‘Paris is ugly’: French capital to get makeover in viral campaign victory

Paris is set for a major spruce-up after a social media campaign shone a spotlight on decay in France’s capital city.

The city-wide makeover will include the introduction of a “zero-tolerance approach to dumping rubbish in public”, and “efforts to combat tagging and illegal posters will also be stepped up”, The Telegraph reported. “Unsightly temporary yellow road markings for new cycling lanes” will be removed and “recently installed concrete barriers” will be replaced with “more discreet” versions.

The raft of policies to beautify the city were announced by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo in response to growing public criticism fuelled by images posted with the hashtag “#saccageparis” (“trashed Paris”). According to the newspaper, the hashtag “went viral in the first half of 2021, with residents posting photos of piled up rubbish, rotting benches, abandoned scooters, or badly maintained planted areas in the street”.

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‘Paris is ugly’

The deteriorating appearance of the City of Lights has been a growing subject of concern in recent years. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, director of hit 2001 film Amelie, told IndieWire in 2019 that a sequel to the romantic comedy would be “a bad idea” because Paris “is so ugly now”.

“It’s so difficult to shoot because there are constructions sites everywhere,” he said.

Journalist and television presenter Stephane Bern echoed those complaints during a recent interview with The Times. “​​I love the city but I don’t like what it’s becoming,” said Bern, who claimed his friend President Emmanuel Macron also feared that the capital was falling into a state of disrepair under the city’s left-wing council.

“Daily life in Paris is hell now,” said Bern, adding: “Wherever I go, people stop me to say, ‘You’re right. We can’t stand it anymore.’”

Photos shared with the #saccageparis hashtag by residents have highlighted “poorly maintained areas” throughout the city, with “concrete blocks left strewn in streets, and damaged street lights badly fixed with tape”, The Connexion reported.

Social media users have also criticised “some initiatives designed to improve the capital”, including “green squares” around trees that were “intended to enable residents to grow plants, but instead have become overrun with weeds, rubbish and dog mess”, said the Monaco-based magazine.

The Telegraph reported that many critics have directed their anger “at city hall for replacing or neglecting Paris’s unique architectural heritage, including its street furniture bequeathed from the middle of the 19th century under Napoleon III”.

The mayor’s office initially denounced the hashtag as a “smear campaign”. But Deputy Mayor Emmanuel Gregoire said this week that the public outcry had “been useful in the way that it forced us to question ourselves and react”.

Beautification project

Socialist Mayor Hidalgo, who is currently running to become French president, has made cleaning up parts of Paris a key priority since first being elected to rule the city back in 2014.

In January last year, she announced plans to turn most of the Champs-Elysees into parks and pavements, dramatically reducing the space given over to cars.

Her efforts to combat pollution in Paris by reducing the number of cars on the streets “won her re-election in Paris”, said The New Statesman’s Europe correspondent Ido Vock, and was “a shrewd political calculation”.

The new plans to give the city a facelift will include an extension of Hidalgo’s early policies. “Many temporary cycling lanes, many of which were introduced during the first lockdown as more people began to cycle, will now be made permanent,” said The Connexion.

But some of Hidalgo’s additions will reportedly be scrapped, including “ugly modern street furniture (such as modern benches and odd-shaped rubbish bins)” that social media critics said were “disfiguring” Paris.