Paris, the city of litter, is shamed into cleaning up its act

Social media campaign forces city council to launch a very French-sounding Manifesto for Beauty aimed at restoring the capital’s elegance.

The social media campaign #saccageParis (Trashed Paris) has encouraged Parisians to post thousands of photographs of unsightly plastic bollards, unemptied litter bins and planters full of rotting vegetation spotted on the city’s streets.

Viewers of Netflix hit show Emily in Paris might easily think its eponymous heroine had pitched up in paradise rather than a living, working city.

The sun is always shining, the Seine glistening and the Eiffel Tower never far out of shot. The worst the young marketing expert from Chicago has to endure – apart from a barrage of appalling Gallic stereotypes – is planting her designer shoe into a dollop of dog poo.

From An American in Paris to Amelie and, more recently, Call My Agent! and Lupin, the French capital has always looked rather too good to be true when portrayed on screen, even if the 1995 film La Haine and the crime series Engrenages (broadcast as Spiral on SBS) have provided glimpses into the darker side of the banlieue.

So what are we to make of the publication last week by the city council of a very French-sounding Manifesto for Beauty aimed at restoring the capital’s elegance, coupled with an admission that some recent innovations, however well intentioned, have turned into eyesores?

The origins of the mea culpa lie in a highly successful social media campaign, #saccageParis (Trashed Paris), which, since its launch early last year, has encouraged Parisians to post thousands of photographs of unsightly plastic bollards, unemptied litter bins and planters full of rotting vegetation spotted on the city’s streets.

The first reaction of Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist Mayor, was to accuse the campaign’s anonymous initiator of being part of a right-wing plot against her. Tracked down recently by French media, the 53-year-old business executive, who declined to reveal his name, said the end of the Covid lockdown had prompted him to look with fresh eyes at the city in which he had lived for the past 20 years. “Everything seemed dirty, ramshackle, patched up, abandoned,” he said.

Countless Parisians agreed, posting horrors of their own, while a slew of commentators piled in. Just before Christmas the campaign published its first annual “awards”, with categories ranging from the least aesthetically pleasing bench to the ugliest square.

With the world’s eyes on the city in the run-up to the 2024 Olympics, Ms Hidalgo is now taking on her critics. Emmanuel Gregoire, her deputy in charge of the streetscape, has announced a number of “corrections”, which include clearing pavements, improving cleanliness and looking again at temporary cycle lanes introduced in the pandemic. When it comes to benches and other street furniture, innovations seen by critics as imposing an alien Scandinavian aesthetic on the city will go in favour of a return to the mid-19th-century wood-and-cast iron elegance of the reign of Napoleon III.

So are the criticisms exaggerated? The yellow plastic bollards and concrete blocks along the cycle lanes are an eyesore, and the enclosures around many trees look neglected. But that sort of “trashing” is easily reversed. More important is that the city’s architectural splendour has been largely preserved. Paris was bombed only briefly during World War II, and planners have kept tower blocks out of the centre, with the notable exception of the Tour Montparnasse, a 59-storey monument to ugliness. New high-rises are planned, though, and the streets around the Gare du Nord – the first sight to greet those arriving on the Eurostar – are grim.

An American friend who has lived in Paris on and off for the past 50 years says her breath is still taken away by the 17th-century Place des Vosges in the Marais. She is also pleased that these days she can spend more time looking up at the red-brick facades and blue-slate roofs and less time looking down at her feet. “There was a time when you couldn’t walk down the street without stepping on dog shit,” she recalls.

Strict fines and a change in culture have made Parisians much more inclined these days to take a plastic bag with them. At least that’s one cliche Emily should be happy to avoid.

The Sunday Times