From
the steps of the Grande Arche, you can see the
Arc de Triomphe in Paris - on a clear day.
La Defense - Paris `Business' Slum
Sore Sights To Make Eyes Weep
By Richard Erickson
Paris Kiosque - April 2001 - Volume 8, Number 4
Copyright (c) 2001 Richard Erickson - used with permission
Today is the beginning of
the Chinese New Year of the Serpent and the year
2544. The weather is perfect for it, so it will
be celebrated with street parades, dragon dances and many noodles
with flashing chopsticks - during this coming weekend, not today.
Since this wonderful occasion is not available for today's report,
I have decided to present something completely different.
You
may be under the impression that modern, stylish, high-tech France
is run from 19th century townhouses - called 'hôtels' locally
- in downtown Paris, but this is not the case.
Downtown Paris is reserved for 25 million annual visitors and
annual parades such as Bastille Day's, for New Years Eve
street parties - also annual - for the finish of
the Tour de France and for lots of demonstrating strikers
and other ordinary malcontents. If there's any space left over,
it is used for towing away illegally-parked cars.
About three
decades ago, some power types decided to place Paris' business
downtown out of town so it wouldn't offend local
sensitivities. This happened after the 56-story Tour Montparnasse was accidently
built before anyone realized what an eyesore it would be
- and still is.
'Euro'-flags - to signal the Grande
Arche as a Euro-information center.
Also, a new President of
France came along, and he stopped the mad plans to
turn the banks of the Seine into freeways - after
one was half built and named after Georges Pompidou.
The
President of France is a pretty powerful person. I don't
know if he actually had the idea, but he must
have okayed the plan to go far out west -
beyond the rich bourgeois neighborhood in Neuilly - and grab
parts of Puteaux and Courbevoie in Paris' light-industrial and 'red'
belt, and put the business downtown there.
These two places
are not even in Paris; there are in the Hauts-de-Seine
department. Just in case anybody was thinking of protesting against
this land-grab, the new place was called 'La Défense' -
as in 'don't mess with it.' Then it was given
a Paris postal code.
This allows businesses to be located,
somewhat offshore, in La Défense and pretend to be in
Paris on their letterheads. Visiting businessmen who have business to
do in Paris must be surprised that the places they
need to visit are not next to the Ritz or
anywhere near the Champs-Elysées.
The don't pay their own taxi
fares anyway. Local residents do, but they would be too
high, so the line one métro was extended beyond Neuilly
to La Défense, and a regional express rail line was
run through it too so working people could live far
away and travel a long time to La Défense, instead
of to Paris where they'd rather go.
It must have
been a very high-up decision, because the main axis of
La Défense lines up with the Pyramid in the Louvre,
and the Obelisk at Concorde, and the Arc de Triomphe
at Etoile.
To 'anchor' it all, a huge arch -
called the 'Grande Arche,' and not 'Pompidou's Brique' - was
built at La Défense's western end and you
could see it in a clear day all the way
from the Louvre, if the slight hill of the Etoile
wasn't in the way and if there were any clear
days.
La Défense restaurants - one named after a Panama
Canal swindle.
While people go around in Paris still moaning
about the awful Tour Montparnasse - unless they are lost
- out at La Défense newer and uglier towers are
thrown up every day and nobody gives a damn, because
they are all in their very own slum and hardly
anybody actually lives in it. One glass and steel tower
looks pretty much like another anyway.
Nobody could live in
it because it is constantly under construction. This has been
going on so long that a lot of things are
being reconstructed - with the result, if you thought you
had the place figured out last year, this year you
are lost again.
For example, the main hall for the
métro and RER trains at La Défense has been under
reconstruction for three years, and when I asked today if
it was finished a young lady sighed and said, "In
2003," without a shred of conviction.
Like anybody else with
sense, I wouldn't be in La Défense to do this
report for you if I didn't have some other 'real'
reason to be in the place. My directions to my
destination were made with a taxi or car in mind,
which are totally unrelated to how to get around on
foot.
