Grieve-Smith on Transportation

First, a little background about how I came to find all these magical places in Greater Paris: some thanks is due to SUNY Stony Brook, which ran the study abroad program. They put us up in the Cité Universitaire and gave us the option of studying at either Paris-IV Sorbonne or Paris-X Nanterre. That gave us experience with the RER, and those of us who went to Nanterre got at least some familiarity with the suburbs. So I already knew that it wasn't some inhuman Corbusian wasteland.

Further credit goes to my friend Jeff, who visited me in Paris and mentioned that the Paris Peace Conference actually resulted in five treaties, each one signed at a different monument in the suburbs. When he got back to the States, he mailed me a list of the locations, which I took as inspiration for some exploratory walks.

Finally, the RER announcement boards themselves told me that there was a station called "Parc de Sceaux," and I figured that a park big enough to have its own train station was worth a visit. (This is also true of the New York Botanic Garden and Prospect Park.)

Here are five more places that you might like in Greater Paris:

• La Défense: It all started with a monument to the defense of Paris against the German siege in 1870, which just happened to be situated on the axis defined by the Champs-Elysées and the Tuileries, on the border between the suburbs of Puteaux and Courbevoie. Add to that the modernist horror of the Tour Montparnasse about five miles away, which provoked the Parisians to ban highrises from the city. The regional planners decided to put their new highrise business district here, and created a major commuter rail and bus hub under it. They also put all the pedestrian infrastructure on a platform completely separate from all the car and transit infrastructure. RER A, Transilien L or Metro Line 1 to La Défense.
• Noisy-le-Grand: I'm trying to remember who it was that suggested I visit this section of the new town of Marne-la-Vallée: possibly Andrew, one of the grad students in the Stony Brook program. In any case, the postmodern architecture of the office and apartment buildings is positively trippy, and it's got an interesting mall right over the train station. RER A to Noisy-le-Grand Mont d'Est.
• Forest of Fontainebleau: This park, formerly royal hunting grounds, surrounds a number of villages including Fontainebleau and Barbizon and one of the largest royal palaces. The forest has inspired many artists and writers over the years, including several of the Impressionists. Transilien R to Fontainebleau-Avon or bus from Melun.
• Ile des Impressionistes: My friend Marie-Laure introduced me to this small island in the Seine, which was also a popular destination and subject of the Impressionists. It has a park, a restaurant and a museum containing replicas of paintings that feature the island, including Renoir's Lunch of the Boating Party. RER A to Chatou-Croissy.
• La Malmaison: This is one of the less-known royal residences in the Paris area. It was bought by Napoleon's wife Josephine in 1799 when he was First Consul, and subsequently enlarged into a mansion. When he divorced her in 1809, it became her primary residence until her death from pneumonia in 1814. It is now a museum to Josephine and the Empire. Bus 258 from La Défense.

In the comments to my previous post about Greater Paris, Alon Levy traces the Parisian fear of the suburbs to Baron Haussmann, who in 1865 demolished much of the proletarian city to make room for bourgeois housing.

But before that the suburbs were something of a refuge for the wealthy and powerful, particularly Louis XIV, who was besieged in the Palais-Royal when he was still a child. Partly in reaction to that experience, he never wanted to live in Paris again, and built Versailles to house the court instead.

The Revolutionaries aimed to reverse that by bringing Louis XVI back to Paris at gunpoint, but it wasn't until Haussmann's boss, the "people's Emperor," Napoleon III, that there was a monarch who really seemed happy to be living in the city. However, the legacy of the court at Versailles lingered on in the form of a favored quarter stretching from Versailles roughly to Neuilly.

For those who have rarely visited Greater Paris and seen its magical neighborhoods, I have prepared a selection of some of my favorite places outside the Paris city limits.

• Versailles: if you've been anywhere outside Paris besides the airport, you've probably been to Versailles. If you haven't, you should go. Of course it's full of tourists, but it's also full of history. It's just as important to French history as the Eiffel Tower. If you really don't want to take the palace tour, you should still go and see the extensive grounds and possibly the Trianons, and if you go on the right day you can visit the Tennis Court. RER C to Versailles-Rive Gauche.
• Saint-Denis: The final resting place of the kings of France, it was desecrated during the Revolution, but has been mostly restored (minus the actual remains). Metro 13 to Basilique de Saint-Denis or RER D to Tramway T1.
• Sceaux: Want Versailles without the pretension? Louis XIV's finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert built his own mini-Versailles a few miles away, and now it's a departmental park. Despite the impressive topiary, it feels much less like a museum and more like a place to picnic. RER B to Bourg-la-Reine or Parc de Sceaux.
• The Coulée Verte: This was once the path of the train from Paris to Chartres via Gallardan. After the line was abandoned in 1953, the government planned to put the A10 highway in the right-of-way. Fortunately, that plan fell through, and the route was instead used for the TGV Atlantique. It is now mostly decked over, and this greenway travels on top or next to it from Massy all the way to the city limits at Montrouge. It passes through all kinds of nice neighborhoods where you could stop for a lemonade. The best part is that it goes right by the Parc de Sceaux, so if you have a bicycle you could take a trip out and back. There's a Vélib' station at the trailhead in Montrouge, but it could get expensive if you linger. RER B or C to Massy-Verrières, or Metro 13 to Châtillon - Montrouge.
• Saint-Germain-en-Laye: One of the locales of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, this old royal chateau now contains the National Museum of Antiquities. The village is also charming, and the forest is a wonderful place for a walk. RER A to Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

