After energy sobriety, resilience.
The political back-to-school season definitely has a very particular focus in Paris, focusing on the consequences of the recent health, climate and geopolitical crises that are affecting the capital.
To better anticipate the challenges of tomorrow, the municipality indeed presented its new strategy on Wednesday.
Read alsoParis: attached to the Seine, to the city of the quarter of an hour, to resilience... what does that mean?
“The territory has been the subject of various crises in recent years, recalls Pénélope Komitès, deputy mayor (PS) of Paris in charge of the subject.
A flood of the Seine in 2018, major social movements, the fire of Notre-Dame… Since February, a war has been going on on our doorstep and this summer, Paris experienced an extremely severe heat wave.
What is the next crisis?
To this question, the community responds by wanting to "go further" than its first action plan adopted in 2017.
Because while some initiatives have succeeded, such as the "oasis" courses in schools or the commitment of citizens in the "Les Volontaires de Paris" program to work towards the most vulnerable, other situations did not have been imagined.
"Food resilience, cyberattacks, the multiplicity of joint crises are subjects that we had not dealt with", continues Pénélope Komitès.
Test the City's devices
So many potential crisis situations against which the City wants to be ready to react.
More concretely, this involves contextualization exercises.
One of them will take place in October 2023. Two districts of the same arrondissement – this one has not yet been determined – will be plunged into a fictitious heat wave scenario, during an operation called “Paris at 50°C ".
“This exercise will simulate a heat wave that we have not yet experienced, longer and with a heat dome phenomenon of 50°C”, explains the assistant.
It will be a question of testing, in two stages, the devices deployed by the City – “mobile misters, cooled rooms or even shade houses, for example” – as well as the reaction of the inhabitants of these districts.
Mobilize Parisians
“The crises, we survived them, but they can happen again, comments Pénélope Komitès.
And even if the future is engaged with concerns, this resilience strategy should not be anxiety-provoking.
The City, through associative, school and cultural projects, calls on the mobilization of Parisians, "to develop responses commensurate with the challenges facing us".