A glance at an orientation plan confirms my suspicion
that the building I am seeking is too new to
be on it. My map at home showed this too
- a blank area with the legend, 'under construction.' And
my map is only about six years old.
As an
extra added missing bit to the puzzle, La Défense has
outgrown itself and slopped over into parts of both Puteaux
and Courbevoie that it hadn't already gobbled up.
It
also looks like an attempt to reduce the slum effect
is underway, with the addition of a university campus -
not to mention that another area the size of the
existing La Défense is to be added to the west
of it. This will create an unrelieved non-stop business slum
between two loops of the Seine - except for a
handy cemetery right behind the Grande Arche.
I guess we
should all be thankful that this is all going on
outside of Paris. But what I don't understand when I
am in La Défense, is in the maze of Paris,
with all its odd streets going every which way, no
place is really hard to find.
Out at La Défense
there are whole fields of concrete rimmed with huge towers
and a lot of these have names on them.
But the 'name' people have dreamed up schemes - that
are the reverse of the old Gauls tearing down the
direction signs so the Romans would get lost and go
to Germany.
Just as I began to wonder just who
I might ask - I spotted a robot info-pole. Without
much hope I tapped in 'Tour Cedre' and hit the
print-out button.
Concrete, steel, glass, reflections - and a grungy
green mall for office workers.
Here is the message it
made for me - "You are at Le Parvis, at
the entry to the CNIT, La Défense 4. You want
to go to Le Cedre, avenue de l'Arche, Courbevoie." 'Aha,'
I thought, 'The damn thing works - if it knows
where I am it might not even be stupid!'
The
message continues, "On your right follow the black arrows indicating
'La Défense 7.' Then turn to your right and follow
the black arrows to the 'Tour Sequoia.' You will arrive
in front of the 'Thumb' monument. Go left and take
the footbridge and follow the black arrows to 'Pole Universitaire.'
The neighborhood of the 'Arche' is on the right of
the 'Pole Universitaire Leonard de Vinci.'"
It does not explicitly
say that Le Cedre building is in this 'Arche' neighborhood,
but what else can I assume?
Leonardo de Vinci? Out
here? Here is a name so wrong it is slander.
The directions could have said, 'Look around the northwest corner
of the CNIT building 10 metres away, and go to
the ceder-colored building.'
But this wouldn't have worked at
night, just like the 'black arrows' won't. Also the direction
message didn't mention the house-sized blocks of marble after the
footbridge, that were set up as an obstacle course and
to obscure the black arrows - all architecturally-designed of course.
The people I managed to meet after doing through the
Tour Cedre's security maze, past blast barriers and around tank
traps asked me if I had any trouble following the
directions they'd sent me for taxis and cars.
Luckily, when
the meeting was over, thousands of tired office workers were
heading in the general direction of the nearest métro -
where else would they be going? - and all I
had to do was travel in their pack, for safety.
Calling La Défense a 'business slum' might seem a bit
strong. But slums are where people don't live well, and
in all the times I've visited La Défense I haven't
'lived well' in it.
Nobody has ever made a
disaster movie to match it. If it was used as
the site for one, it wouldn't have to be demolished
by spectacular explosions and helicopter collisions. As a disaster, it
stands on its own.
The carrousel is a permanent La
Défense fixture - but kids are not.
You can visit
La Défense for the price of a round-trip métro ride.
I would suggest doing this if you are in any
doubt about what makes Paris great - because of all
urban places in the world, La Défense is probably the
most anti-Paris.
If you can say that Paris is worth
saving pretty much as it is - it is handy
to have La Défense so close, to see what Paris
is being saved from. Of course, life is short, and
there are better uses for métro tickets.
Richard Erickson, living in Paris for the last twenty years, has been putting
Paris online as long as anyone. More of his writings can be found in
Metropole Paris
where this article first appeared.
He can be contacted via
erickso@world-net.sct.fr.
