The Car-Free Revolution Continues in Paris

During her tenure as mayor of Paris, "Anne Hidalgo has opened linear parks in the old highways along the Seine, phased out diesel cars in the city, opened bus lanes, raised parking meter prices, and plowed bike lanes down hundreds of streets." The city eliminated cars from even more areas as the pandemic hit, and there are plans to pedestrianize the famous Champs-Elysées.

Henry Grabar interviews David Belliard, Paris's adjunct mayor for transportation and public space, the city's "point man for many of these endeavors," including "establishing car-free zones outside schools and enforcing the capital’s new speed limit of 30 kilometers per hour—a notch below 20 mph."

Discussing the city's history, Belliard says "[w]hen the car arrives, we transform what we can call public space, and this public space becomes automobile space, with the logical system of the car imposing itself in Paris. And public space is completely devoured, eaten away, and in a certain way privatized to one single, unique use." Since then, the city has worked to improve facilities for cyclists and pedestrians, with some projects expedited by the pandemic. According to Belliard, "COVID permitted us to accelerate certain things, especially with respect to the bicycle."

Defending the city's policy to limit parking and the entry of private cars in the central part of Paris, Belliard asserts that "[e]ighty percent of trips between Paris and the suburbs are by public transit." As Belliard sees it, "[t]he redistribution of public space is a policy of social redistribution."