“Paris!”, a title that is both sober and a little boastful for a (free) exhibition of the Town Hall and its bookish variation on the enterprise of asserted seduction, all on the eve of the Olympics and its millions of expected tourists. At the helm, Anne Hidalgo and her troops, including the director of the Théâtre de la Ville, Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, curator of the exhibition, who are doing their utmost to put together a proactive Parisian showcase illustrating the big heart of a population “young, committed, united, mobile, free and good living”, composed of nearly 180 nationalities, and the various transformations of the capital in the face of challenges, from the climate emergency to the fire of Notre-Dame through the attacks.
If the whole is intended to be at the level of our fellow citizens, the first (huge) photo that appears is part of the Parisian “majesty” with the photo of nearly a thousand first councilors surrounding the PS mayor all smiles during the Mayors’ Summit for the climate on December 4, 2015; followed, it is true, by a gallery of giant portraits of anonymous people taken by the visual photographer Marguerite Bornhauser.
Then come some “gadgets”, a video installation offering an immersive experience of crossing the City of Lights by bike, a life-size “school street”, the rise of the Seine, from its sources to Le Havre, etc. In the book (Flammarion), designed as a Moleskine travel notebook, full of illustrations and bilingual French-English, covering the themes of the exhibition, we will mainly be interested in the multiple data (well chosen) provided by the Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme (Apur) on Homo parisianus: thus, 28% of the 2.1 million Parisians are single, 48% of workers, 25% are under 40 years old, 25% are born abroad, 33% of households own a car (compared to 50% in 1980) and Louise and Gabriel are the favorite names of their newborns.
Furthermore, Parisians travel nine times out of 10 on foot, by bike or by public transport. The city has 25% social housing, where more than 700,000 people live, 5,355 summer terraces, or 50% new since 2021, and more than 200 protected streets near schools. Finally, nearly 3,000 wild, animal (including black crows and red squirrels) and plant species have been observed there in recent years. While pollution has fallen by 40% since 2011. Not a word about traffic jams, real estate prices and other slight Parisian inconveniences. One wonders if some of our honorable visitors will not be tempted to settle in this heavenly “refuge city”…
Exhibition “Paris!”until Saturday November 16, 2024 at City Hall.