Influidos por el sansimonismo, Napoleón III e ingenieros como Miguel Chevalier o empresarios como los hermanos Pereire creían en el voluntarismo económico, que puede transformar la sociedad y reabsorber la pobreza. Es un poder fuerte, e incluso autoritario, de animar a los capitalistas a lanzar grandes trabajos que beneficiaran al conjunto de la sociedad y en particular a los más pobres. El pivote del sistema económico es la banca, que se desarrolló considerablemente. Estos principios encuentran un campo ideal de aplicación en los proyectos de renovación de París. Los trabajos de Haussmann serán decididos y encuadrados por el Estado, puestos en ejecución por los empresarios privados y financiados por el préstamo.

The Haussmannian system

At first, the State expropriated the owners of the land concerned by the renovation plans. Then he demolished the buildings and built the new axes with all their urban equipment (water, gas, drains). Haussmann, contrary to Rambuteau, resorted to massive loans to find the money necessary for these operations, 50 to 80 million francs a year. Starting in 1858, the Caisse des travaux de Paris (Paris Works Fund) was the preferred tool for financing. The State recovered the money borrowed by reselling the new land in the form of individual lots to developers who had to build the new buildings according to a precise specification. This system made it possible to dedicate an amount twice as high as the municipal budget itself to the work each year.

Then the system gradually broke down. The massive loans from the Fund generated a debt amounting to 1.5 billion francs in 1870 and this contributed to discrediting the great works. Jules Ferry will denounce the financial hole in 1867: "Haussmann's fantastic accounts."[9]​.

Public regulation

Haussmann benefited from a legislative and regulatory framework designed to facilitate the work and ensure the homogeneity of the new arteries.

The decree of March 26, 1852 regarding the streets of Paris, adopted a year before Haussmann's appointment, enabled the main legal instruments:

The public powers intervene both on the gauge of the buildings through regulations, and on the aesthetic appearance of the facades through easements:.

The capital role played by road architects, in charge of managing roads and their public services, marks the importance assumed by engineers within the large bodies of the State.

El desarrollo de las operaciones refleja la evolución del Imperio: autoritario hasta 1859, más liberal a partir de 1860. Se destruyen para construir más de entre 1852 y 1870. Algunas de estas operaciones de urbanismo se continuaran bajo la Tercera República Francesa, después de la salida de Haussmann y de Napoleón III. París absorbió en 1860 sus faubourgs (suburbios) hasta las «fortificaciones» que habían sido construidas por Thiers en 1844 (que fueron demolidas a partir de 1919).

Los doce antiguos distritos (Arrondissements) dieron paso a veinte nuevos distritos, que no mantuvieron ni los límites ni la numeración anterior.

A network of large openings

When Rambuteau had opened a new important road in the heart of the city, Parisians were amazed by its width: . Haussmann is going to relegate rue Rambuteau") to the status of a secondary thoroughfare with a network of new openings from and to . Avenue Foch, for its part, which measures nearly 1,000 feet wide, with its monumental side walks. He will begin work on the realization of boulevard Diderot, "a consequence of the expansion of the old rue Mazas"). The network of Haussmannian and post-Haussmannian arteries constitutes, even today, the ossatura of the fabric Parisian urban.

The great north-south and east-west divide

From 1854 to 1858, Haussmann took advantage of the most authoritarian period of Napoléon III's reign to do what only this decade, possibly, could do in the entire history of Paris: transform its center by opening a gigantic intersection.

The construction of the north-south axis, from the Boulevard de Sébastopol to the Boulevard Saint-Michel, caused numerous alleys and dead ends to disappear from the map. It formed a large crossroads at the level of Grand Châtelet with the Rue de Rivoli: this last street, originally established by Napoleon I along the Tuileries, was extended under the Second Empire to the Rue Saint-Antoine&action=edit&redlink=1 "Rue Saint-Antoine (Paris) (not yet written)").

During this time, Baltard and Félix-Emmanuel Callet") were preparing and equipping the Halles, a project launched by Rambuteau, while the Île de la Cité was largely demolished and rearranged. Its bridges were rebuilt or subject to major works. The rue des Halles&action=edit&redlink=1 "Rue des Halles (Paris) (not yet written)") was built in 1854, in order to link the Halles with the Place du Châtelet.

