Metropolitics

The new banks of the Seine: all for the best, or just another Woody Allen set?

Mathieu Flonneau & translated by Oliver Waine — 2014-05-21T04:50:00Z

June 2013 saw the completion of a project to transform the riverside expressway on the Left Bank of the Seine in Paris into a pedestrian promenade, accompanied by a series of leisure and recreation features. Historian Mathieu Flonneau delivers a scathing critique of what he sees as a purely cosmetic measure for the prestigious city centre, decrying both its underlying ideology and its unintended consequences.
If the great film-maker Woody Allen were to shoot Midnight in Paris (2011) again,

- Debates / gentrification, public space, Paris, cars, redevelopment, pedestrian, Seine, riverbanks

For cities of a different nature

Jérémy Grangé & Sylvain Petitet & translated by Oliver Waine — 2014-03-26T05:50:00Z

City-dwellers want to see more of their metropolitan areas turned over to nature and urban public spaces; however, our cities today are still structured by a network of roads that were primarily built to manage motor traffic flows. Sylvain Petitet and Jérémy Grangé show how implementing sustainable urban infrastructure could provide city-dwellers with easy and convenient access to the places that generate most of their journeys, revealing a new form of network-based public space.
The 20th

- Essays / public space, public transportation, sustainable development, nature, well-being, bicycles, infrastructures, pedestrian, infrastructure, cycling

Pedestrians, cars and the city

Cédric Feriel & translated by Oliver Waine — 2013-05-29T10:01:37Z

Pedestrianisation and the ability to get around the city on foot are key considerations in contemporary projects for public spaces – and yet the very first pedestrian zones date back to the 1960s, not just in Europe but also in the United States. Cédric Feriel re-examines this important legacy in the light of current thinking on the subject.
Since the early 2000s, pedestrians have regained their place at the heart of debates on urban development in Europe and the United States (Urbanisme

- From the Field / Europe, public space, United States, cars, downtown, city centre, pedestrian