Anne Hidalgo’s sack of Paris – POLITICO

PARIS — If Anne Hidalgo met her archenemy in the street, it’s unlikely she would recognize him. The mayor of Paris’ most ardent foe is an anonymous 52-year-old who vents his anger from the safety of a computer screen. In less than a year, his hashtag #saccageparis, documenting the grubbiness and disarray on the streets of the French capital, has become a full-fledged movement to take Hidalgo down.

The man, who goes by the Twitter handle @Panamepropre, said his outrage goes beyond usual urban complaints of filth, noise and traffic. His is a battle for the soul of Paris, against the dramatic changes Hidalgo has made to the city in the name of sustainability and better urban living.

Whether or not one agrees with @Panamepropre, there’s no denying that Hidalgo has changed the face of Paris at a pace that has bewildered its citizens. By pushing cars out of major thoroughfares and pedestrianizing large swaths of the city center, Hidalgo has earned international plaudits and the admiration of hosts of municipal authorities looking to green their communities. But her efforts have also stirred up countercurrents of discontent among Parisians who accuse her of destroying the city’s historic heritage and disrupting their morning commutes.

Hidalgo’s urban revolution and the high-handed methods with which she’s accused of carrying it out are already causing her political fortunes to ebb. Her bid to become president of France seems to be on track to die before it truly takes off. And yet, with cities and countries bound by their promises to fight climate change, Hidalgo’s experiment — and the movement threatening to derail it — is being closely watched by officials around the world.

Whatever happens with her run for national office, Hidalgo’s supporters say her battle is just beginning. “[Hidalgo] finds energy in adversity — even when it looks like she has been cornered, she’s convinced there is a solution somewhere,” said her former adviser Matthieu Lamarre.

Counter (car) culture

On Sunday afternoons, the banks of the River Seine are packed. There are joggers dodging dog walkers, children shrieking in the playgrounds and skateboarders zigzagging around queues for food trucks.

Six years ago, this scene was very different. The northern bank of the river that winds through the heart of Paris was an expressway that crossed the city from east to west. Cars streamed past the city’s greatest views: the Louvre museum and its gardens, the Orsay museum, the Notre-Dame cathedral, the medieval Saint-Louis island … During her mandate, Hidalgo has closed off more than three kilometers of heritage real estate to cars, moving an estimated 73,000 daily car trips off the banks of the river.

“I used to drive a car on the banks at sunset or sunrise, musing that it was the most beautiful sight in the world,” said Paris architect Dan Dorell. “It was absurd to build a motorway there, right through the heart of Paris.”

All over the city, Hidalgo has clawed back space from cars, fighting what she said is a democratic war to give Paris back to Parisians —  those who travel by foot or bicycle, anyway. Rue de Rivoli, the capital’s main commercial street, is now a boulevard for bikes and a limited number of authorized cars. Two of Paris’ main squares, Place de la République and Place de la Bastille, used to be giant roundabouts, but traffic has now been squeezed to one side, making way for large pedestrian areas bustling with people.

Since her election in 2014, Hidalgo has also created over 400 kilometers of bicycle lanes, arguing that cycling is good exercise, more ecological and a faster mode of transportation. The mayor has promised “a revolution” for cyclists and an end to the all-powerful reign of the motorcar.

The COVID-19 epidemic offered another opportunity to roll back car culture in Paris. At the height of restrictions last year, cafés and bars were allowed to open temporary terraces in parking spaces. The number of terraces — either new or extended — doubled in the space of just a couple of months, according to Le Monde.

Some streets, particularly in the fashionable northern district, were completely transformed, with tables and chairs spilling out onto the street in a mishmash of different styles. City hall is now in the process of making thousands of these new terraces permanent, removing an estimated 6,800 parking spaces almost overnight.

Tipping point

Through her many projects, Hidalgo has shown that radical policies can change habits. The number of cyclists in Paris doubled between 2019 and 2020, according to figures from city hall. On some main avenues, there are more bikes than cars at rush hour.

Stéphane Kirkland, an urbanist with the consultancy firm Arcadis, said Hidalgo’s efforts helped to reach a “tipping point” in behavior.  “Paris is the only city that has been so aggressive in creating infrastructure,” said Kirkland. “People always assume it has always been a bicycle city, but it’s only been three years in the works.” 

According to the United Nations, the city of Paris cut carbon emissions by 20 percent from 2004 to 2018, during the mandates of Hidalgo and her predecessor and mentor Bertrand Delanoë.

