I had not been to France in several years, despite my French heritage (my mother was French, as was my father’s father). And I have lived in France, off and on, for several years in the past. I was a bit apprehensive, having a love/hate relationship with the country that has by and large turned a blind eye on its racist colonial past and how it continues to manifest in the present. It is racist and exploitative, especially in Africa, but also in its former colonies. Nonetheless, Paris was a pleasant surprise – despite the numbers of homeless people and a sense of dissatisfaction (though that is the French character, whine, whine whine).
It is true that the mayor of Paris has been able to vastly expand the bicycle infrastructure, there were bikes of all kinds everywhere, crisscrossing roads, sidewalks, going every which way, oblivious to traffic norms, driving drivers crazy. And posing a bit of risk for all. The French are not know for their discipline, but one hopes that over time, the situation will be a bit less chaotic and thus the reaction against the transformations will cool. Taxi drivers were unhappy with all the circulation changes in favor of bikes, and really hated the scooters. Then again, bicyclists were not exactly obeying traffic rules so it posed real safety problems. It was cool to see the numbers of different bikes – lots of electric ones – with seats for children, cargo bikes, delivery bikes. There were also a great number of electric scooters, whose rental will be banned in Sept, as the Parisians voted them out of the mix. One does get the sense that things are changing in that regard, in Paris. Clearly a lot still needs to be thought out to better integrate the bus service, which seems to have been impacted, taxis, and automobile traffic, and the mayor is reviled by the right and the left. The right for making Paris less car friendly, the left for bidding (and winning) the next Olympic games. There is question whether Anne Hidalgo will be reelected, though many who are the most affected by the traffic changes, are not Paris voters. Those dependent on the car to come into Paris to work – the public transportation system does not penetrate equally in the greater suburban region – have it hard. She also removed an enormous amount of street parking which makes Paris feel more open and liberated space for greening. That too makes those car dependent unhappy.
Under Mitterand in the early 1980s (socialist president), there were land reforms, delegating land use authority to the locals, and sprawl exploded. Now those people are hard up, rising fuel prices, and attempts to reduce cars in Paris (Paris has bad air quality a lot of the year). Many among them I suspect, were part of the Gilets Jaune movement protesting President Macron’s proposal to raise the price of gas, as part of his environmental policies.
One of the most striking changes in Paris, aside from the bike infrastructure, was the increase in green spaces. Before the current mayor, Paris enforced the Hausmann plan, including the spacing of street trees, very rigid and comparatively space, even though Paris has been known for its treed boulevards. Now the plans allow double alleys of trees, trees in places where they were not allowed before at all. Wide streets also have an increase in planting boxes with – depending – flowering plants, and or a predominance of weeds. I heard complaints about how messy Paris looked, how untended. The issue of ‘weeds’ is pervasive. We hear the same kinds of complaint in LA when people convert their front yards to natives, or other, they can look untended, wild, messy and hence unattractive. There is an implicit sense of order that is aligned with a sense of aesthetics, that this greening offends. I thought it lent a feeling of greater softness to a city whose urban fabric can be quite hard, and which is dominated by pavement. Of course I was there in the late Spring, so everything was very green, the trees in parks had their new leaves, the grass had been well irrigated, green was everywhere. What a change. There is also far more organic food on offer in the stores, despite there only being 10.5% of ag lands devoted to organic agriculture. France, in the 60s and 70s enacted land reforms and ag policies for land consolidation, and in the north there are huge grain monocrops, fertilized to the max, that have greatly contributed to groundwater contamination. Still, consumers are supporting organic as its seen all over, from single mom and pop grocery stores selling fresh produce, to chains such as Naturalia.
Paris continues to offer great outside cafés and dinning, people are on the street, it’s a city that feels sociable, that enables far niente, where strolling occurs. There are now even more spaces for people to hang out than before, part of the greening initiative. When you see what they have been able to achieve in a pretty dense space and compared to former mayor Garcetti of Los Angeles, great streets program, it puts us to total shame. LA’s great streets consisted of a few corners newly devoted to pedestrians, protected by plastic bollards and paint. The infrastructures were equivocal as they did not want to encourage encampments but wanted to be friendly and not cost much, and not make any permanent changes to circulation. Welcome to LA these days.
What was surprising was the number of smokers, for a while there the French seemed to have reduced the number of smokers, in Paris, they were everywhere. And there is a lot of vaping. On the other hand there did not seem to be much obesity, though people were more heavy than in Japan – different body type too, no doubt. By and large, people were friendly and chatty if you engaged them.
I went to the museum of the Quai Branly, designed by Jean Nouvel, where the French have all of their colonial relics, collected over a century. It is a dark and creepy place, the exhibits are constrained by the fancy architecture, and the walls look like they are covered with leather though I could not find any information about that. The exterior facing the Seine is a very successful living wall, and the gardens are lovely. The museum itself does not seem to acknowledge France’s colonial past, displaying artifacts from Africa like trophies. There is also a collection of objects from Oceania, and the whole effect is highly disturbing, despite all the praise the museum has received, again, France has struggled to recognize its colonial past (and present), and the museum is prime example.
At the same time, Paris is no longer White. One can observe that immigration has increased, and there are far more people of color, largely from the African continent than ever before. People seem to tolerate one another, at least as far as a visitor can tell. In a short week it was hard to see the evolution of neighborhoods, and of course I did not have the time to do an extensive survey!