
George-Eugène Haussmann, the man who created Paris - Perados
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160126-how-a-modern-city-was-born
======
vonnik
Let's be really clear: Haussmann built an autocrat's city. He was the
architect of Louis-Napoleon, nephew of the former French emperor, and the city
was built during the so-called second empire. That is, it does not reflect
democratic values. How does it not reflect them? Well, the broad avenues
radiating from star-like intersections are meant to favor the artillery if
rebels ever try to build a barricade. This structure was later used to shape
Washington DC. These considerations were important because of the Paris
Commune of the 1870s, where the people of Paris rebelled against what they
felt was bourgeois oppression. Except for a few periods after WWI and WWII,
when artists like Picasso or Hemingway briefly frequented a poor and beautiful
city, Paris has been a bourgeois stronghold ever since. This has huge cultural
ramifications, many of them negative, for life in the city, since a premium is
put on proper behavior and, above all, silence. Haussmann's ravages pushed the
working class out into the suburbs -- what people now refer to the Red Belt --
depriving Paris of much of its vibrant street life. There were huge tradeoffs
in the makeover, so let's not unduly idolize him.

~~~
btilly
Huge public outlay for wide roads, originally designed for military use and
now used heavily by civilians. Where have I heard that before?

Oh right. The US Interstate System! :-)

Incidentally for a similarly influential person in US history you have to look
no farther than
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses).

I'm in awe of the audacity of slipping unlimited power to construct roads into
a bill about parks, while planning to become the person who would have that
power. The authority in question was the ability to construct parks anywhere,
and the right to build access roads for them. So he created a series of long
narrow parks, and built big fat access roads down the middle. That is why
those roads got named, "parkways"!

~~~
clock_tower
But the Interstates weren't specifically designed to give an advantage to the
government in street fighting. Haussmann's boulevards were designed for easy
access for artillery (and cavalry?), and to make barricade-construction
impossible, as vonnik noted -- not to facilitate movement and redeployment
like the Interstates. (I've heard the rumor that the Interstates were meant to
facilitate suburbia from the start -- on the theory that if the country's
population and economic activity spread out into the suburbs, we'd be harder
to ruin with a small number of nuclear weapons.)

That said, Robert Moses was certainly a tyrant of urban planning on the same
level as Haussmann. White ethnic populations of the Northeast still remember
him, and have not yet forgiven him for his habit of running freeways through
their neighborhoods -- ruining the neighborhoods in the process, and in many
cases driving them out to the ethnically-homogenous blandness of the suburbs.

I'm also reminded of Le Corbousier. Architecture can certainly attract
autocrats...

~~~
Create
Once upon a time, there was a man here who built stuff, in Berlin for Albert
Speer his name was. Philip Johnson and he was a wonderful artist and a moral
monster. And he said he went to work building buildings for the nazis because
they had all the best graphics. And he meant it, because he was an artist, as
Mr Jobs was an artist. But artistry is no guarantee of morality.

[https://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-
of-...](https://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-thought-
requires-free-media)

~~~
clock_tower
How soon I forget the big one(s). Indeed, Hitler himself was more of an
architect than anything else (talked about in a digression at
[http://www.leesandlin.com/articles/LosingTheWar.htm);](http://www.leesandlin.com/articles/LosingTheWar.htm\);)
but I didn't want to Godwin's Law the matter straight out of the gate.

------
gerbilly
During the revolution, no one had an accurate map of Paris.

This is what made the barricade such an effective tool. People could throw up
a few barricades and quite effectively defend a neighbourhood.

When the army showed up they had to channel through narrow unfamiliar streets.

If the tide turned against the people, they often managed to escape through a
little known back alley.

The "Grande Boulevards" may look majestic, but they are also military roads.
They make it easier to move troops within the city.

~~~
SFjulie1
The supputative remaining of the "cour des miracles" (~ rue du Caire // north
montorgueil, la butte aux cailles, ménilmuche & place St Marc appeals more to
my heart of former parisian than 4 septembre, champs Elysee, havre cau, Bvd
des Maréchaux and other boulevards.

------
ePierre
For people interested in what Paris looked like before it became the Paris we
know, I strongly recommend to have a look at Vergue
([http://vergue.com](http://vergue.com)), and especially at the work of
photographer Charles Marville ([http://vergue.com/category/Auteurs/Charles-
Marville](http://vergue.com/category/Auteurs/Charles-Marville)) who was
commissioned to take pictures of streets that were going to be demolished or
completely renovated.

Vergue is doing a fantastic job of not only renovating these photographs, but
also provides a crazy amount of details for each of them (What were these
posters about? What is that tool we see next to the entrance of that café ?
etc.)… in French only, sorry :)

~~~
chm
Magnifique. I've just spent 30 minutes perusing the website. I would pay good
money to have access to a "live" VR exhibition of these old streets. Walking
around Paris, in two different eras.

------
saretired
The article is poorly researched. Napoleon III's motivation was preventing
insurrections, not improving health of Parisians or the smell of the streets.
Haussman targeted areas favorable to guerrilla action from rooftops, to
barricades, and to escape, which often happened to be the oldest in Paris. The
new avenues down which a cannon could be fired from one of the city to the
other during an insurrection, in a nice bit of unintended consequence, later
made the job of the invading Prussians easier. Haussman's plans were opposed
by a number of cultural figures, including Baudelaire, who believed the loss
of a great number of medieval buildings was unconscionable.

~~~
msellout
The Catacombs was a public health issue. The older graveyards were full and
bodies were rotting in the open. I can't remember if that also coincided with
the collapse of a road into the tunnels underneath, but that was around the
same time. +/\- 100 years.

------
entee
It's easy to forget how a "historic place" is actually not that old. Cities
are constantly changing, we'd do well to not let preservationist instincts
always trump new development and changes for a more useful city.

SF in particular should be more creative about finding ways to preserve
neighborhood feel without making a suicide pact with the effective 3-stories-
or-less limit in most areas.

------
touristtam
I would recommend that 4 episodes tv program from the French-German channel
Arte, if you can speak either language:
[http://boutique.arte.tv/f10552-paris_berlin_destins_croises_...](http://boutique.arte.tv/f10552-paris_berlin_destins_croises_serie)
(this is the link for the french version).

------
Aissen
This is so true. What a visionary. Paris would be a totally different beast if
it was not for him. This makes you regret that there were no such visionary
(on a similar scale) in the twentieth century.

~~~
js2
Oscar Niemeyer? Frederick Law Olmsted?

~~~
zb
Albert Speer?

~~~
msellout
Charles Bulfinch for Boston.

------
languagehacker
Haussmannize San Francisco!

------
NN88
Atlanta needs one of those.

~~~
msellout
What about the Beltline? Things seem to be going well in ATL.