Hidalgo has also made Paris a showcase for the 15-minute-city movement, hitching up with urban planner Carlos Moreno, a Sorbonne professor who said he could fix the scourges of modern living: pollution, noise, lack of space and lengthy commutes. 

Moreno’s idea is simple but powerful: Cities should be built so that residents can shop, work, exercise and access all the services they need within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from their home. City space should be reclaimed from roads, cutting traffic, carbon emissions and pollution.

Some have dismissed Hidalgo’s adoption of Moreno’s vision as sloganeering. Paris has always been a compact city and boasts the same density as certain areas of Manhattan, where residents have always been within 15 minutes from a shop, park or school.

The idea “is a gimmick; I don’t see what impact that has on the city,” said Kirkland. But, he added, as a gimmick, it’s a good one: “The idea that you need to manage a city and encourage proximity is good. It’s good communication. The number of tweets dedicated to the fifteen-minute city or the 30-minute city has been enormous.”

Under Hidalgo, Paris has become a model for cities coming under greater pressure to cut their carbon emissions. She has scooped up awards for her leadership in the fight against climate change and was named one of the 100 most influential people by Time magazine last year.

Leftist life story

Hidalgo’s eco-friendly initiatives — combined with photos of her clinking glasses with millionaires and nailing deals with high-flying groups like the Louis Vuitton Foundation — have earned her a reputation as the queen of Paris’ bohemian-chic brigade.

Her early life tells another story.

Hidalgo, 62, is the daughter of Spanish refugees. Her grandfather, a left-wing activist from Andalucía, was sentenced to death under the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Though he was ultimately spared, he spent several years in jail, while Hidalgo’s father was sent to a very strict orphanage for so-called Reds, according to biographer Nadia Le Brun. Childhood holidays to Spain, Hidalgo has confided, were moments to recall the lines of refugees heading for the French border and the dangers of fascism.  

“It gave her a strength and a tenacity,” said Serge Orru, her former climate advisor. “She was brought up in the love of the French Republic and the memory of the fight of Spanish Republicans; it goes together.” 

In the 1960s, Hidalgo’s family moved to Lyon in search of a better life for their children. At the age of 14, Hidalgo dropped her Spanish first name “Ana” and became “Anne” because her father wanted her to integrate and succeed in France.

And succeed she did, starting out as a work inspector before becoming a government adviser under the Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in the 1990s. Her supporters say she is a woman of great belief, not a career politician. And for France’s left-wing establishment, one couldn’t imagine a more fitting life story. 

“Her father was a factory worker, so were his colleagues,” said former advisor Lamarre. “When she started her career, her aim was to defend workers’ rights. She didn’t want to be in [the] spotlight, didn’t have political ambitions. She was buried deep in her files.” 

Hidalgo ran in her first election in 2001, aged 40. “At the age of 40, she knows who she is,” said Lamarre. “She’s very different to politicians who joined a party when they were very young. She built her political beliefs on her own, based on her readings, and it gives her a good dose of freedom.” 

Bureaucratic agility

Those who know her say Hidalgo’s late entry into elected office helped her tackle the behemoth that is the French administration, and avoid the usual ideological trench warfare of French politics.

The mayor has often shown incredible agility in disarming opponents. She has pushed through significant transformations in Paris by making radical, but purportedly temporary, changes, and banking on the hope that everyone will come around to her point of view.

On February 21, 2018, a judicial ruling came through that could have cost Hidalgo her political career. The administrative court of Paris slapped down her decision to ban cars from driving on the banks of the Seine, confirming an earlier ruling that there was insufficient evidence to justify closing a major artery in Paris. 

“It was not an easy time,” said Orru. “The decision to open the banks up risked turning into a political defeat for her” — and a victory for her opponents in the conservative Les Républicains party.

City hall had pedestrianized the banks on the basis that it would reduce pollution, but the team behind Hidalgo knew they were on shaky ground. “There were doubts about [measuring pollution levels],” remembers Orru. “It was clear that a drop in pollution was not going to happen overnight.” 

The court’s decision came off the back of a failed electric car scheme that was due to cost taxpayers millions in compensation payments. Her administration badly needed a victory. 

So Hidalgo changed tack. 

Within 15 days, her administration had written up a decree banning cars on the grounds that the river banks, with their views of the Louvre and the Notre-Dame cathedral, were a UNESCO heritage site. “That is what’s called agility,” said Orru. “We needed to take the right decision to win.” 

