Removing Paris’s Périphérique Ring Road: Towards More Sustainable and Desirable Lifestyles?

In the run-up to the 2020 Paris municipal elections, many proposals and claims are being made on the future of the périphérique, the 35-kilometer (22-mile) ring road around Paris: removing it, redesigning it as an urban boulevard with traffic lights, turning it into green spaces, creating several dedicated lanes to promote different modes of transportation, etc. The Mobile Lives Forum wanted to explore the option of totally removing it. What problems would its removal pose at the Parisian, metropolitan and regional levels? Under what conditions could this removal be part of a transition towards more desirable and sustainable lifestyles? And, therefore, what should we make of the proposals made in the various municipal election campaigns?