The first works on the left bank began in 1854. The opening of the rue des Ecoles" to the rue des Fossés-Saint-Bernard"), which was already foreseen before the inauguration of the prefect Haussmann, allowed the completion of a better service to the Latin quarter and its schools.

Haussmann completes this great crossroads with axes that connect the first ring of boulevards with the center, such as the rue de Rennes" on the left bank and the avenue de l'Opéra on the right bank. It should be noted that the work on the avenue de l'Opéra will not be mostly undertaken until 1876 and will not be fully completed until 1879. As for the rue de Rennes, which was to reach the Seine, it will never be finished.

The completion of the boulevard crowns

Haussmann continues the work of Louis XIV. Widen large boulevards and build or plan new large-gauge axes, such as Richard-Lenoir Boulevard.

The western neighborhoods benefited from a prestigious operation: twelve avenues, most built during the Second Empire, met at the place de l'Étoile. Among them, Foch Avenue, surrounded by gardens, is distinguished by its exceptional width of . In contrast to the latter, "Avenue de Friedland") was the first part of an axis that, after the completion of Boulevard Haussmann, would link the Place de l'Etoile with the Opéra district.

The Boulevard Voltaire facilitated the contour of the center from the Place de la Nation and the Avenue Daumesnil"), cleared the riverside neighborhoods of the Gare de Lyon, while guaranteeing access to the Bois de Vincennes.

The third network: the outer districts

In the last years of his mandate, Haussmann began to prepare the districts created on the site of the old communes annexed in 1860. He thus created a very long and winding road that affected the XIX, XX and XXI districts: rue de Puebla"),[11​ rue des Pyrénées"), avenue du Général-Michel-Bizot").

Some of the axes connected the grand boulevards of Louis

On the left bank, as the "boulevards du midi" [midday], which pass through the Place d'Italia ("Place d'Italia (Paris)"), Place Denfert-Rochereau and Montparnasse were too far from the center, the idea of ​​another road crossing in an east-west direction prevailed. Haussmann folded the Rue des Écoles"), drawn by Napoleon III, in his personal project: the Boulevard Saint-Germain, which extended the great boulevards of the North Bank on the left bank.

Other axes such as Boulevard Malesherbes or even Boulevards Barbès and Ornano"), both towards the Gare du Nord, made it possible to cross the external arrondissements in the direction of the center.

The squares-roundabouts

The interconnection between the major circulation axes – boulevards, avenues or others – imposed the creation of tailored squares. The Place du Châtelet, designed by Davioud, was the crossroads between the two great axes that crossed Paris from north to south and from east to west. Haussmann's works reconditioned other large squares already existing throughout Paris: the place de l'Etoile, the place du Château-d'Eau") or the place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville.

Others were created from scratch, such as the squares Malesherbes, de l'Alma, Pereire, Puebla, du Prince-Eugène or even l'Opéra.

Railway stations

Haussmann had the Lyon station built in 1855 by François-Alexis Cendrier and the Gare du Nord in 1865 by Jacques Hittorff.

He dreamed of interconnecting the Parisian stations by railways with each other, but he had to content himself with facilitating their access by connecting them with important axes. From the Gare de Lyon, rue de Lyon"), the boulevard Richard-Lenoir and the boulevard de Magenta thus allowed you to reach the gare de l'Est. Two parallel axes, rue La Fayette&action=edit&redlink=1 "Rue La Fayette (Paris) (not yet drawn up)") and boulevard Haussmann on the one hand, rue de Châteaudun") and rue de Maubeuge") on the other, They link the neighborhood of the Gare d'Est and the Gare du Nord with the Gare Saint-Lazare. On the left bank, the rue de Rennes") connects with the Gare Montparnasse, then located on the current site of the Montparnasse Tower.

The monuments

Napoleon III and Haussmann marked the city with prestigious achievements. Charles Garnier built the Garnier Opera in an eclectic style and Gabriel Davioud conceived two symmetrical theaters on the Place du Châtelet.

