Just as we were finishing work on our latest Italian-themed issue, which includes a special report on the current troubles of architects in Rome, news spread around the world of President Sarkozy’s competition to create a new Grand Plan for Paris. At first, the contrast between the two cities could not appear more marked. The political situation in Rome – in particular the election of a new right-wing mayor after nearly 20 years of left-wing mayors who were sympathetic to modern art and buildings – is paralyzing the city’s architects. Projects are being cancelled, architects are losing work and nothing is being built or commissioned. In Paris, however, it seemed as if a forward-looking leader was giving architects a license to be truly ambitious. “I don’t want a virtual city: I want projects. You have the absolute freedom to dream, and the means to go with it,” President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly told a stellar line-up of 10 international architecture practices in March. The idea was to create a new grand plan for Paris, to rejuvenate they city’s outskirts and to think boldly about expanding its boundaries. The plans, developed by practices including Rogers Stirk Harbour, Jean Nouvel, and lauded urbanist Christian de Portzamparc, ranging from creating of enormous new parks, bringing mixed populations into high-rises, to building high-speed train lines, and even the movement of existing Parisian monuments.
In a time of recession, the scheme is remarkable, no doubt: “Sarkozy, or at least his advisors, wants to redefine the city and its region in a manner unheard of since Baron Haussmann in the mid-19th century” enthused Tom Dyckhoff in The Times. Yet, just like in Rome, Parisian politics and architecture are impossible to separate, and Sarkozy was soon accused by some of pure political gesturing. The Telegraph reported that opposition Socialists were describing Sarkozy’s plan as a “Trojan horse” to reclaim power in Paris and the surrounding areas – mostly run by the Left. Jonathan Glancey, writing in The Guardian, was also suspicious of such grandiose proposals: “surely what is needed is a way of… creating and nurturing the education, the jobs, the businesses and the ways of life that will allow Paris to develop humanely.” Zaha Hadid, who had not been requested to develop ideas for Sarkozy, told Building Design that the schemes were doomed to failure because “if you want to design through consensus, you end up with a kind of mediocre solution because… the committee system does not allow for extreme solutions.”
Suspicion and cynicism is not an unavoidable response to such grand visions. It is heartening that anyone is thinking on such a huge scale: as Nicolai Ouroussoff commented in the New York Times, “even if none of the proposals are ever built, they show a daring that has not been seen in a Western city for decades.” But this is clearly not enough. The current malaise of Roman architecture shows that hopes raised by apparently progressive administrations can result in even greater despair when the promises aren’t fulfilled. We will have a better idea if Paris awaits a similar fate in the coming months, when Sarkovy announces the next stage in the Grand Plan, and his resolve is really put to the test.