This is the challenge that French president Sarkozy offered to ten prominent architecture and town planning firms. They presented their ideas earlier this month.
I love Paris and call the city home, so the proposals interest me keenly.
There's an official site, but it's ungainly and user unfriendly and weighted heavily in favor of still and moving images of politicians. Comparison and synthesis have been relegated to a page that's "under construction". There's some official video, but it's hard to use. The press, especially l'Express, offers coverage that's incomplete but more accessible.
But travelers who will be coming to Paris later this year will be able to join Paris residents at the Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine. The various submissions by the architects and planners will be on display there from May through November. This museum is in the Palais de Chaillot, across from the Eiffel Tower, and is open daily except Tuesday.
Sarkozy's initiative –Le Grand Pari– used a clever play on words: in French, "Paris" (the city) and "pari" (a bet, a wager), sound the same. So "the big Paris" or "greater Paris" sounds the same as "the big bet".
I use a bicycle almost daily to get around Paris, so I was disappointed to read of another fatality suffered by a cyclist using a Vélib rental bike, the sixth fatality since the service was lunched in 2007. The collision occurred in the Eighth Arrondissement, at the intersection of the avenue de Friedland and the rue Balzac. (I know this intersection well, and bike across it several times a week.)
The profile of this fatality tracks its predecessors:
The cyclist was a 50-year old man. The profile of a Vélib fatality is a middle aged cyclist, not a youth.
The cyclist was riding in broad daylight, on an ordinary street. Fatalities occur on ordinary streets, not traffic circles; they also occur during normal hours, not late at night.
Alcohol was not involved. Unless I've missed something or the
details haven't been reported, alcohol has not been a factor in any
Vélib fatality, for either cyclist or motorist.
The cyclist was struck by a turning truck. Vélib fatalities result from collisions with large vehicles. Turns seem to present particular dangers.
The vehicle driver said he saw nothing. Blind spots are a clear and present danger to cyclists. I'd written on this last September. At that time, there was talk of adding stickers to Vélib bicycles to warn cyclists of the dangers posed by blind spots. I haven't yet seen any stickers.
I deplore this latest fatality, and especially a public policy failure to do more to prevent future loss of life. For this cyclist, the critical point I'd want to make to the police and city officials is: given that the victims are not drunken, joyriding misfits, what can be done to enhance cyclist safety?
I have a few hypotheses:
One is that there may be a learning curve, for truckers. Do big rig drivers learn about cyclists in driving school? I suspect that the subject isn't yet covered. Without assigning blame, I'd also want to know whether most truckers driving in central Paris come from the suburbs, where they're less used to congested streets and cyclists.It may be possible to target drivers of large vehicles, to alert them to dangers posed to cyclists.
Another is that these are pure accidents: the driver does not see the cyclist, due to a blind spot. Retrofitting vehicles is impratical; prominent warnings to cyclists have yet to be made. What has been done in cycle-friendly towns in the Netherlands or Germany?
This is a quantitative problem that has an answer: how dangerous is Vélib, per kilometer traveled?
La presse française est unanime : Le président Obama a commis une gaffe quand il a lancé une blague sur les jeux paralympiques.
Mesdames et messieurs les journalistes, vous n'avez rien compris.
Commençons par l'essentiel : Barack Obama est passé sur le Tonight Show with Jay Leno, émission très regardée en troisième partie de soirée, animée par un humoriste. Ainsi, Obama se montrait homme, homme du peuple, président Démocratique (avec un "d" majuscule), quelqu'un qui agit avec du séreieux sans nécessairement se prendre au sérieux.
Plus encore, Obama confirmait son statut d'homme de couleur qu'un américain "blanc" aimerait (aurait aimé ?) avoir comme copain. Ainsi, quand Leno interrogeait Obama sur les équipement sportifs à la Maison blanche, la question de fond a été plutôt : Un homme de couleur à la Maison blanche, qu'est-ce que ça change ?
Leno a demandé à Obama si ce dernier avait brûlé et démoli le bowling installé à la Maison blanche, pour installer à la place un terrain de basket.