The Hôtel-Dieu, the city barracks (which will become the police prefecture) and the Commercial Court") replaced the medieval quarters of the Île de la Cité. Each of the twenty new Paris arrondissements received its own town hall.

They are in charge of including these monuments in the city, providing great perspectives. Thus, the avenue de l'Opéra was designed to provide a magnificent setting for Garnier's building, but the latter found it too narrow and had to enhance its façade to combat the excessive heights of the buildings around it, while the houses that blocked, according to them, the Notre-Dame cathedral gave way to a large esplanade.

In the religious domain, the Second Empire saw the advent of the Church of St. Eugene (now église Saint-Eugène-Sainte-Cécile"), the church of the Holy Trinity&action=edit&redlink=1 "Église de la Sainte-Trinité (Paris) (not yet redacted)"), the church of St. Ambrose "Church of St. Ambrose (Paris)") and the Church of St. Augustine "Church of Saint Augustine (Paris)").[12] The latter is notable for its high vault without buttresses, made possible by the use of a metal structure, and its iconic location at the intersection of several main boulevards.

Modern public facilities

The renewal of Paris was intended to be global. The healthiness of the accommodation implied better air circulation and also a better water supply and a better waste disposal network.

In 1852, drinking water came mainly from the Ourcq River. Steam engines also extracted water from the Seine, whose hygiene was deplorable. Haussmann entrusted the engineer Belgrand with the creation of a new water supply system for the capital, which involved the construction of 600 kilometers of aqueduct between 1865 and 1900. The first, the Dhuis, provided water collected near Château-Thierry. These aqueducts poured their water into tanks located in the capital. In the capital itself and next to the Montsouris park, Belgrand then erected the largest water tank in the world at the time to receive water from the Vanne&action=edit&redlink=1 "Vanne (river) (not yet written), the Montsouris reservoir").

A second network, dedicated to non-potable water, also took water from the Ourcq and the Seine for cleaning the streets and irrigating green spaces. To achieve this, an inverted siphon installed under the Pont de l'Alma) allowed the canals on the left bank to pass their waters to the right bank.

The evacuation of dirty water and waste went hand in hand with the bringing of drinking water. Once again, it was the Second Empire that gave the decisive impetus to the modernization of the Paris sewage network. "The law of 1852 made it mandatory for buildings to be connected to the network when the street had one. Streets that did not have one will benefit from the installation of a fully accessible sewage network: more than 340 kilometers of network were built under the direction of Belgrand between 1854 and 1870. The network was unitary: The rainwater flowed through the same channel as the sewage. The drains stopped pouring into the Seine in the heart of Paris, and emptied much further downstream, in Asnières.

These two networks, extensive and perfected over the following eras, are still in use today.

Napoleon III also reorganized gas distribution in Paris. In 1850, he entrusted a concession to a single company, the Compagnie parisienne du gaz[13]​, always maintaining control of prices. The consumption of lighting gas, a by-product of the (polluting) transformation of coal into coke, which had appeared in Paris under the July Monarchy, increased significantly. The industrialist and chemist Payen warned:

At the same time, Haussmann entrusted Davioud with the creation of the street furniture that is still present today on the sidewalks and gardens of the capital.

green spaces

Green spaces were rare in Paris, a city that had always developed within its walls which, despite successive extensions, ended up restricting it.

Seduced by the vast parks of London, Napoleon III entrusted the engineer Jean-Charles Alphand, Haussmann's future successor under the Republic, with the creation of several parks and forests. The Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes bordered the city to the west and east. Inside the Thiers wall, the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont and the Parc Montsouris offered walks to the inhabitants of neighborhoods too far from the large outer forests. The Monceau Park, former property of the 'Orléans family, was partly divided into lots and built. Each neighborhood also received small squares&action=edit&redlink=1 "Square (lieu) (not yet written)") (around 80 squares for the 80 neighborhoods of Paris, the intention being that any inhabitant of Paris could find a square within a ten-minute walk of their home[14]​), while rows of trees lined some avenues (the number of trees planted in the streets of Paris is estimated at 80,000 during that period[14]​).

