Former French president Georges Pompidou — think end-1960s to early 1970s — did plenty to make Paris wonderful: he built most of the eyesores everyone wonders about today, including the Forum des Halles shopping mall (currently being torn down and rebuilt), the Montparnasse Tower (which wiped out hundreds of artists’ studios in what was the city’s most atmospheric neighborhood), the expressways that destroyed nearly all Paris’ riverside ports… I could go on. Old Georges, he’s one of my favorite Paris People (and gets a chapter all to his own in my book on Paris)…
Anyone who’s walked the banks of the Seine in recent years and dreamed about seeing them pedestrianized — that is, un-Pompidou-ized — has authentic reason to celebrate. Long sections of the banks are being wrenched from the tyranny of the automobile and handed back, in part, to walkers and bikers.
Here’s my take on this happy event, in my AOL.com monthly column at Gadling.com:
Seine-Side Saunter: Retaking Paris’ Riverfront
Before dawn the other day, I stole down to the Seine and waited in darkness until the security
guard at the construction worksite had walked upstream out of sight.
Vaulting with the agility of a middle-aged guy with bad knees, I strode down the newly laid cobbled walkway below the Pont de Sully. The site is part of an ambitious project to slow or banish cars from Paris, and welcome walkers to the Seine while revitalizing the river’s UNESCO World Heritage Site banks.
I danced a silent, gleeful jig of victory; the river would soon be ours again!
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