Haussmann's renovation of Paris
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Haussmann Renovations, or Haussmannization, of Paris was a work commissioned by Napoléon III and led by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, spanning from 1852 to 1870.
The project encompassed all aspects of urban planning, both in the center of Paris and in the surrounding districts: streets and boulevards, regulations imposed on facades of buildings, public parks, sewers and water works, city facilities and public monuments.
The project was strongly criticized by some of its contemporaries, forgotten for a good part of the twentieth century, and then redeemed when post-war urban planning became discredited; however, it still has an influence on the everyday lives of Parisians. It established the foundation of what is today the popular representation of the French capital around the world, by changing the old Paris of dense and irregular medieval alleyways into a modern city with wide avenues and open spaces.
It also must be noted that the unsanitary quarters "cleaned" by Haussmann contained very few of the bourgeois class. Indeed, the parting of uprooting of established working class residential areas may have been another security measure, as a disrupted and scattered community will find it harder to unite and so will pose less of a threat. To modern ears this may sound odd, but the working classes were still known as "the dangerous classes" to Parisians, and the French in general, and the memories of the 1789 and 1848 revolutions where workers revolted against the state had left deep impressions on the Parisian psyche.
So was established a sort of "zonage" that still dominates the distribution of housing and activities in Paris and its nearest suburbs: from the centre to the west, offices and bourgeois quarters; from the east and outer rim, poorer housing and industry.
It should also be noted that when reports of the outbreak of the Paris Commune insurrection reached Haussmann he expressed his frustration at not having been able to carry out his reforms quickly enough to make such an insurrection futile.