Urban transit is a major hazard in Santo Domingo; vehicles destroyed.

Dueños del país ...en las suyas. October 9, 2009. Teofilo Bonilla, El Nacional.

Photo: Justo Maracallo

The "surprise stoppage" that was carried out by the National Transportation Federation, New Option (Fenatrano) Thursday from six to ten AM wreaked havoc on the avenues of the National District and the Province of Santo Domingo and left thousands of commuters stranded. Transit in the South region was also paralyzed as ten people were injured and the windows were shattered in tens of buses.

Bus passengers had choice words for Fenatrano head Juan Hubieres, who they accused of "doing what he likes with his customers, while the authorities stay out of it because they're afraid of him." Student Cosiris Estévez remarks that, "It's been three days now that they've been making it hard for people to get to work or back home."

This week, drivers affiliated with the three unions Fenatrano, Conatra and Unatrafin, have fought with each other to control the Yaguate-San Cristóbal-Baní and Santo Domingo-San Cristóbal-Yaguate routes. Thirty-five people have been injured, drivers and passengers, by bats, stones and knives, and windows have been smashed in more than twenty buses.

Private employee José Modesto says that there is chaos in the country. "They have to put a stop to this. Is there nobody who can rein in Hubieres? I've been here since seven AM, it's nine o'clock now and I still haven't been able to get a ride."

Pirate cars have been making a killing. Some charge as much as fifty pesos for the trip from Parque Independencia to the corner of Lincoln and Churchill Avenues, or Lincoln and Jiménez Moya Avenues, but they are filled with passengers desperate enough to pay the extra twenty pesos.

Fenatrano controls the following routes:

• Pintura-27 de Febrero-Avenida Duarte
• Parque Independencia-Avenida Bolívar-Rómulo Betancourt-esquina Caliente
• Kilómetro 12 de la Sánchez-Isabel Aguiar-Kilómetro 9 de la autopista Duarte
• La Agustinita-Tirandentes-Alma Mater-UASD
• Esquina Caliente-Rómulo Betancourt- Jiménez Moya-Independencia-Parque
• Lope de Vega-Lincoln
• Ortega y Gasset-avenida Reyes Católicos
• El Torito-Hermanas Mirabal-Máximo Gómez-UASD-Feria

Passengers coming from outlying areas of Santo Domingo Province, along the route covering kilometer markers 11 to 17 of the Americas highway, were frustrated as they tried to arrive on time at work, school, the airport, free trade zones, or errands.

Antonio Marte, of the National Confederation of Transportation (Conatra), warned Hubieres that if he continued to destroy buses registered to his union and to the National Union of Transportation and Affiliates (Unafin), he wanted to remind him "that he's got buses too, and that no matter who gets hurt or who gets taken down, nobody steals our Yaguate route."

Alfredo Pulinario Linares, transportation advisor to the administration, condemned the Fenatrano stoppage, now in its third day, "because the public should not be punished for a conflict between two trade groups."

"Cambita" Linares promised that the twelve thousand drivers affiliated with his Central Committee for the Movement of the Transportation Drivers (Mochotran) will continue to provide service along the 64 routes it controls. He called on Hubieres and Marte, as well as the Surface Transportation Technology Office (OTTT) and the Transportation Reform Office (Opret) to hold a meeting to bring Fenatrano, Conatra and Unatrafin to an agreement that would spare the public further inconvenience.

Marte warned that he would not put up with further scare tactics from Hubieres. "He needs to realize that the drivers don't want him anymore. The public will not tolerate this kind of surprise stoppage thuggery." Marte said that this morning in Yaguate in San Cristóbal Province, ten buses had their windows smashed, seven in Las Americas, and three more on Caliente corner in the capital.

Ramón Pérez Figuereo, director of the United National Central Committee of Transport Drivers (CNTU), also called on Diandino Peña of Opret to bring the drivers to the table and bring an end to the stoppages and the clashes between drivers. Arsenio Quevedo of Unatrafin blamed Hubieres for spreading terror and threatening drivers who did not want to continue as members of his organization.