Catching up with Hidalgo at an event in Paris, I asked her about shaking up a capital that has been dubbed an open-air museum. “Cities are alive, cities move, reinvent themselves, and historic places need to change. And it’s true that I’ve taken risks,” she said. “But it has always been done with the people. You have to work hand in hand with the people,” she added. 

‘Philistines’

But as Hidalgo’s plans for Paris have gathered pace, so too has their opposition.

The #saccageparis movement (roughly translating to “#vandalizedparis) gained momentum very quickly after its founder posted his first tweet in February. More than 2 million tweets have been posted with the hashtag so far, and 50,000 individual Twitter users have used it at least once according to the group’s figures.

“The hashtag exploded on the internet,” said @Panamepropre, who wants to remain anonymous to protect his personal and professional life. “It sparked a spontaneous movement of people sensitive to our heritage, people of the right and the left, in particular people who are disappointed with Hidalgo.”

At a protest in front of city hall in October, hundreds gathered to complain about Hidalgo’s policies. Their complaints were many and miscellaneous, from the dirtiness of the city to what they say is a haphazard promotion of e-scooters and bicycles at the expense of pedestrians.

Many of them also accused Hidalgo of attacking the city’s heritage, replacing the 19th-century design style of park benches, lampposts and fountains with ugly cheap urban furniture such as the mushroom seat — clusters of flat, round stools around the bases of trees. The installation of leaky ecological urinals — removed by the city earlier this year, after just a couple of months — was a low point of her mandate, they say.

“They are philistines,” said Henric Caldas, a fabrics restorer at the protest. “Paris has a cultural heritage, and the tourists come here to admire our Haussmannian architecture. I’m not against modernity but [Hidalgo] is defacing the city.”

The #saccageparis movement has also taken a stand against Hidalgo’s war on the automobile. According to figures from city hall and the traffic monitoring website Inrix, traffic jams have increased in Paris, while the overall traffic has decreased.

The pushback against Hidalgo also echoes another grassroots movement: the Yellow Jackets protests that were sparked by a green tax hike on fuel and led to rolling, sometimes violent, demonstrations.

Critics say it’s no accident that Hidalgo and her allies ignore the voices of the middle classes who live beyond the ringroad, the Péripherique, encircling inner-city Paris. The 15-minute city might be great for the green elite — but it’s a different story for the unfashionable rubes in the suburbs who drive to work. But they’re not included in the Paris constituency and don’t get a vote. 

“Paris is extremely dirty; her policies on traffic and mobility have been knocked out,” Paris’ conservative opposition leader Rachida Dati told French television. “I don’t think the French want France to look like Paris under Hidalgo. Her track record is disastrous.”

Coming up

There are signs #saccageparis is scoring some victories against Hidalgo. After dismissing the movement as being a fake operation from rivals in the conservative party, her team at city hall announced in July that they were backtracking on some of their policies, dropping unpopular urban designs and working to restore the city’s heritage.

The backlash has also left Hidalgo with an image problem. A poll last year showed that only 40 percent of Parisians were satisfied with her track record in Paris. That’s 30 percent less than the national average in France, where local mayors are generally quite popular.

Hidalgo’s presidential bid, launched in September, has spectacularly failed to take off as well. Polls suggest she would get just 4 to 6 percent of the vote, a rate that is so low that it has sparked rumors that some in the Socialist Party are trying to unplug her. Last week, she called for a primary among leftwing and green candidates as a way of saving her bid.

She has also displayed an inability to reach beyond the walls of the capital and connect with the middle classes across France. In October, she tried to endear herself to new voters by suggesting VAT cuts on petrol to compensate for spikes in fuel prices.

“It’s pragmatism,” she told me. “We are not all in the same situation. The issue with cars is not the same in big cities as it is in the countryside where there is no public transport.” 

“Our horizon is very clear, we’ll ban diesel and non-electric cars in Paris in 2024 and 2030 [respectively]. We succeeded in shaking up the car industry. But the environment will not be protected at the expense of the more vulnerable.”

Hidalgo may not get a chance to revolutionize France next year, but she’ll always have Paris. The city is hosting the Olympics in 2024, giving her another opportunity to advance her vision. She has declared she wants to make Paris a “100-percent cycling” capital and turn the Champs-Elysées into “an extraordinary garden” by the time the games begin. She also plans to counter some of the criticism against her by investing in sports and transport infrastructure in the poorest suburbs of Paris.

“You liked season one,” she told reporters when she announced her plans earlier this year. “You’ll love season two.”

Aitor Hernández-Morales contributed reporting.