Modernizing a City

My recent trip to Paris allowed me to witness a very rare thing for any European capital: City Planning.

We’re all familiar with the Rue de Champs-Elysees, Rue de l’Opera and what other French-sounding boulevards we’ve all heard of. They spread out like a system of veins delivering the life-blood of Paris to virtually every area. In the USA, we don’t really think twice about the virtues of a well-planned city – barring that nasty snarl of traffic, we simply hop into our cars, go down Blah-Blah Street and turn right at the Rue de l’Whatever. Magically, we arrive at our local sundry goods store. Assuming that one can arrive at his destination with only a few right-angle turns is a mixture for malady in most European cities. The streets seem to go in non-concentric circles. Intersecting streets appear to be radii from the city center, but are really cords of the larger circle, bringing you back to the street on which you were just traversing. Heck, there’s even a good chance that your much-beloved path of Rue de l’Easy becomes Boulevard du Purgatory shortly after passing Place de la Something.

Streets in Europe are only for those with an extremely fast metabolism and/or a SmartCar. I complain frequently of the long journeys on the bus during which other cars play chicken with my bus for the right-of way. Those “think thin” moments hang upon the hope that some other cars pull over and lets the opposite direction pass. There are circulation blockages everywhere – from that DHL van double-parked to that bus at the bus stop waiting for some loser to find a 5-cent piece in his/her wallet to complete the fare. In a hurry? Too bad. You should have walked.

Paris was sort of a different experience. Yes, there were those narrow streets that annoy every speed-oriented gas-pedal-pusher, but they are short and mostly intersect with those giant, thriving arterial Boulevards. Granted, they’re still congested like one would expect in any large city, but the traffic actually moves at a respectable pace. A journey between the Paris Convention Center and Gare du Nord took about 30 minutes, which is less time than it takes for a bus to travel between Kensington and the City in London, and is about the same distance.

This didn’t come about by accident. We all know that these cities grew slowly for a few hundred years between the 10^th century and the Industrial Revolution. Suddenly, populations exploded exponentially. Post-plague numbers place Paris at about 100,000 people (1340s, and remained relatively stable thanks to disease outbreaks for 500 years). The end of the Franco-Prussian war sees Paris at 650,000 people (6x as many people in about twice the space), which grew through the Industrial Revolution to today’s 60 Million inhabitants. The tiny, winding streets became a danger for sanitation, fire abatement, and, you know, violent uprisings by the bourgeoisie against the monarchy. Given France’s (in particular Paris’s) affinity towards protest in the streets, overthrowing the government, blockading said streets and waging guerilla warfare behind sandbags and overturned tables, it was time to do something. Plus, Paris was choking itself in the maze of medieval, sprawling capillaries that don’t even allow for efficient movement between different arrondissements.

The fearless French leader Napoleon III recognized this impending disaster/threat to his rule. He hired (the French, not German) Haussmann to do something about it. Haussmann came in, destroyed building after building to give Parisians a method of getting from Point A to Point B without relying on a Guillotine to remove some protruding body parts. This renovation discouraged/prevented those pesky revolutionaries (also enabled those pesky invaders) and gave Impressionists something to paint. (See THIS and THIS) It really was revolutionary. Suddenly, the idea of city planning was everywhere – New York could spread north, the ring-and-radius method of highway planning was enabled, and cities could anticipate the boom of the Model T.

Haussmann took major Parisian landmarks or locations (Arc d’Triomphe, Paris Opera, Place de l’Concorde, etc), built a ring in front of/around them, and connected each of them with a series of rays emanating in multiple directions.

Naturally, this meant razing entire sections of the city, plopping down a chunk of thoroughfare, and rebuilding around it. The new buildings had a series of interesting building codes setting standards for height, width, alignment of windows, façade motif, roof slope, and whatever else. Since Haussmannization (1852-1884) didn’t happen overnight, there is a bit of variance between the early-stage rebuilding and the late-stage rebuilding; however, in general, it gave the streets of central Paris a uniquely identical atmosphere.

And thus it gives Adam a strategy as he plays SimCity instead of reading for class.