Hubieres warned that the "surprise stoppages" would continue until the government ceased the "harassment, abuse and persecution" against him and the Fenatrano drivers by "paramilitary groups recruited by the police chief." He claimed that yesterday, twelve men armed with shotguns, pistols, revolvers, knives and daggers were detained for an hour and then allowed to return to Yaguate where they attacked Fenatrano buses.

Jarrett Walker read my translation of the Le Monde interview with Roland Castro, and picked up on a good quote: "The urban question has never been seen by intellectuals as central because this marvelous Paris, the Paris of Baudelaire, it's their Paris." He acknowledges that he has rarely left that central part of Paris, but that it's important for people to do so - in any city.

Jarrett concludes, "That doesn't mean I have to like everything I see in suburban belts, but to be credible when talking with people in a suburban community, I have to be able to point to what's already working right there or nearby -- not just what's being achieved in a core city with centuries of history and momentum. So long as we stay inside our urbane inner-city enclaves, and dismiss all of suburbia with the same gesture, we won't be able to engage such conversations. And there's just too much suburbia to ignore."

He's right, but the thing is that the suburbs of Paris are generally not "suburban" the way many Americans think of the word. It's not row after row of tacky 70s ranch houses punctuated by strip malls. A lot of it doesn't even resemble the "banlieue" that makes bourgeois Parisians quake in their boots. There are Corbusian housing projects and run-down row houses, but the suburbs are by no means full of them.

You know how most French gourmet food is named after a place? Bordeaux wine comes from the area around the city of Bordeaux, and beef bourgignon comes from Burgundy, and so on. Well, it turns out that Brie cheese comes from the region of Brie, which is now the eastern Paris suburbs. There are tons of suburbs with en brie in their names.

I think that gets to the way the French suburbs really are. They were originally towns that happened to be near the capital - even Montmartre was such a town. Most of them contain a quaint old downtown with a church and narrow streets. Many have old palaces that were built by the kings as hunting lodges or other kinds of retreats, often surrounded by well-maintained forests. Some have old monasteries or convents. There is even some evidence suggesting that the original settlement of the Parisii was actually where Nanterre is now.

As the city grew, these towns were gradually absorbed into the metropolis. The railroads allowed people to live in Le Pecq and work in Paris, while an extensive network of streetcars and interurbans helped them move around locally. These also allowed artists to spend an afternoon or a weekend painting bridges and trees (not all intellectuals were as parochial as Jarrett describes). The extensive royal domains were nationalized into parks during the various revolutions and made available for public recreation.

Around the villages and parks, a mix of housing was built. Since it was transit-oriented development, it largely consisted of row houses near the stations, detached houses further out and larger houses even further. Beginning with the 1965 regional master plan, the government began to build the new towns, the universities and the business centers - and the highways. It is only then that you get the unpleasant projects that Parisians have come to associate with the suburbs.

Roland Castro : "Il faut en finir avec ce qu'est Paris aujourd'hui", by Josyane Savigneau, Le Monde, September 12, 2009.

Roland Castro leads one of the ten architecture firms hired to work together on the Greater Paris plan. In this interview, he explains this project of unchecked ambition, which aims to reinvent urban space.

Among architects, competition is a constant. For Greater Paris, we've got ten competing projects going on. How do you really expect to be able to work together?

First of all, we have to be clear that this is not in fact a competition. Many architecture firms - forty or so - made it clear that they were interested in the Greater Paris project and submitted dossiers with a complete set of renderings. Ten were hired, and therefore each one has presented its vision. Naturally, there are differences, but there are also points in common. We also know each other well, especially Antoine Grumbach, Christian de Potzamparc and I. In 1974, when none of us yet had very many contracts, we got together with some others and created a discussion group. We were at war with the modernist movement. We were attached to the idea that you need to create city, and not separate objects. Because of that, today, in the six French teams that were hired, there are people who have a history together.

You are the only one, besides Michel Cantal-Dupart, who worked on the failed Banlieues 89 project.

The complete project was never finished because we ran up against the bureaucracy, but it was not a total failure. First, we opened people's minds. We started several projects. There are still towns that are even today cutting ribbons on projects that grew out of Banlieues 89. The Saint-Denis-Bobigny light rail came from that. Also the achievement of putting the Southwest TGV line underground at Châtenay-Malabry.

Is there something from Banlieues 89 that lives on in your Greater Paris project?

Back then, Michel Cantal-Dupart and I made a Greater Paris project. The concepts, as we presented them at Beaubourg, are still valuable, in particular the realization that any place has the right to call itself downtown. Also, the idea that there are magical sites throughout the area outside of historical Paris, and that all of it is fertile ground. You can give each place in the suburbs the same importance that you can with locations inside Paris.

