Paris councilor Pierre-Yves Bournazel summed it up in one sentence last Thursday at a press conference: “The local urban plan is what is most important for a city”. And this is the reason why, no doubt, this text arouses so much tension within the Parisian majority, not completely in harmony on the vision of the city for the coming years. Communists and environmentalists oppose each other on the future of the gates of Paris and the ring road or even the small belt. The town hall must soon convene an extraordinary council but the negotiations being at a standstill, the appointment is long overdue.
Who will emerge victorious from the showdown? If the discussions do not succeed, the whole majority will lose, and in the first place the ecologists, since the text which will continue to take precedence will be the one which currently exists, which dates from 2006 and is considered “obsolete” by the ecologists, even if it has gone through several revisions in the meantime. As summarized by Nicolas Bonnet-Ouladj, president of the communist group at the Council of Paris: “If the ecologists do not vote for the PLU as it is, they are the ones who take a huge risk. »
Porte de Montreuil, the divisive project
One of the points of tension for months concerns the Porte de Montreuil, and more generally, the future of the ring road. Environmentalists denounce a construction project which they believe will increase the heat island effect; the cutting of trees caused by this project, or the exposure to pollution of an additional number of people, since the project plans to create offices. The discussions seemed, according to the ecologists, to have resulted in the status quo, before the about-face: “We had proposed not to write anything on the Porte de Montreuil but in the end the supporters of this concrete urbanism came back to the charge so that it could say that we accept the project, ”complains Nathalie Maquoi, vice-president of the Parisian environmental group.
“The project has been delayed for a year, the inhabitants are angry and really fed up,” explains Jacques Baudrier, elected Communist and deputy in charge of public construction, who claims to have the support of the First Deputy: “Without the Porte de Montreuil, there will be no PLU. “We want to be able to build when it will be cleaned up,” adds Nicolas Bonnet-Ouladj, to which the environmental vice-president replies: “We are building today, it is criminal. It is out of the question to say to ourselves that we are going to add populations”
Classify, or not, the small belt
Ecologists and communists are also struggling over the floor surface threshold from which a real estate project must include a part in the ground, in order to fight against the artificialization of the soil. For the communists, this threshold must be determined at 250 m2, or, according to Jacques Baudrier, “80% of the plots in Paris”. Ecologists would like this threshold to be lowered to 150 m2: “The threshold proposed by the Communists changes the categorization of 40% of plots in Paris. This allows real estate developers to continue to concrete,” denounces Nathalie Maquoi. “Keeping 1 or 2 square meters of open ground is not called green space. We must not impose the creation of bogus open ground but effective open ground, ”answers Jacques Baudrier.
Third subject of tension: the small railway belt, which ecologists would like to classify as a green urban area. “There are 54 hectares of biodiversity. It must be a place where you can walk. The SNCF behaves today as it wants. We end up with cut trees as soon as she wants to replace a plot, ”criticizes Emile Meunier. On the contrary, the Communists would like to keep “a possibility of reversibility” while opening up to local residents, explains Nicolas Bonnet-Ouladj.
50 m high, too much for greens
Finally, the height of certain towers, an eternal subject of debate within the majority, makes environmentalists wince, who would like to limit buildings exceeding 37 m in height, and refuse the towers planned for Bruneseau and Bercy-Charenton. They seemed to have found a point of balance with the Communists, before a new twist: “We were at a level of almost finishing the text and wreckage, plummeting: we ended up with towers put where they had been abandoned” , criticizes the elected ecologist Emile Meunier. “We cannot say that we are making a PLU to raise the climate and at the same time be on the principles of the 20th century: there is an enormous ecological cost for the construction and operation of these towers”, adds Nathalie Maquoi.
The Communists are not opposed to these projects, which provide public facilities and housing. “50m seems reasonable, we can’t talk about tall towers, and the law authorizes it. And below 50 m we cannot have a financial balance: we do not have enough inhabitants to do public service, ”explains Nicolas Bonnet-Ouladj.
“The “PLU at the same time””
“We have the impression that they want to make us the PLU at the same time: we display climate objectives but we build towers, we say that we want to protect biodiversity but we do not protect the small belt from cutting the SNCF. The account is not there. We will not vote in the state the PLU. And we will table amendments on each of the points”, protests Emile Meunier.
Which side of the scale will the PLU tip? “It’s time to choose, and the choice must be the climate,” argues David Belliard, mobility assistant and environmental leader. For the moment, the First Deputy in charge of town planning, Emmanuel Grégoire, seems to lean more towards the Communists, who are nevertheless numerically less numerous in the Council of Paris. He has refused for the moment to “comment on the disagreements” but warns: “If we don’t change, we keep the current PLU. »