Interessanter Artikel zu Paris
Paris looks skyward for housing
Monday, November 3, 2003 Posted: 1316 GMT ( 9:16 PM HKT)
PARIS, France (Reuters) -- In a move some fear will ruin the skyline of a city which prides itself on its beauty, Paris City Hall says it may turn to skyscrapers to solve the French capital's chronic housing shortage.
A 30-year-old ban on high-rise construction has left Paris with a city center that is strikingly uncluttered compared to those of New York or London, where historic monuments jostle for space with modern tower blocks.
But with more people reported sleeping on the streets of Paris because of huge waiting lists for social housing, Socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoe is under pressure to meet an election promise of providing 50,000 new homes.
"We are not talking about creating a Manhattan in Paris," Delanoe's deputy Jean-Pierre Caffet told Le Parisien daily. "On the other hand, our city cannot become a museum-city."
Any decision will have to await a new urban planning bill due to come in next year. But conservatives are already up in arms, with ex-mayor Jean Tiberi declaring himself "stupefied" by the plans.
Caffet promised the historic center around the River Seine -- including Notre-Dame cathedral and the Louvre museum -- would be spared any new high-rise building, but said such projects would be viable in the surrounding areas where old and new already mix.
"Paris has got a surface area of just 105 square kilometers -- that's tiny for a major city...So one of the solutions is to build upwards to win space," he argued.
Paris is no stranger to rows over its skyline, including the one that greeted the opening of the 324-meter (1,063 ft) Eiffel Tower in 1889. Author Guy de Maupassant mounted an unsuccessful petition against what he called "an odious tower of bad taste."
A similar outcry greeted the construction of the 209-meter Montparnasse tower in 1972. Two years later, a new urban planning bill limited building to 31 meters within city limits and 25 meters in the historic center.
Erschienen: http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WO…s.skyline.reut/index.html