Paris: a post-Kyoto metropolis?
Built in the 50s and 60s as a fast solution to the housing shortage and characterized by high-rise apartment buildings, postwar suburbs like the French banlieues face various problems nowadays. Although the construction of those neighbourhoods was planned by architects, sociologists and social geographers, the social problems in the banlieues became a major issue in French urban policy. For the project ‘Grand Paris’ 10 international teams presented their ideas about the future of the sustainable ‘post-Kyoto’ metropolis.
Solutions for unemployment, housing and discrimination are needed
The most important question that puzzles metropolises like Paris is: how to compete with other global cities and at the same time structurally solve social, economical, ecological and infrastructural problems. Most metropolises are best known for their city centers, but in terms of inhabitants their suburbs are at least as important. Post-war flat areas like the French banlieues have deteriorated over the last decennia. The urban violence in 2005 in many French cities made clear that the country needs solutions for the unemployment, housing and discrimination problems.
Paris Plus
Dutch architect Winy Maas was 1 of the 10 participants of the Grand Paris project. His solution is inspired by the lessons learned in the Bijlmer, a suburb in Amsterdam that never became a banlieue like in Paris because the majority of the ‘low income’ flats were demolish within 20 years after their construction. The solution by Maas for Grand Paris, named ‘Paris Plus’, is based on both a better infrastructure between the city and the suburbs and within the suburbs themselves.
On the Grand Paris Website you can read more about the
international urban cooperation on suburbs.
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