Noise, pollution, abandonment… at the entrance to Paris, the slow agony of the Bagnolet interchange
FactualThe elected officials want to put an end to the cumbersome Porte de Bagnolet interchange, a concrete octopus built in the late 1960s. But how to get rid of it, and how to do without it? Analysis of a textbook case in town planning.
He is lost, this man. At the wheel of his gray Toyota, he hesitates. Should he climb the ramp in front of him? Go down to the one next door? Take the nearby ramp, which will allow him, perhaps, to join the ring road? Here, the signs do not indicate anything clear, and even the GPS are disoriented. So, this very gray Friday morning, the driver moves slowly in the middle of the crossroads. Stops. Restart. Bites on the central reservation. Step back. And finally opts for the U-turn, hoping to return at least to its starting point.
Welcome to Porte de Bagnolet. A concrete octopus. A “urban mangrove”, in the words of urban planners David Mangin and Marion Girodo. Within a radius of a few kilometers are entangled the ring road, which encloses Paris, the enormous A3 motorway, a shopping centre, huge almost empty office towers, a few hotels, a bus depot, a bus station at the abandonment, three floors of car parks, a closed footbridge, ramps in all directions… Not to mention a metro terminus at the exit, where street vendors may offer cigarettes “fallen from the truck” for “cheap, 5 euros per package”, while dealers are ready to drive the required ones to their nearby point of sale.
A confusing and hostile imbroglio for both cars and pedestrians. And, in the middle of all this tagged and aging concrete, a tiny green space. Three cypresses, two lawns, no one knows who maintains them. The rare familiars of the place baptized it “the eye of the cyclone”. This repulsive decor on the border of Paris and Seine-Saint-Denis is above all “one of the most polluted areas in Europe”, saddens Patrice Bessac, communist mayor of Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis) and president of Est Ensemble, the inter-municipal structure which notably brings together Montreuil and Bagnolet. More than 200,000 vehicles pass every day under the eyes, ears, nose and throat of some 35,000 inhabitants, poor in the majority of cases, very often immigrants.
Ugly, dirty, noisy, polluted, decrepit, sometimes dangerous: the Bagnolet interchange is, with its surroundings, a perfect example of urban planning in the 1960s and 1970s at its most spectacular and brutal. An urban object designed around the car, modern fifty years ago, and very cumbersome today. What to do with these heaps of concrete? How to get rid of it? But, at the same time, how is it going? So many questions at the heart of the ongoing discussions between Paris, the neighboring municipalities, the region, and the State. A textbook case on how it is possible to rethink the city, its access and the way to move around.
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