This Saturday, March 30, Anne Hidalgo and her teams are celebrating 10 years of piloting the capital. Succeeding Bertrand Delanoë, of whom she was the first deputy, the mayor of Paris was elected in 2014 with more than 53% of the votes. Re-elected in 2020, she had free rein for a decade to transform the city.
What conclusions can be drawn from these years? To find out, we asked ten elected officials – five from the opposition and five from the majority – to give us two or three positive and negative points, with the obligation to give as many “good” as in “bad”. And you will see that the positions are largely aligned, both on the left and on the right, on what worked and what should be completed.
More room for pedestrians, fewer cars
They are unique: the streets of schools, these spaces around Parisian establishments closed to traffic and planted with vegetation, are by far the most cited when it comes to analyzing what emerges from positive over the last ten years. The mayor’s spokesperson, Lamia El Aaraje, cites rue Henri Dubouillon (20th) and rue Henri Poincaré (20th) among the 150 already completed. In the opposition, it’s easy to take your hat off either. “This contributes to the calming of public space. Schools are places to be protected, it’s still more pleasant to arrive in a protected public space,” argues Pierre-Yves Bournazel, co-president of the Independents and Progressives group. ” It’s great ! “, states unequivocally Hélène Jacquemont, LR advisor of the Changer Paris Group. “I think it will leave a mark on the capital,” even recognizes the spokesperson for his group, Aurélien Véron.
From this point of view, the face of Paris has changed a lot. Since 2011, car traffic and pollution have decreased by more than 40%. “This changes everything! », welcomes Emile Meunier, EELV municipal councilor, who credits this to the mayor: “It started in 2001 with the bus lanes, but there was an acceleration with Hidalgo; she passed the second and held up against the State. »
The bicycle takes over the territory
As a corollary of the reduction in car use, cycling has become increasingly popular in the capital. Its use has jumped 70% since 2019, according to town hall. Enough to satisfy both the left and the right. “She understood that we had to leave an important place for cycling,” recognizes Aurélien Véron. Even if, according to him, the “places are not well laid out” and “intermodality” should be rethought. “We have created more than 500 km of trails in ten years and it is thanks to the political voluntarism of the town hall,” says communist senator Ian Brossat, former deputy for Housing. “This has an impact on the air,” says Fatoumata Koné, leader of the Les Ecologistes group.
In the same camp as the socialist mayor of Paris, François Dagnaud places the idea of a “new sharing of public space” among his boss’s two greatest successes. For a question of social justice: while the car represents only 10% of trips, the mayor of the 19th finds that “there is no reason for an ultra-minority mode of travel to occupy all public space”.
Mass social housing
The figures are there: on social housing, Paris City Hall has taken out its wallet. While the number of social housing was 13% in 2001, it has now reached 25%, therefore respecting the Solidarity and Urban Renewal (SRU) law, which imposes a minimum number of social housing. And in a city like Paris, where land is expensive, this is not necessarily an easy task. “It’s not nothing, she held on. It cost a certain price and we can be proud of it,” comments Emile Meunier.
Faced with the exodus of Parisians for whom housing has become too expensive, providing mass social housing has undoubtedly kept a certain number of people within the city walls. A result which Ian Brossat, in charge of Housing for almost ten years, welcomes, and which is unanimously supported by the majority. On the right, however, this point is not mentioned. Aurélien Véron, on the contrary, deplores the “pre-emption of private housing to turn it into social housing”. According to him, this has contributed “to driving out the middle classes, all for a colossal debt”, and has caused “Paris to become a city polarized between the very poor and the very rich. »
A child-friendly city
If Paris is not always the most suitable for seniors (see below), it opens its arms to children, in particular through its policy towards nurseries and schools. Pierre-Yves Bournazel is particularly delighted to see musical awakening there, made possible thanks to the 70 teachers employed by the City of Paris. They teach music there, but also plastic arts and even sport, in nursery and elementary school. And it’s the only community in France to do so!
A good point in this assessment, shared by the mayor’s spokesperson: “We have high-quality professionals and a very ambitious policy, particularly for babies with disabilities. We train our agents, it is not up to disabled children to go to a specialized establishment.”
