Paris' Green Belt in the 21st century – Yesterday, today, tomorrow?

Imagined first as a homogeneous system, the idea of the Green Belt has been confronted for a century with urban development which, little by little, has made it impossible to see this initial intention. Nevertheless specific aspects of the territory, whether they be social, land use or landscaping, still let one imagine a renewed identity emerging in the future.

Around the infrastructures of the Boulevards Maréchaux and the Boulevard Périphérique, there is a juxtaposition in the ways that land is used. First there were clearly visible systems such as the belt of HBM housing schemes, Cité Univesitaire and the Lafay Bill, then as time moved on through the epochs the pressure of land use associated with the persistent image of the area as being behind and rejected, led to an ubanisation which broke up the overall coherence of the territory, giving place to it being considered mainly as a base for development projects and service zones. The importance of a Green Belt gradually became secondary.

With the arrival of the Maréchaux tramway, the accomplishment of the - Renouvellement Urbain -- big urban renewal projects, the maintenance work on the covered sections of the ring road at  des Lilas and Porte de Vanves and the new pedestrian bridges, the Green Belt as a whole is reappearing at the heart of an urban project.

In the current metropolitan context the Green Belt has a role to play which  needs to go beyond the image of a gap and a no man's land for it to become an advantageous space which is lived in, passed through, shared and at the service of the dense city. Enhancing its specific characteristics, offering landscape qualities, opening up the potential for new uses and paths for crossing it, ecological corridors, areas of biodiversity, will be made possible by acting upon the systems of which it is made up.

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