The urban plan for a "greener and more united" Paris adopted

Green spaces: find 300 hectares

The result of two years of negotiations between the components of the majority of the mayor Anne Hidalgo, this reference text - 3.000 pages - for the instruction of building permits and urban planning must draw a capital "better adapted to climate change" by 2035-2040.

With the adoption of the plan, which will not take place in its final version until the end of 2024 or the beginning of 2025 at the end of the public inquiry, "40% of the public space will be desealed by 2050" and 300 hectares of additional green spaces will become accessible to the public, assures the left-wing executive.

New park in the north-east of Paris, debited residence car parks, private spaces open to the public.... The town planning assistant Emmanuel Grégoire, who says he has "already identified 110 hectares", intends to "open all this in the ten years".

But the ecologist Emile Meunier (EELV) has "some questions about the ability of Emmanuel Grégoire and Anne Hidalgo to reach" these 300 hectares more and asks "a meter of m2 of green spaces on the pediment of the town hall".

Rachida Dati (LR) described this objective as "unrealistic" and "demagogic".

The executive also promises the protection of the 100.000 alignment trees in the capital. According to Emmanuel Grégoire, "the current PLU did not protect the trees".

On all plots of more than 150 m2, real estate projects must have an increasing share - up to 65% - reserved for open ground.

Housing: transforming the existing

Despite this effort, the future PLU "will not be an anti-construction PLU: it will make it possible to build where there is room. But we are betting more on transformation", summed up Emmanuel Grégoire.

The town hall having almost achieved its objective of 25% social housing by 2025, it intends to go further with 40% public housing - 30% social housing and 10% said to be "affordable" - ten years later.

But at the same time, "123.000 Parisians have fled Paris for 10 years", recalled Rachida Dati.

About 1.000 new reserves - plots "pastilled" to become social housing - have been identified, with a budget for preemptions which must double, from 200 to 400 million euros. The increase in the property tax decided at the end of 2022 allows this effort.

And any office building of more than 5.000 m2 built or renovated will have to devote 10% of its surface to the creation of housing, a "functional mix" which does not please the right.

"Counterproductive" measures, according to elected LR Valérie Montandon, which will "discourage owners from carrying out thermal renovations".

The Communists, through the voice of Jacques Baudrier, put forward "a historic PLU for public facilities" with 180 plots reserved for health, sport, culture or early childhood.

More or less density?

The Greens obtained a limitation of future buildings to 37 m in height, the "historic height of 1977" from which the Socialists then derogated up to 180 m with the Batignolles court, a Duo tower and the Triangle tower currently under construction , recalled Emile Meunier.

For the ecologist, the Parisian left "has turned the dark page of urban planning led by Ms. Hidalgo and Mr. Missika", the predecessor of Mr. Grégoire.

If the list of buildings protected by the town hall should be extended by more than 800 addresses, elevations will remain possible in the widest streets.

Rachida Dati denounced the 1.500 elevations allowed by the Parisian left since the adoption of the current PLU in 2006, which "contributed to the disappearance of hollow teeth and our suburban heritage".

The elevations "must be delivered with extreme caution", asked Béatrice Lecouturier (MoDem).

With these measures, the executive will be able to "densify more", fears Jean-Pierre Lecoq (LR), while the 3,8 million m2 built over the past twenty years have "saturated and mineralized the city", deplores Pierre-Yves Bournazel ( Horizons).