Roads considered dangerous, unsightly and dirty
It’s an antiphon to the right, but perhaps not without reason. Parisian public space is regularly the target of criticism, through the #SaccageParis movement. For the mayor of the 6th arrondissement Jean-Pierre Lecoq, the roads are “abandoned” and the budget dedicated to it “insufficient”. The councilor particularly regrets the absence of road inspectors: “The brigades are depopulated, it will take you a month to rectify the situation. It’s a permanent disaster.” Hélène Jacquemont points out “super dangerous” roads with “holes in the road”, and Aurélien Véron regrets the lack of “aesthetic continuity” and green spaces that are not sufficiently maintained: “The squares are damaged on the Champ-de-Mars we have peeling lawns, stunted copses, trees that have not been replaced…”
On the left, some acknowledge half-heartedly that there is perhaps room for improvement. If the mayor of the 19th arrondissement, François Dagnaud, welcomes the greening of the city, he recognizes that it requires “reinforced resources in terms of maintenance”. “Places can be soiled, because plants are a more sensitive material. It’s not as easy as sweeping the floor. There is room for improvement. If there is less mineral space in the city, resources must be shifted to vegetated areas. »
Contrary to ecological commitments, concrete has progressed
If in recent years, the executive has highlighted its policy on tree planting and regularly organizes major communication operations on these spaces reclaimed from concrete, the figures speak for themselves. Between 2006 and 2020, nearly 3 million additional m2 of housing and offices were built. Almost over the same period, between 2006 and 2021, only 77.7 hectares of green spaces were created. Without the woods, Parisians have on average less than 3 m2 of green space per inhabitant, much less than the ratio of 10 m2 that it is targeting.
On this point, Anne Hidalgo’s environmentalist allies and her opponents agree. “Behind the green speech, there is a policy that is not. It was a logic of ever more construction,” affirms Pierre-Yves Bournazel. And to cite the Ménilmontant stadium, the Championnet PE field, or even the Triangle tower, projects to which he opposed.
A city disconnected from its metropolis
This is a negative point spontaneously put forward by many of our interlocutors: during these ten years, Paris has thought too much on its own, without taking into account neighboring towns and communities. “The development should have been thought of on the scale of Greater Paris,” believes Pierre-Yves Bournazel, in agreement with his environmentalist colleagues. “Anne Hidalgo has completely missed the metropolis, while most of the issues that affect Parisians are resolved at this level. By wanting to finance social housing through offices [à travers la taxe sur les bureaux] rather than through taxes, it practiced a policy of capturing the wealth of the metropolis, it is a real “municipal selfishness””, sharply criticizes Emile Meunier.
Among the socialists, some readily recognize that we should “part of a metropolitan vision”: “Paris is a city to live in. But objectively, it is also the heart of a metropolis of 12 million inhabitants. And its users are not just its inhabitants,” judges François Dagnaud.
There is still work to be done on housing…
If Paris can boast, as we have said, of having respected the Solidarity and Urban Renewal (SRU) law, the housing situation remains very tense in the capital. The fault, in particular, is the development of furnished tourist accommodation, a point that the mayor’s spokesperson ends up recognizing. “We should have managed to do better. Despite all the social housing implemented, we have developers who buy entire buildings. Today, there are only 12 people who control tourist accommodation. We need to do more checks and impose more sanctions,” explains Lamia El Aaraje.
On the right, Hélène Jacquemont does not understand why the city has not succeeded in increasing the number of housing adapted for the elderly, called “autonomy residences”, which are nevertheless social housing. According to a study by the Department of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (Drees), at the current rate, there will be a shortage of 100,000 places in nursing homes in France in 2030, and nearly 10,000 in Paris, according to the elected official. of the 17th in charge of Social Affairs. However, “not a place has been created since the start of the mandate,” criticizes Hélène Jacquemont.
A point that Ian Brossat concedes: “We lacked a specific offer for veterans, in order to free up the large social housing they occupy and which are no longer always adapted to their needs. » Enough to give the next mandate a lot of work to do.