The city of Paris, being London’s twin as the spiritual home of psychogeography and stomping ground of the urban flaneur, was a natural place to focus another piece of writing following a recent visit. With our time frame being only three days, and neither of us knowing the city well, we were more of a mind to roll along the well-worn grooves of the tourist track rather than try and subvert it, although still attempting to see as much of the city by foot as possible.
After a disorientatingly early start, catching the 7.01am Eurostar from St. Pancras, we arrived at the Gare du Nord mid-morning, and after re-fuelling with coffee and crepes, decided to walk the 7 km stretch southwards across the River Seine to our hotel in the heart of the Montparnasse district. Slumping down the thick arterial Blvd de Sebastopol gave us the first taste of the long and wide stretches of road that are as emblematic of Paris as the cobbled picturesque streets of the Latin Quarter or Montmartre.
That afternoon, as we walked westwards through the Jardin des Tuileries, across the chaotic plughole of Place de la Concorde and up the slope of the Champs-Elysees, I was taken back to my time walking and cycing the colossal highways of Los Angeles and how similar it felt (albeit on a much smaller scale), the sensation of futility in your eutechnical mode of transit along such an indeterminately linear road. In fact, I think this comparison slightly more than a little ill-founded; Paris’ boulevards being far more amenable, aesthetically and pedestrian-wise, than LA’s neverending highways that seem to stretch on like pylon lines cutting their way across a vast expanse of open terrain.
It is at the eye of the Arc de Triumphe, with the grand spokes thrusting outwards like the rays of a cartoon sun, that one gets the fullest appreciation of the vision wrought into concrete life by the 19th-century civic planner Baron Haussmann. Tasked by Napoleon III to reconstruct the geography of central Paris, from its ostensibly medieval cluster that had become increasingly unfeasible for a modern urban environment, he set about commissioning the strident roadways and monuments that today epitomise the city and have served as the blueprints for so many others around the world.
It is interesting to note just how divisive his reforms were at the time; not least because of the staggering financial burden it would place on government budgets, but because of the subsequent interpretation of such designs as being favoured and enacted specifically as a means of enhancing authoritarian control. The long, broad macadamised corridors; the large, open public recreational spaces; and the sharp, angular intersections, were all deemed to have been idealised with the improved military suppression of insurrectionary rebels, as well as the easy movement of armed forces, as being primary motivations. Fascinating that lurking just behind the very valid, surface policies of improving sanitation, transit and accommodation, were the ulterior motives of civic suppression.
Marshall Berman’s comprehensive book ‘All That Is Solid Melts Into Air’ states that, ‘the Napoleon-Haussmann boulevards created new bases – economic, social, aesthetic – for bringing enormous numbers of people together. At the street level they were lined with small businesses and shops of all kinds, with every corner zoned for restaurants and terraced sidewalk cafes.’ How intriguing that a singular vision encompassing these wide urban expanses, sidewalk cafes, benches, cultural monuments, circumscribed vegetation, et cetera, would transplant the Old City environs in such a short space of time as being the world-renowned symbiology of Paris.
For the first time perhaps, this urban modern city could also subjugate the primacy of the pedestrian in favour of the new invasion of motor cars. Ironic then that Paris is still considered pleasantly strollable, whereas the pattern it represented became exploited the world over, resulting in cities such as Los Angeles where any form of walking is seen as a very odd pasttime.
This got me thinking about links, however spurious, to 21st century urban developments that can be noticed in London, if not all over Britain. Something that lit the fuse was realising, after 3 days of lengthy walking around Paris, how refreshingly franchise-free it appeared to be. Of course, this is due partly to local and cultural ignorance on my part, but I don’t think that tells the whole story. The number of independent businesses, shops and cafes was a far cry from the sad recession-weary state of Britain’s capital city. Just as you’re supposedly never more than a few feet from urban rodents, it increasingly seems that you cannot walk for a few minutes in London without passing by a TescoExpress, a Sainsburys, a Starbucks, a Pret a Manger, or a Costa Coffee.
So cancerous is their growth that, as an example, walking north away from Brixton and through Kennington, you will pass 4 or 5 TescoExpress stores, each that appears to have metamorphosed out of some previously healthy commercial body. One has fixed its grip within the bowels of a dubious-looking hotel; another has fed from the host of a mock-Tudor pub; another has subsumed a petrol station. This serves as a microcosm of what can now be seen as ‘clone high streets’ that drape themselves through each British town centre without fail (in the last year alone I’ve seen such replications in Penzance, Bristol and Leeds, to name just three). Maybe soon mini branches of Tesco will start being set up in small corners of your flat, thereby maximising market penetration and heightening consumer convenience.
Perhaps this Tesco-isation of shopping streets, along with other phenomena such as the Wetherspoon-ist invasion of the British pub scene, can be seen as a gradual but no-less-subtle modern derivation of Haussmann’s Paris reconstruction. Underneath the attractive surface claims of uniformity, ease and convenience, lies a sinister motive of slash & burn commercialism, consuming everything of any local distinction, and spitting out the same pre-fab fungus of monotonous conformity. Stand in a Bristol, Penzance or Leeds branch and it matters not a jot; since all are geographically neutral and all thrive on the public’s apathetic, credulousness and desire for stress-free activity. Could parallels be drawn between the decrepit and out-moded layout of medieval Paris, desperate to be blasted open into expansive accessibility, and the dire state of contemporary Britain’s high street diversity, wilting under the persistant onslaught of a franchise cartel? Or perhaps its just the French red wine weaving irrelevant nonsense.
In any case, walking around Paris was a very welcome break from London. A very fulfilling walk I might recommend is setting out from the hectic Place de la Bastille, across the Il de la Cite and walking the length of the Blvd St Germain which curves and dips round like a scarf hanging from the broad shoulders of the Seine. It is as quintessential a view of Haussmann’s Paris as any, with its teeming traffic lanes, monumental buildings and elegant cafes sprouting out from every corner. Once you join the river again you could cross over and stroll along the river bank marvelling at the ceaselessly photogenic landmark, the Eiffel Tower, perhaps a structure too iconic to be viewed with any real subjectivity.
Actually rather a controversial structure upon its unveiling in 1899; there is of course the well-known anecdote from Guy de Maupassant, that the tower’s restaurant was his new favourite as it gave him the only view of the city from where you couldn’t see the Eiffel Tower. Strange perhaps that such a structure should be so derided at the time and yet come to be regarded as an icon of architectural design years later. You could be forgiven for making the (albeit quite flippant) comparison between that contemporary loci of people’s equal-parts ire and adoration that has sprung up on the London skyline – the Shard. Although, considering the price for public admittance, I don’t think it’ll become my subversive view of choice any time soon, no matter how good the restaurant might be.
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