How close is this article to reality? Anyone been to Paris of late? Is it how the article describes?Delanoë focused on two primary issues in his historic 2001 campaign. The first was to establish transparency in the city government. Delanoë ran on a platform of radical change from the dubious ways of the previous Mayor, Jean Tiberi, whose “arrogant clan has made off with the city” (Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris 2001 ; Delanoë lance sa campagne, 17 October 2010).
But from the outset he also promoted a redistribution of public space. He saw Paris as having been subject to the “hegemony of the automobile” under Tiberi and his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, and he promised to reverse that policy.
Sounds good, worth emulating everywhere. 'permanently decommissioned a highway'? Wow, unbelievable.During Delanoë’s 13 years in City Hall, many streets were redesigned to add dedicated bus lanes. More than 400 miles of bicycle lanes were created. Since 2002 the banks of the Seine have been closed to traffic each summer and 5,000 tons of sand have been used to create a beach in the middle of the city, complete with parasols and other sea-side amenities. In 2006 a major new tramway line was opened. In 2007 the city introduced a bikeshare program, Velib, that today has a quarter of a million subscribers and accounts for 100,000 trips a day on average. 20 mile per hour zones were created in many residential neighborhoods and new “shared spaces” were introduced in certain streets. In 2013 the city permanently decommissioned a highway segment to create a promenade along the Seine and unveiled the redesign of Paris’s largest square, Place de la République, now largely reserved for pedestrians.
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