As with health operations or cosmetic surgery, to feel good about yourself, you first have to go through a scalpel, and often that hurts. This is essentially what the “Embellish your neighborhood” project offers. Works, construction sites, this is the promise made by Jacques Baudrier, assistant to Anne Hidalgo in charge of public construction, monitoring of construction sites, coordination of work in public space. This Wednesday, he held a point on the evolution of this project.
For phase 1 of this project, 17 districts had been selected to be submitted to the comments and wishes of Parisians and their elected representatives on the changes to be made. The mayor of Paris claims 2,500 projects proposed on the idee-paris.fr site and 16 of the 17 consultations have been completed since October 2021.
#EmbellishYourNeighborhood work begins!
Following the creation of a new metro entrance @Line11_RATPrue du Temple is changing and will house a planted pedestrian square, benches, bicycle racks and a Wallace fountain.
Completion in 6 months. pic.twitter.com/ajFlwy2zoj— David Belliard (@David_Belliard) January 26, 2022
Also, it’s time for action, and phase 1 of the project will go into “works mode activated”. In total, 250 development operations are launched this January. Streets to schools, widening of sidewalks and pedestrianization, greening of neighborhoods, development of cycle paths… All the selected neighborhoods will undergo a major facelift. If they are too numerous to be listed here, all the inhabitants of the districts concerned will receive, or have already received, a six-page booklet detailing the work to come and this information may be available on the Paris City Hall website. Jacques Baudrier also insisted on the communication effort that will be made around future projects, with the installation, in particular, of signage and educational maps on the facilities. They can also be followed live on the Internet from map of Paris construction sites.
Little by little, all neighborhoods will be affected
Phase 1 on the right track, phase 2 can begin. From February to March, nine selected neighborhoods will see the consultations start. They are mainly based in the large arrondissements of the capital, “to avoid favoring the smaller central arrondissements”, and will follow the same process with the possibility of participating by Internet, via organized walks and public meetings. Jacques Baudrier hopes for “greater participation of the inhabitants” for this second phase, the first having been hampered by the confinements. The consultations will end around October and the work should begin at the end of this year 2022.
It will then be the turn of phase 3 in 2023, then phase 4 in 2024, then phase 5… This strategy makes it possible to spread the works over time and limit them to very specific areas. On average, 6,000 works are permanently in progress in the capital and they represent “only” 1% of the surface of the city according to the town hall of Paris. The sites of the Paris City Hall correspond to a third of the work, another third comes from the construction industry and the last third from the work of network operators (RATP, gas, electricity).
A few months of work for years of tranquility
Thus, to limit the impact of all its developments, the mayor of Paris is asking all network operators to review their plans so that they all agree with the work already planned. Although they dragged their feet due to the logistical and organizational difficulty that this entails, they made good on bad luck and 90% of their worksites are already coordinated.
By synchronizing all these operations over the same period, Jacques Baudrier guarantees the inhabitants 6 years of peace of mind once the work is finished: “We make sure with the operators that everything will be done so that the inhabitants have peace of mind for years. At least for one term. “The assistant admits all the same that minor work “if they do not require more than one night” will always be possible for the maintenance of the road network.