This week, the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, gave the green light to a dramatic makeover of the most famous avenue in the French capital, the Champs Elysees. Promising to turn the 2.3-kilometer (1.4-kilometer) strip from Concordia Square to the Arc de Triomphe into an “extraordinary garden,” the city The $ 305 million plan, planned by PCA-Stream architects, will halve the space allocated to cars, significantly increase the area’s tree cover and try to encourage more small-scale shops along the sidewalks of the avenue. .
The project, dubbed “Re-Enchanting the Champs Elysées” and due in 2030, is likely to be a late deadline. Although the street still largely retains its international label as “the most beautiful avenue in the world,” the reputation of the Champs Elysees among Parisians has been low for some time. Despite its magnificent buildings and spectacular views, the avenue has been widely criticized in France for being polluted, congested, expensive and, thanks to the brand’s saturation and strong tourism, even “in the old,”A term probably best translated as“ past ”.
The current lack of love among locals for the Champs Elysées is an open secret. A 2019 survey found that 30% of Parisians disagreed with the “most beautiful” label, a proportion that increased when respondents were closer to the avenue itself, and 71% rejected the street as to “tourist”. Even the city, in its renovation proposals, acknowledged that the street was currently known as a meeting point for “large international chains perceived as antiseptic and barely distinguishable.”
More space for bikes and walkers, less space for cars and many more trees.
Representation courtesy PCA-Stream
Most major cities have an unusual but popular shopping center with a similar function: New York’s Times Square or Amsterdam’s Leidseplein. A specific problem with the Champs Elysees, however, is that they are both in the old and too expensive to be really affordable. Even the emporia for domestic brands, such as a huge Louis Vuitton flagship, make street retail offerings feel like a very expensive airport. Strollers don’t come here just to buy, of course, but with heavy vehicle traffic and large expanses of radiant asphalt, it’s also not an ideal place for cafe terraces.
As a result, locals stay. PCA-Stream research on the flows of people in the area found that, once people working in street businesses were discounted, only 15% of pedestrians in the Champs Elysées came from Greater Paris.
The new makeover will not make the street automatic, but it will certainly make the avenue a more pleasant place to stay, in line with other eco-friendly and reassuring vehicle projects already carried out elsewhere. of Paris. Current representations (still potentially susceptible to later adaptation) show sidewalks that roughly double in width, while car lanes will be reduced to four, even around the Place de L’Étoile, an intersection of several lines. which connects all the avenues essential for the circulation of the northwest of Paris. Generous bike lanes will flank both sides, while the remaining vehicles are shown in representations (optimistically) as they are peacefully mixed with pedestrians, suggesting that an as yet unforeseen speed reduction will also be introduced. This pedestrian space will be shaded by a newly folded line of trees and the pavement below them is partially cleaned to create a more rain-absorbing surface.
However, it is at the eastern end of the avenue, in Plaça de la Corcorde, that the biggest change will be seen, a change that, unlike the rest of the project, should be in place before the Olympic Games. of 2024. Here, the spectacular but rather arid square, currently surrounded by traffic lines, will be visually remodeled by planting. What is now a wide piece of cobblestones will be filled with tree-shaded lawns that hold the fountains in the square like a pair of open lips. Meanwhile, a major road will be buried on the south edge of the square, with the planted area of grass and bushes. Panoramic views of the square are likely to be missed at various points, but the space will feel more accessible to pedestrians. Joining the existing gardens, it will finally be possible to walk from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe under a leafy roof, breathing cleaner air in a green space full of benches and water fountains.
Limiting a sunken road will create even more green space.
Representation courtesy PCA-Stream
The businesses along the avenue should also undergo some changes. The public consultation showed that citizens wanted one “a more authentic and more French retail offer, “according to the city, which” emphasizes the art of French living, experience and gastronomy ”. Given the street’s popularity among visitors and the high commercial incomes that force companies to have a high turnover to survive, this guideline may risk creating a theme park version of French culture that could still have . in the old aspects. Still, the desire to make the avenue more of a monument and less of a mall seems like a promising sign.
And yet the quieter, car-free Champs Elysees can still be a shock. It is, after all, a multi-lane road where traffic has long been part of the scene. In the days before the cars, it was recognized more as harmful, the mess of Citroëns and Renaults weaving around the Arc de Triomphe was considered a Parisian show par excellence: proof that life in the city was strong and dirty, but also dynamic and vibrant. Few may want to preserve this scene, but the Champs Elysees without the cars will be a remarkably different place: a large axial avenue that is no longer devoted primarily to movement.
More than a decade ago, a somewhat similar transformation swept the intersection of an American metropolis, the partially pedestrianized Times Square of New York City. This still makes some New Yorkers sick nostalgic for the hustle and bustle of the past, and Hidalgo may find some Parisians resistant at the same time to banishing cars along this boulevard; its multi-year campaign to deliver the city from the domain of the automobile has been marked by this setback in the past. But if the wave without cars continues, and developments in other European cities, including Brussels and Madrid, he suggests, can: larger urban spaces could expect a less frantic future.