City that inspired Haussmann

Before assuming the position that Napoleon III would give to Haussmann, he was the prefect of the Giróns region. He lived in Bordeaux, a city with wide avenues whose width was proportional to the height of the buildings that flanked it, therefore when he took the reins of the capital, he did so with the idea that Paris would look like Bordeaux.

Balance

Louis Lazare shows that the work had eliminated 57 streets or passages, 2,227 houses demolished to the ground and more than 25,000 inhabitants, almost all workers, forced to leave the city center were pushed to the outskirts. This displacement, which followed the progress of work in the center of Paris, was a forced migration. The population left predominantly to the neighborhoods neighboring the former wall d'octroi"), mainly towards the faubourgs du Temple"), Saint-Antoine") and Saint-Marceau")[15]​ but also in the suburbs, mainly in the communes of Belleville&action=edit&redlink=1 "Belleville (Seine) (not yet written)"), Ménilmontant&action=edit&redlink=1 "Ménilmontant (quartier parisien) (not yet drafted)"), Charonne&action=edit&redlink=1 "Charonne (Seine) (not yet drafted)"), Ternes"), Montrouge, Vaugirard&action=edit&redlink=1 "Vaugirard (Seine) (not yet drafted)") et Grenelle&action=edit&redlink=1 "Grenelle (Seine) (not yet drafted)").

Artistas y arquitectos como Charles Garnier denunciaron la monotonía sofocante de esta arquitectura monumental. Políticos y escritores acusaron la extensión de las especulaciones y de la corrupción (La Curée, de Zola) y algunos acusaron sin razón a Haussmann de enriquecimiento personal. Las numerosas críticas se referían no obstante a cuestiones de fondo y van a acabar por hacer caer al prefecto.

El debate sobre la obra de Haussmann.

Antes de nada deberíamos decir que en el caso de París y de Haussmann, las actuaciones que finalmente quedan a la vista son menos importantes que otras cosas que creó desde su puesto y que son calles que se pueden ver cada día. En este sentido podríamos decir que la intervención de Haussmann se apoya en un pilar fundamental que es la reforma en la forma de gestión y en la actividad administrativa de los poderes públicos.

El interés que tiene el plan de Haussmann radica en ser el primer ejemplo de una acción, sobre una trama ya existente, lo suficientemente amplia e importante como para mantenerse con el paso de los años y de las transformaciones sufridas posteriormente por la ciudad. Pero esta forma de actuar fue criticada en su tiempo. Si los liberales le criticaban sus “métodos financieros“, los intelectuales y artistas no le perdonaban lo que ellos entendían como la destrucción de los ambientes del viejo París y la vulgaridad de las nuevas construcciones. En general el plan de Haussmann funcionó perfectamente durante muchos decenios, pero luego llegó a quedarse inadecuado y “pequeño“ para las necesidades crecientes de los nuevos tiempos, con el agravante de que aquel enorme dispositivo se mostraba como un ente que carecía de flexibilidad y que oponía una gran resistencia a cualquier modificación. En el fondo Haussmann piensa que París puede ser “reordenado“ de una vez por todas y que esa reordenación deberá hacerse con criterios de regularidad geométrica y simetría aceptando en este punto los convencionalismos de la cultura de la academia.

Haussmann no puede actuar como lo harán los urbanistas barrocos sino que su acción es un continuo estímulo y coordinación de las múltiples fuerzas que actúan de modo siempre variable sobre la formación urbana.

The widening of streets as a weapon of an authoritarian regime?

Napoleon III's contemporaries accused him of having hidden an essentially police project under social and hygienic concerns: the construction of wide roads would have had as its main objective to facilitate the movements of troops and the establishment of straight streets would have allowed cannon fire on the mutinous crowd and its barricades.

The very breadth of the work showed that Napoleon's goals could not be limited to the aspect of public safety: beyond the opening of the boulevards, which was the most spectacular part, the transformation involved the establishment of modern underground networks, the installation of effective street furniture on the surface and the harmonization of architecture along the new streets. It is true, however, that Napoleon wanted to establish strict order. Haussmann did not hesitate to explain that his openings would facilitate the maintenance of order to promote his projects before the Council of Paris" or before the local owners. The strategic dimension was therefore present, but constituted only one element among others. It was possibly the most important when it came to linking the main barracks together.[16] This concerned the Boulevard Voltaire and the Rue Monge, Gay-Lussac and Claude-Bernard, according to Pierre Pinel.

