Paris Dreams of a Calmer, Greener Champs Elysées

The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, this week gave the green light to a dramatic appearance of the most famous avenue of the French capital, the Champs Elysées. We promise to transform the 1.4-kilometer (2.3-kilometer) strip from the Place de La Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe into an ‘extraordinary garden’, the city The $ 305 million plan, proposed by architects PCA – Stream, will roughly halve the space allocated to cars, significantly increase the area’s tree cover and encourage more small-scale shops along the flanks of the avenue .

The project, called ‘Re-Enchanting the Champs Elysées’, to be completed by 2030, is probably too late. While the street still retains its international name as the ‘world’s most beautiful avenue’, the reputation of the Champs Elysées has long been low among Parisians. Despite its beautiful buildings and dramatic views, the avenue in France has been widely criticized for being polluted, crowded, expensive and – thanks to brand saturation and heavy tourism – even “ringarde,“A term that can probably best be translated as ‘passé’.

The current lack of love among the locals for the Champs Elysées is an open secret. A 2019 survey found that 30% of Parisians disagreed with the “most beautiful” marker – a share that rose the closer respondents lived to the avenue itself – with 71% calling the street ‘touristy’ finished. Even the city acknowledged in its proposals for the renovation that the street was currently known as a meeting point for ‘large international chains that are considered antiseptic and barely distinguishable’.

Most large cities have a soft but popular commercial center with a similar function – the New York Times Square or the Leidseplein in Amsterdam. However, a specific problem of the Champs Elysées is that they are both ringed and too expensive to be truly accessible. Even emporia for local brands, such as a large Louis Vuitton flagship, makes the street’s retail offerings feel like a very expensive airport. Of course, walkers not only come here to buy, but with heavy vehicle traffic and large expanses of asphalt radiating heat, it is also not an ideal place for cafe terraces.

As a result, locals stay away. PCA-Stream’s investigations into the flow of people in the area have found that, once you find people working in businesses along the street, only 15% of pedestrians on the Champs Elysées of Greater Paris.

The new makeover will not automatically make the street hip, but will definitely make the avenue a more pleasant place to linger, in line with other greening, car-calming projects that have been done elsewhere in Paris. Current versions (which may still be susceptible to later adaptation) show that sidewalks approximately double in width, while motorways are reduced to four – even around the Place de L’Étoile, a multi-speaking intersection that connects all the roads that are essential is for the circulation of northwestern Paris. Spacious bike lanes will flank on both sides, while the remaining vehicles (somewhat optimistically) are shown to mix peacefully with pedestrians, indicating that an as yet unannounced reduction in speed will also be introduced. This pedestrian space is shaded by a newly doubled line of trees, and the pavement beneath them is partially cleared to create a more rain-absorbing surface.

On the east side of the avenue, on the Place de la Corcorde, however, the biggest change will be seen – a change that, unlike the rest of the project, must take place before the 2024 Olympic Games. Here, the currently spectacular but rather arid square, behind the lines of traffic, will be visually reformed by planting. What is now an expansive piece of paving stones will be filled with tree-shaded lawns that fasten the fountains of the square like a pair of open lips between each other. A large road at the southern edge of the square will be buried, with its grass and bushes. The view of the square is likely to be lost at several points, but the space is more accessible to pedestrians. By joining existing gardens, it will eventually be possible to walk under the leafy cover from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomph and breathe cleaner air into a green space dotted with benches and water fountains.

The businesses along the avenue also need to be changed. In public consultation it was found that citizens a ‘more authentic and more French retail offering, according to the city, one that emphasizes the French art of living, know-how and gastronomy ”. Given the street’s popularity among visitors – and high commercial rents that force businesses to have a high turnover to survive – this guideline could create the risk of creating a theme park version of French culture that still ringed aspects related to it. A desire to make the avenue more of a monument and less of a shopping center nevertheless seems a promising sign.

And yet a quieter, more car-free Champs Elysées can still come as a shock. It is, after all, a passageway with more lanes where traffic has long been part of the scene. In the days before cars were recognized as more than harmful, the turmoil of Citroëns and Renaults around the Arc de Triomphe was seen as an extremely Parisian spectacle as proof that city life was loud and dirty, but also dynamic and lively. Few people want to preserve this scene, but a Champs Elysées without cars will be a very different place – an excellent axial lane that is no longer dedicated primarily to movement.

More than a decade ago, a somewhat similar transformation swept the crossroads of an American metropolis, the partially pedestrianized Times Square, in New York. It still ranks some New Yorkers nostalgic for past crowds, and Hidalgo may find that certain Parisians also resist banning cars along this boulevard; her multi-year campaign to free the city from car domination has been characterized by such a setback in the past. But if the car-free wave continues – and developments in other European cities, including Brussels and Madrid, suggests that it can – more large urban spaces can look forward to a less insane future.