively, diverse and pleasing urban atmosphere. “Of course we cannot give them all a Comedie Francaise,” he said, “but we will try to give them everything else.” (Image 4).

The S.D.A.U. was not a cut and clear political program in the sense that it did not propose a clear solution for future social life like Howard with its new towns. I would argue, that the S.D.A.U. is inscribed in traditions of political 'programs' though. It had a very precise idea of its objectives and implications for social life but due to its scale of study it didn’t show it too clearly, defining only general directions. The plan hoped that an identity will develop in the new communities but designed them in relation to a development strategy designed for the agglomeration where Paris has the central role. The plan dealt on agendas, not to serve but ‘how to’ persuade the public to relocate.                                          

It is important to realize, at the outset, that the new towns were constructed after 1968; so they could essentially be a reflection of the second period and not of the ideology that prevailed at the moment of their inception. The 1965 approach to the question of the urban centers is essentially pragmatic, quantitative, qualitative and mechanistic. The events of May 1968 seriously shook up the prevalent conceptions in France and with it the state, the policy of centralization, and the urban policy in France. A very immediate impact is the reduction, in 1969, of the number of villes nouvelles from 8 to 5 in the province. Many of the shortcomings could be blamed on the inability of the 1968 French government to match ambitious plans with sufficient public money to carry them out. When public resources became strained by the many renovation projects planned for Paris, Georges Pompidou, who inherited the program from DeGaulle, urged private investors to share more of the burden. To make it as profitable as possible for them, they were given larger shares of the public-private corporations, as well as such concessions as permission to build more lucrative high-rise buildings and to defer development of public facilities. Once again, the plan of persuasion comes to light.