François Margolin is a director, producer and screenwriter. He directed the film
Salafists
.
We have known for a long time about the successes of the mayor of Paris, which arouse the ire of most Parisians and most of those who need to go there to work.
Dirt everywhere, trash cans rarely picked up, rats, crows, concrete blocks deliberately abandoned in the middle of busy intersections, red lights repaired with tape, reduction to one lane - when it's not down to zero like rue de Rivoli - of most major axes, disappearance of most of the urban equipment of the architect Davioud around 1860 (newsstands, public benches, clocks, Wallace fountains, etc.), which had been the charm of Paris for ages).
Not to mention, of course, the squares in northeastern Paris transformed into deal zones.
To this must be added from 2024, the entry into force of ZFEs (Low Emission Zones).
They will reject outside Paris and its close suburbs nearly a third of thermal engine vehicles.
The poorest will be the most affected.
It is, according to our town hall officials, the "peaceful Paris" or the "embellished Paris".
And it doesn't matter that no one likes it.
It suffices to read, to be convinced of this, the thousands of comments in response to the satisfied tweets of our elected officials, who are particularly critical.
But the municipality is persuaded to act for our good.
I am lucky (or unlucky) to live in the center of Paris, which has become the municipality's experimental laboratory.
A funny laboratory where the scooter and the electric bike are kings.
Francois Margolin
There are three more important things to me that I would like to talk about.
The first is the most symbolic from a political point of view.
All the more so for a mayor who had the success that we know in the last presidential election: 1.7% nationally, 2.1% in the city she leads.
These scores could push the city councilor to reflect on his policy, it is not so.
I am lucky (or unlucky) to live in the center of Paris, which has become the municipality's experimental laboratory.
A funny laboratory where the scooter and the electric bike are kings, where the parking spaces for cars have, for the most part, been removed (including those for the disabled) in favor of spaces for bicycles, said scooters and electric vehicles.
Whole sections of streets have been blocked, or put in the wrong direction, to prevent free-flowing traffic.
Result: the elderly no longer know how to get to their homes and the craftsmen no longer want to come.
Worse still, the disappearance in these areas of respect for the Highway Code, which was undoubtedly the last thing that united the French, and affirmed the existence of a social pact between them, whatever their age, their origin, their gender, religion, skin color.
The town hall has indeed promoted, as an intangible principle, the fact of taking the streets in the opposite direction.
After bicycles, it is now scooters, motorcycles and, more recently, cars, which are engaged in this practice, which is the cause of numerous accidents, sometimes fatal, and of an almost permanent tension between users of the different modes. transport.
Some elderly people do not even dare to leave their homes to do their shopping for fear of being run over.
"Paris is a party", wrote Ernest Hemingway, but I don't think he imagined that.
Francois Margolin
Second problem, which is only the consequence of the first: the transformation of Paris into a giant shopping center.
A kind of open-air
mall
, where, especially on weekends, hordes of tourists come to shop or have a drink.
There is, of course, no inherent harm in this, but this phenomenon gives the inhabitants the impression that the city no longer belongs to them.
Paris has been transformed into a gigantic film set where the monuments serve as decorative elements and the inhabitants as extras.
It's no longer a city where you work, it's no longer a city where you study, it's no longer a city where you demonstrate.
It is a city where one buys and where one consumes.
“Paris is a party
wrote Ernest Hemingway, but I don't think he imagined that.
He thought of the people we met there, of the restaurants that closed late and of this city that was still called “the city of light”.
This “city of light” is precisely the third point on which I would like to insist.
Recently, a foreign friend whom I was driving home from Porte de Saint-Cloud to the Marais, along the Seine, asked me if there was a power outage that evening.
She couldn't see a single monument lit up, with the exception of the Eiffel Tower and the construction site of Notre-Dame.
No wonder, the town hall of Paris has decided to turn everything off after 10 p.m. for ecological reasons.
How to explain to a foreigner that "the most beautiful city in the world", considered "so romantic" has become one of the most sinister cities in the world, at night?
Yet it was in this city that in the 18th century, the prefect of Paris decided, to fight against crime, to light up the dark streets.
VS'
It was in 1820 that the prefect Lebon chose to make Paris a model for Europe, by imposing urban lighting.
This was the start of Paris' global expansion.
From Paris as a model.
We have gone back three centuries.
What have we done, poor inhabitants of this magnificent city, to deserve this?
How can you make believe that you love a city when you make everything that is the pleasure of life disappear? Life is not dark, it is bright.
Our sad town councilors apparently did not understand this.
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