Ce qui importe dans la réponse d'Obama, c'est que le bowling a été conservé, et que le président y jouait de temps en temps. Oui, il va faire installer des paniers de basket sur un terrain de tennis, mais le bowling reste.
La "blague" douteuse est sortie quand Obama a évoqué ses performances au bowling. Ici encore, la vraie question était : Et un homme de couleur à la Maison blanche, qu'est-ce que ça change ? Car parmi les préjugés qui subsistent aux Etats-Unis, il y a celui-ci : le bowling est un sport de blancs, les personnes de couleur ne savent pas y jouer.
Obama a répondu, pour la paraphraser : en effet, je ne suis pas bon joueur, mon score est médiocre, risible même. Et pour mettre le point sur le "i", il s'est comparé à un athlète des Special Olympics. (Aux Etats-Unis, les Special Olympics visent les athlètes handicappés mentaux.) Pour interpréter les sens des propos tenus par Obama, on pourrait dire qu'il comparait un homme de couleur qui jouait à un sport "de blanc" à une personne handicappée mentale qui participe à un événement sportif. Dans les deux cas, il s'agit d'un combat pour se faire accepter.
Toujours est-il que le président Obama s'est mal exprimé ; il s'est excusé aussitôt auprès du directeur des Special Olympics, Tim Shriver. Le monde étant petit, il s'avère que Tim Shriver est le frère de Maria Shriver, épouse du gouverneur de Californie Arnold Schwarzenegger. Tim Shriver est aussi le fils d'Eunice Shriver, fondatrice des Special Olympics et soeur du président Kennedy, ainsi que de Rosemary Kennedy, handicappée mentale.
Tout me laisse penser ue la "gaffe" du président Obama fera de la publicité pour les Special Olympics et avancera les efforts d'intégrer dans la société américaine les handicappés mentaux.
Anyone who lives in France, as I do, soon becomes acquainted with strikes and demonstrations. The former often aim at disruption, disordering the routines of daily life. The latter usually aim at mobilization, a symbolic show of force.
There was a strike –a mix of public-sector workers of employees at troubled industrial firms– and a big demonstration in Paris yesterday. It was a lovely Spring day –even if it wasn't officially Spring– and turnout was high. Organizers claimed turnout of three million demonstrators throughout France; authorities pegged the nationwide total at about half that number. Whatever the actual turnout, there was a big crowd marching in Paris yesterday.
What are the demonstrators' demands? This turns out to be a tough question. Apart from some specific demands –to halt layoffs, to boost pensions– the demonstrators call on Sarkozy to act more decisively to stimulate the economy. Opinion polls show that strong majorities –from two thirds to three quarters– of French people support the demonstrators.
I'd argue that specific demands are secondary, and that what counts most in French demonstrations is the symbolic value behind mobilization. A demonstration is a sort of mirror image of an election: voting is individual, secret, and based on questions (candidacies) decided in advance; demonstrating is collective, done in public, and open-ended as concerns its agenda. I also think that the French demonstration we know today draws on deep cultural roots, going back to religious processions. When I see a big street demonstration in Paris, I think back to Claude Berri's "Manon des Sources", and a scene where Manon and the secular schoolteacher join a religious procession to ask divine intercession so that water flows again (even though Manon and Bernard know who's responsible for the water stoppage, and have just remedied the problem); it's symbolically important that Manon and the schoolteacher join in the procession.
March 20 will mark Norwuz (meaning "new day"), the Persian new year, which begins at the vernal equinox.
I called on some friends yesterday, and discovered two Nowruz traditions.
One is housecleaning, a very thorough Spring cleaning.
The other is haft sin, a ceremonial table set with seven items (at last) beginning with the Persian letter sin ("S"). I didn't have the presence of mind to ask whether I could photograph my friends' haft sin table, but remember seeing: wheat sprouts, spices, pudding, dried fruits, apples, decorated eggs, apples, berries, flowers, candles, goldfish (swimming in a large vase), and the Koran in Arabic and Persian versions.