Whatever you say about the French – and having worked with them – I could say a lot –little of it good, but they have an ability to get big projects done.
They are great at running what’s called Les Grands Projets (big jobbies Madam).
Take their Millenium celebrations where they lit up the Eiffel Tower (itself a great project) compared to Tony Blair’s half-shaped football we now call The Dome. (Great gigs, in fairness.)
Britain seems to have lost that edge that gave us Brunel who built railways and tunnels (who was half-French, anyway) and Bazalgette (also part-French),who built the London sewer system, although his descendants continued the scatological tradition with his great-great-great Grandson, Peter, chairing the F-Arts Council.
Next year Paris will host the Olympics, and I will guarantee you they will put on a show to rival the Beijing Olympics of 2008. There will be no Coq-en-l’air (cock-up, Madam.)
For a start, they are building 68 new Metro stations for the Olympics. Homes are being built above the stations with a strong emphasis on subsidised housing. So your 15-minute city is very much within reach.
One-quarter of homes inside the main ring road are now social housing – almost three times as many as 20 years ago and the plan is to get one in three by 2030.
Not since Hausmann cleared the slums in the 19th century and remodelled the city, with its wide boulevards, has there been such a dramatic change in a European city.
But how about the NIMBYs, naysayers and objectors. I was once at a conference, with a French speaker who was fairly fluent and was oblivious to English slang. When asked about consultation he said: “If vous wants to drain ze swamp, vous do not consultant ze frogs.” Indeed.
Joyeux Noël et bonne année.
Bonne Weekend.
Tom
PS. As with many I will be contributing to Conquer Cancer rather than waste £1.25 on cards that might never get delivered by the Royal Mail.
by the Planning PR guru 