Haussmann was not responsible for the police. His mandate corresponded, on the contrary, to a weakening of the prefect of police") in favor of the prefect of Paris, who recovered powers such as problems related to unhealthiness, public lighting and street cleaning.[17]​.

The breakdown of social balance

Despite the social ideals that initially partly animated the transformations of Paris in the spirit of Napoleon III, numerous contemporary observers denounced the demographic and social effects of the urban operations carried out by Haussmann.

Louis Lazare"), author under the prefect Rambuteau of an important dictionnaire des voies parisiennes") [Administrative and historical dictionary of the streets of Paris and its monuments], estimated in 1861 in the Revue municipale that Haussmann's works contributed to the disproportionate growth of the population in need of assistance, attracting a poor population to Paris.[18] In fact, Haussmann himself He slowed down work to a certain extent in order to avoid an excess influx of workers to Paris.

On the other hand, critics denounced, since the 1850s, the effects that the renovations had on the social composition of Paris. In a somewhat schematic way, a portrait of the pre-Haussmannian Parisian building was drawn as a synthesis of the Parisian social hierarchy: bourgeois, on the first floor; officials and employees, in the second and third; workers, in the room; service personnel, students and the poor, in the attics. All social classes thus coincided in the same building. This coexistence, which of course had to be qualified according to the neighborhoods, would have largely disappeared after Haussmann's work. These would have had two effects according to the habitat distribution plan in Paris:

In response, Haussmann put forward the very complex creation of the Bois de Vincennes, intended to provide the working population with a walk comparable to the Bois de Boulogne. On the other hand, it should be noted that the unhealthy neighborhoods “nettoyés” by Haussmann hardly housed bourgeois people.

Thus a form of zoning was established that always dominated the distribution of inhabitants and activities in Paris and its nearby banlieue: in the center and in the west, the offices and bourgeois neighborhoods, to the east and on the periphery the poorest inhabitants and industrial activities.

The crisis of the financing system

At the end of the 1860s, the financing system already experienced dysfunctions. The annexation of the neighboring communes in 1860 had been very expensive: the work to be carried out in these suburban neighborhoods was more important than in the city center, which was already provided with some equipment. The planned credits were, by far, insufficient. On the other hand, the flexibility of the political regime itself made expropriations more difficult; the jurisprudence of the Council of State and the Court of Cassation") almost always intervened in favor of the owners.

Furthermore, Parisians were already suffering badly from the works that had paralyzed the city for almost more than twenty years. The networks of boulevards that saturated the outer districts with construction did not have as obvious a usefulness as the opening of the Boulevard de Sébastopol or the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

Jules Ferry made a name for himself thanks to a series of press articles grouped together under the title Les Comptes fantastiques d’Haussmann (The fantastic accounts of Haussmann). He denounced the exaggerated ambition of the latest projects and their uncertain financing. These projects were in effect financed, not by the loan, but by delegation bonds issued by the Caisse des travaux de Paris [Paris Works Fund], outside the control of Parliament.

Haussmann was finally deposed from office in early 1870, a few months before the end of the Second Empire, which he had served for its entire duration. The debts incurred were finally absorbed by the Third Republic "Third Republic (France)").

Haussmannian aesthetics: the “street-wall”

"Haussmannianism" was not content only with laying out streets and creating appropriate facilities. He also intervened in the aesthetic aspect of private properties.

The street front of the block "Manzana (urbanismo)") (in French, islet, îlot) was conceived as a homogeneous architectural ensemble. The property was not autonomous and had to contribute to a unified urban landscape with the other buildings supported by the new openings. However, the Haussmannian block remains heterogeneous: only the plots located in the new openings were affected by modernization, and the other plots of the previous block were not destroyed; The buildings from previous centuries coexisted with the new buildings, and the randomness of the unbuildable plots revealed the back part of these constructions in patios or in the new alignments.

The Paris Urban Planning Regulations and the easements imposed by the public powers favored a typology that completed the classic evolution of the Parisian property towards the characteristic façade of Haussmannian Paris:.

