More green, fewer cars: the Champs-Elysées will begin a profound change, promised elected officials and experts from the French capital on Wednesday. The idea is to ‘re-enchant’ the famous Parisian avenue between now and the 2024 Olympic Games.
Named ‘Re-enchanting the Champs-Elysées’, the project carried out by the town hall of Paris, elected officials and the Champs-Elysées Committee (bringing together traders and businesses on the avenue) must be done in two stages. The first must be completed by the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris in the summer of 2024. The second has more blurred outlines.
Concretely, it is at the two ends of the Parisian avenue of two kilometers that the changes will be the most visible. First on the side of the Place de la Concorde, where the gardens on either side of the ‘Champs’, now largely faded, will be transformed.
“We are going to turn these gardens into real gardens for walks,” promised the socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo, during a press conference. A hundred trees will be planted and small streets pedestrianized, the elected socialist wishing to “restore freshness” to adapt the city to global warming.
Fewer cars
The other major change for 2024 will take place around the Arc de Triomphe. The Place de l’Etoile roundabout will see its heavy car traffic reduced.
“On the Arc de Triomphe, what we are going to do is an enlargement of the ring” pedestrian surrounding the monument, explained Anne Hidalgo. ‘It’s a narrowing of the car space, I prefer to be clear. Because that’s how we should consider the city of tomorrow,’ she added.
But the reduction in motorized traffic, the mayor’s hobbyhorse and politically sensitive subject, does not currently concern the avenue itself, which has two lanes of car traffic and one bus and taxi lane in each direction. On this subject, “the mayor has agreed (…) to discuss, to negotiate, I know that she has her opinions, we have ours”, assured Marc-Antoine Jamet, president of the Champs-Elysées committee.
Avenue gradually deserted
On the top of the avenue, very commercial and popular with foreign tourists, the sidewalks and street furniture, in places aging, will be renovated, promised the elected officials.
By 2024, the town hall must commit 26 million euros for all the works, to which will be added 6 million from Solidéo (an Olympic works delivery company) for the sites concerned by the Games, namely the Place de la Concorde and the Grand Palais. Because the challenge is to bring Parisians back to this iconic avenue of the city, laid out in 1670 and which has survived the ages.
We must ‘re-enchant one of the most emblematic windows of the capital, the most famous of the Parisian avenues, which has suffered from having lost a lot of its splendor in the last 30 years’, said the mayor of the 8th arrondissement of Paris, Joan of Hauteserre.
Swarming with people until the middle of the 20th century, it was gradually deserted by Parisians and more taken over by foreign tourists and customers of luxury stores.
Place de la Concorde
Its terraces will also have to be ‘harmonised’ by 2024, a sensitive subject for traders which has been entrusted to the Belgian designer Ramy Fischler. And beyond the Olympic deadline, the transformation must continue. The development of the project was entrusted to the architect Philippe Chiambaretta.
Place de la Concorde, now fully paved, will be at the heart of the changes. It will be necessary to “facilitate the crossing”, “to restore access to the monuments, the obelisk and the fountains” and to green the place, “a furnace”, explained the architect.
Anne Hidalgo said she was in favor of extending the Tuileries gardens to the obelisk.
/ATS