We had already thought that it was time for the army to leave the forts, which are castles. Charles Hernu was Defense Minister at the time, and he got all the military together for the project. Since then, well... they've done a lot of work on all the forts and the military is very well situated.

Do you feel inspired by the speech that President Sarkozy gave where he said that he wants Paris to embody "the true, the beautiful, the great, the just"?

The just, yes. We've had enough of suburban housing projects, enough of urban apartheid situations. Greater Paris has to be more than just a symbol of economic influence; there must also be solidarity.

Do you also approve of the President when he says that we have to get rid of zoning?

We've been saying that for thirty years, and it still hasn't happened. There has always been a certain weakness on the part of intellectuals and politicians on the urban question. Even if it's changing a bit, the intelligentsia still doesn't really work on this issue. The urban question has never been seen by intellectuals as central because this marvelous Paris, the Paris of Baudelaire, it's their Paris. Annie Ernaux lives in Cergy-Pontoise, but she's an exception among writers and it baffles some people. They never leave their Paris, and they're completely unaware of all these magnificent neighborhoods, like in Montfermeil for example, or in Gennevilliers. All these garden cities have something magical about them.

Now we're getting into transportation problems. These magnificent neighborhoods that you mention, how easy is it to get to them?

The transportation problems are key, but they can't take up all our thoughts. The transportation project is at this point the only one that is actually in progress. All the teams have addressed that question. We all agree that we need rapid transit, automatic metros, elevated metros, particularly above the A86 expressway. I personally also like what I call poetic transit, boats on the Seine, light rail and inclines. There are people who ride the light rail for pleasure and I completely understand that: it's a cinematographic way of moving through the city and seeing it.

These ten projects are making everyone dreamy, but do they have any chance of seeing the light of day? Where's the money?

It is clear that it will be at least ten years before Greater Paris sees the light of day. On the question of money, I'm not completely pessimistic. A large chunk of the stimulus could fund Greater Paris.

How do you go from ten projects to one without choosing one over all the others?

We will all combine forces into one international Greater Paris Workshop, where the ten teams will work together. There are definitely differences among the projects, but on the most important issues there is agreement. Everyone wants to de-zone, everyone wants to deregulate, everyone is in favor of sustainable development, everyone agrees that we should no longer demolish without thinking. No one is thinking of the city in extension any more, but in intensity. Obviously it's complicated when you want to work together. It took us two months to agree on an association of Greater Paris architects, but we finally did it. It's pretty extraordinary to be working on such a large territory - in my firm's project, it's a space fifteen times the size of Paris - where there is enough room for architects' egos, even super-sized ones.

There's also the joy of building what will ultimately have to be a new school of thought that will finally do away with the thinking that came out of the modern rationalist movement, with the Athens Charter that was published in 1942 by Le Corbusier, and built space in tiny pieces: residences here, entertainment there... A lot of things that are still happening today come from there, starting with industrial zones. We can make industrial places where yes, you have to monitor noise and pollution, but we can bust up these zones. When I was a student, the Paris Mint was a factory that employed 600 people and it was two steps away from the Institute, in the middle of town.

Looking at your firm's project, what is the meaning of this park in La Corneuve, where the rendering has been all over the media because it makes everyone think of Central Park in New York?

Castro's vision of a "Central Park" for La Corneuve

The Seine-Saint-Denis Legislature created a park, actually a park zone, completely cut off from urban areas, except in one tiny place. This park is bigger than Central Park. We could create a border around it, and put cafés and theaters inside. It needs to be urbanized and at the same time made into a true park, not an empty space. We showed the apartment buildings along Central Park in our project to give people an idea of the scale of the space.

The thing is that this space isn't the only one in need of reinvestment. Take the port of Gennevilliers, which in the spirit of Greater Paris should be both a port and a living space. The most beautiful skies in Paris can be seen from there. I'd like to see an opera house built there. I could mention many other places that could one day be as important as the Ile Saint-Louis or the Ile de la Cité. We all agree on the idea of multipolarity. Rogers, in his project, shows us how we have to do away with what Paris is today: a body, historical Paris, with severed limbs, a suburb cut in pieces.

What would be, for you, the most beautiful success that could come from a Grand Paris?

The decloistering of living space. That it would no longer be impossible to live where you want to live. Today we go to the suburbs by default. In Greater Paris, moving away from the historical center should be one possible choice. A happy choice. If I allow myself to dream? I'm imagining that in five years I will go write a book in a hotel at the port of Gennevilliers, next to the opera house. And to announce it, I'll have a press conference at the fort of Ivry...