The façade is organized around strong horizontal lines that often continue from one building to the next: balconies, cornices, perfect alignment of façades without significant setbacks or protrusions. The Rivoli street model is extended to all the new Parisian streets, at the risk of standardizing certain neighborhoods. On the façade, progress in sawing and transportation techniques allowed ashlar stone to be used in a "large rig", that is, in the form of thick blocks and not as a simple cladding. The streets produced a monumental effect that exempted buildings from resorting to decoration: sculptures or moldings would not multiply until the end of the century.

Posterity of Haussmannianism

The Haussmannian transformations improved the quality of life in the capital. The great epidemics, especially those of cholera, disappeared (but not those of tuberculosis), circulation was improved, new buildings were built better and more functionally than the old ones. But having intervened only occasionally in the old neighborhoods, there were still unhealthy areas, which explains the resurgence of hygienist ideas in the following century, and then the radicalism of some urban planners of the 19th century.

The Second Empire marked the urban history of Paris so much that all subsequent architectural and urban planning movements will be forced to refer to it, either to adapt to it or to reject it, or even to try to repeat certain elements.

The end of "pure" Haussmannianism can be dated to the Paris urban planning regulations of 1882 and 1884, which broke with the uniformity of the classical street by allowing the projections and the first fantasies at roof level, which will develop considerably after the regulation of 1902. However, it is still only a "post-Haussmannianism", which rejects nothing more than the austerity of the Napoleonic model without questioning the general disposition of the streets and the blocks.

After the Second World War, however, new housing needs and the advent, a century after Napoleon III, of a new voluntarist power with the Gaullist Fifth Republic opened a new era of Parisian urban planning. This almost completely rejected the Haussmanian heritage in favor of Le Corbusier's ideas, abandoning the alignment on the street, the limitation of the clearance and the street itself, abandoned to the automobile to the detriment of pedestrian spaces in "Dalle urbanism" (reconstruction urbanism after the Second World War). This new model was quickly called into question in the 1970s, which marked the beginning of the rediscovery of the Haussmanian heritage: the return to the multifunctional street was accompanied by a return to the limitation of the clearance and, in certain neighborhoods, by an attempt to recover the architectural homogeneity of the blocks of the Second Empire.

Parisian public opinion today has a positive view of the Haussmannian heritage, to the point that certain suburban cities, for example Issy-les-Moulineaux or Puteaux, have built neighborhoods that claim even in their name ("Haussmannian district") the Haussmannian heritage. These neighborhoods are actually pastiches of the post-Haussmannian architecture of the beginning of the century with their "viewpoints" and their logias "Log (architecture)") (spacious balconies, mostly covered, containing a closure on one of their sides).

Influidos por el sansimonismo, Napoleón III e ingenieros como Miguel Chevalier o empresarios como los hermanos Pereire creían en el voluntarismo económico, que puede transformar la sociedad y reabsorber la pobreza. Es un poder fuerte, e incluso autoritario, de animar a los capitalistas a lanzar grandes trabajos que beneficiaran al conjunto de la sociedad y en particular a los más pobres. El pivote del sistema económico es la banca, que se desarrolló considerablemente. Estos principios encuentran un campo ideal de aplicación en los proyectos de renovación de París. Los trabajos de Haussmann serán decididos y encuadrados por el Estado, puestos en ejecución por los empresarios privados y financiados por el préstamo.

The Haussmannian system

At first, the State expropriated the owners of the land concerned by the renovation plans. Then he demolished the buildings and built the new axes with all their urban equipment (water, gas, drains). Haussmann, contrary to Rambuteau, resorted to massive loans to find the money necessary for these operations, 50 to 80 million francs a year. Starting in 1858, the Caisse des travaux de Paris (Paris Works Fund) was the preferred tool for financing. The State recovered the money borrowed by reselling the new land in the form of individual lots to developers who had to build the new buildings according to a precise specification. This system made it possible to dedicate an amount twice as high as the municipal budget itself to the work each year.

Then the system gradually broke down. The massive loans from the Fund generated a debt amounting to 1.5 billion francs in 1870 and this contributed to discrediting the great works. Jules Ferry will denounce the financial hole in 1867: "Haussmann's fantastic accounts."[9]​.

