PARIS OF TOMORROW

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 July 1938, Page 9

PARIS OF TOMORROW

OLD FORTS BEING DISMANTLED. MODERN MOTOR HIGHWAYS. M. Raymond, former president of the Paris Municipal Council, in a volume which he has just written on the French capital, gives some idea of how Paris will probably develop in the future. Eighteen main forts and nine minor works of defence, built round Paris at' distances varying between one and three miles, no longer of military value in modern warfare, will be gradually dismantled, and already small houses and buildings are springing up on the glacis and approaches, together' with public gardens. And as the agglomerations of population spread, so it is thought they will gradually meet and merge in the framework of a greater Paris. The forts will tend to induce the city to grow equally on all sides and maintain its practically circular shape which characterises the Paris ■that we know.

Dangers of attack from the air, however, are dictating another plan. Paris may spread in long narrow tentacles alongside the main roads leading out of the city. The roads are already being widened for modern motor traffic, and it is thought that there these perfect main roads, making access rapid and easy by motor traffic, will cause the population to cluster along them. These main roads, running north, south, east and west, are being built to specification, their width 65 yards, with and additional 21 yards on each side for pedestrians. Efforts will be made to avoid dense population at any point, so that in case of air attacks, houses can be quickly abandoned and the population take refuge in the fields, probably in special dug-outs. The Paris of today will become more and more merely a business centre, and fast motor traffic using the big main roads will convey the population to and fro at morning and night. These roads will be joined up one with another at a certain distance from the city by roads in ever widening circles. Parallel with the main roads'leading from Paris would be railway lines to share their burden of carrying goods and population. If, however, as the French still hope, other nations in Europe ultimately realise that the future of mankind cannot be served by mutual destruction, then the tentacle system will be unnecessary and Paris will take other forms. One plan already provided for includes the creation of a number of garden cities for workers on the lines of the very fine garden cities built by railways in different parts of the north of France for their workers, each garden city with ffs own small park and athletic ground (with a trained monitor for supervising the children’s games and exercises), its garden plots, its school and clinic.