The Boulevard Périphérique divides the Paris region: arrondissement inside, banlieu outside; one served by transit, the other car-dominant. This issue explores an example of modern urbanism – in particular, the corporate centre of La Défense.
This issue is a revised version from the one e-mailed to the Price Tags subscription list. (If you’d like to be on that list, click here, and note “subscribe” in the body.)
Readers can comment on the issue by clicking in “Comments” below, where I’ve already posted one of the interesting remarks I’ve received.
Author
I read this issue with interest. As you may know, Paris is my second home, having lived and worked there in the past, and I am a regular visitor. So please permit me to offer some comments and question some of your statements about the Périphérique and La Défense.
First, La Défense:
I could not agree more that this is an abomination of late modernism, and fails miserably as a people place. It is truly a wonder how the French, having Paris as their living model of a great people-oriented city, could so blindly have allowed or agreed to this experiment of the modern anti-city which so blatantly reverses all the good lessons of urbanism right next door. It still amazes me, but then again look at many of the outer banlieus, which are equally dismal. It’s as if the French suffered a collective amnesia or dementia in the ’60s/’70s when it came to planning and building new cities. How do you get it so spectacularly wrong? Oh well, they weren’t alone of course (pace the UK’s New Towns program for example, or most of North America). And they still seem not to have learned, judging by the EPAD propaganda video clip you posted.
Second, the Boulevard Périphérique:
With all due respect, I think that your analysis is too simplistic, not entirely accurate and incomplete. Your obvious hate for the automobile is clouding your judgement, and I really wish you were more balanced in your observations. Yes, the Périphérique is a product of another era’s thinking about transportation, and is not a panacea, but…
1. The Périphérique has saved Paris from far higher numbers of vehicles within the city, which would otherwise have to cross the city to get around. Whether you like them or not, you can’t simply ignore the reality of cars and perhaps more importantly trucks, and the alternative (no Périphérique) would be far worse on the city’s urban environment. The Périphérique did not create this reality, and you seem to be in denial about the role of cars and trucks in the modern economy. How would you have those “Businesses requiring modern spaces and roads for trucking occupied lands near the ring” otherwise locate or operate?
2. In fact the Périphérique works quite well as a diverter of very large volumes of traffic that would otherwise be clogging up the city’s streets. And assuming your quote of 43 km/h average driving speed is accurate (outside of “rush hour” it is usually much higher than that, in my own experience), this is still much higher than many large cities’ surface street speeds. Yes, it clogs up badly at times, but generally it works pretty well to distribute very large numbers of vehicles around the city and out to the national autoroute network (I am sure you don’t like that system either, but many Parisian travellers would beg to differ with you).
3. You oversimplify the difference between the urban experience within the Périphérique and that beyond it. The citizens of places such as Neuilly, Montrouge, Boulogne, St Cloud, Vincennes and Montreuil (among many others) would take exception to your description of Paris as “a pre-auto central core, densely served by transit” and all their suburbs as “a car-dominant region beyond, built out in the modern era”. That is simply not true. Of course it is true that the more recent social housing banlieus built to house immigrants in the ’60s and ’70s are very bad but that is just part of the story beyond the Périphérique. And you fail to even mention the extensive and very effective regional transportation network (RER) as well as the fact that several Metro lines extend well beyond the Périphérique. These plus the extensive bus network serving the banlieus provide a suburban transit system that we can only envy here in Vancouver.
4. Perhaps most surprisingly in your haste to discredit the Périphérique, you also did not mention one of the most important public transit initiatives of Mayor Delanoe, which is the construction of a surface streetcar system that follows the line of the Périphérique and will eventually connect all the radial rail and metro lines and substantially enhance movement between banlieu and banlieu. This new route (well underway with large sections completed in the south, for example) would not be possible were it not for the land use decisions taken after the city walls were demolished, including the Périphérique, which left a continuous linear open space girdling the city.
5. You criticize how the former military zone (the “ceinture” as Parisians call it) lands have been developed, saying it is “Essentially anti-urban, the redevelopment lands consisted of grand ensembles – projects housing between 30,000 to 40,000 people … For the middle-class, highrise buildings were integrated with social and sport facilities.” What is the problem with this? Housing that many people on lands so close to public transport, not to mention the great many public sports facilities, schools, libraries, daycares, pools and parks that were developed, seems to me to have been a real success, which Parisians attest to daily in their heavy use. As importantly, these multiple uses coexist with the Boulevard Périphérique.
6. Finally, while your critique of the Périphérique is loud and uncompromising (and not entirely unfounded, I readily agree), you are curiously silent on solutions. What would you have them do? Perhaps you are not aware of another of Bertrand Delanoe’s new initiatives underway: covering over most of the sunken motorway with landscaped gardens and more sports fields. Sections have already been completed in the northeastern area around Porte des Lilas. A neat solution methinks, which will both maintain the critical utility (yes!) of the road and minimize its negative impacts on the adjacent neighbourhoods, as well as creating more land for public uses. Not too shabby. Or is nothing short of demolition of the motorway and banishment of all those evil cars and trucks an acceptable solution to you?
Gordon, you perform a valuable educational function in publishing Price Tags, and many (me included) are avid readers. I would hope you would try to give us the full picture, even if this sometimes does not as neatly fit and reinforce your personal biases and priorities. I would be happy for you to use my comments as you see fit.
Keep up the good work!
Regards,
Lance Berelowitz AA Dipl MCIP
Principal
URBAN FORUM ASSOCIATES
Town Planning, Urban Design & Communications
My company’s Paris office moved from near the Arc de Triomphe to La Défense recently. During my next visit, I’ll have to explore the difference in the environs.
From my perspective as a tourist, you simply don;t comare the two environments – I don’t see why all environments must fit a particular mould. Visit La Defense on a weekday at lunch hour and you’ll see thousands of people on the plazas – quite the sight. Go there on a weekend, and it would be dead. The same could be said (on a much smaller scale) of facilities in Vancouver. Visit the QE Theatre when there’s no performance – its dead. Ditto for BC Place, GM Place or Canada Place when no events are scheduled. Are those places automatically failures? I don’t think so. Even places like Yaletown with a dense built form are “dead” during the weekdays (so much so that retail stores have largely failed and restaurants (operating at night) have survived the best).
The “wonder” of La Defense is the immense scale of the plaza and the perspectives that you get from the elevated vantage points surrounding it – particularly down the axis. That scale, in and of itself, is at odds with a small scale compact dense urban pattern – but that’s probably the point of the exercise – to be different and offer a different experience than typical Paris.
Now what do you think of Canary Wharf and the City’s efforts to greatly densify to pay catch-up to regain office tenants?
ugh. la défense…
i was recently a geography student at paris x – nanterre (which is just beyond la défense), so we would talk about it a lot in class.
thanks for such a great article (and see you at jane’s walks),
m.