Public regulation

Haussmann benefited from a legislative and regulatory framework designed to facilitate the work and ensure the homogeneity of the new arteries.

The decree of March 26, 1852 regarding the streets of Paris, adopted a year before Haussmann's appointment, enabled the main legal instruments:

The public powers intervene both on the gauge of the buildings through regulations, and on the aesthetic appearance of the facades through easements:.

The capital role played by road architects, in charge of managing roads and their public services, marks the importance assumed by engineers within the large bodies of the State.

El desarrollo de las operaciones refleja la evolución del Imperio: autoritario hasta 1859, más liberal a partir de 1860. Se destruyen para construir más de entre 1852 y 1870. Algunas de estas operaciones de urbanismo se continuaran bajo la Tercera República Francesa, después de la salida de Haussmann y de Napoleón III. París absorbió en 1860 sus faubourgs (suburbios) hasta las «fortificaciones» que habían sido construidas por Thiers en 1844 (que fueron demolidas a partir de 1919).

Los doce antiguos distritos (Arrondissements) dieron paso a veinte nuevos distritos, que no mantuvieron ni los límites ni la numeración anterior.

A network of large openings

When Rambuteau had opened a new important road in the heart of the city, Parisians were amazed by its width: . Haussmann is going to relegate rue Rambuteau") to the status of a secondary thoroughfare with a network of new openings from and to . Avenue Foch, for its part, which measures nearly 1,000 feet wide, with its monumental side walks. He will begin work on the realization of boulevard Diderot, "a consequence of the expansion of the old rue Mazas"). The network of Haussmannian and post-Haussmannian arteries constitutes, even today, the ossatura of the fabric Parisian urban.

The great north-south and east-west divide

From 1854 to 1858, Haussmann took advantage of the most authoritarian period of Napoléon III's reign to do what only this decade, possibly, could do in the entire history of Paris: transform its center by opening a gigantic intersection.

The construction of the north-south axis, from the Boulevard de Sébastopol to the Boulevard Saint-Michel, caused numerous alleys and dead ends to disappear from the map. It formed a large crossroads at the level of Grand Châtelet with the Rue de Rivoli: this last street, originally established by Napoleon I along the Tuileries, was extended under the Second Empire to the Rue Saint-Antoine&action=edit&redlink=1 "Rue Saint-Antoine (Paris) (not yet written)").

During this time, Baltard and Félix-Emmanuel Callet") were preparing and equipping the Halles, a project launched by Rambuteau, while the Île de la Cité was largely demolished and rearranged. Its bridges were rebuilt or subject to major works. The rue des Halles&action=edit&redlink=1 "Rue des Halles (Paris) (not yet written)") was built in 1854, in order to link the Halles with the Place du Châtelet.

The first works on the left bank began in 1854. The opening of the rue des Ecoles" to the rue des Fossés-Saint-Bernard"), which was already foreseen before the inauguration of the prefect Haussmann, allowed the completion of a better service to the Latin quarter and its schools.

Haussmann completes this great crossroads with axes that connect the first ring of boulevards with the center, such as the rue de Rennes" on the left bank and the avenue de l'Opéra on the right bank. It should be noted that the work on the avenue de l'Opéra will not be mostly undertaken until 1876 and will not be fully completed until 1879. As for the rue de Rennes, which was to reach the Seine, it will never be finished.

The completion of the boulevard crowns

Haussmann continues the work of Louis XIV. Widen large boulevards and build or plan new large-gauge axes, such as Richard-Lenoir Boulevard.

The western neighborhoods benefited from a prestigious operation: twelve avenues, most built during the Second Empire, met at the place de l'Étoile. Among them, Foch Avenue, surrounded by gardens, is distinguished by its exceptional width of . In contrast to the latter, "Avenue de Friedland") was the first part of an axis that, after the completion of Boulevard Haussmann, would link the Place de l'Etoile with the Opéra district.

The Boulevard Voltaire facilitated the contour of the center from the Place de la Nation and the Avenue Daumesnil"), cleared the riverside neighborhoods of the Gare de Lyon, while guaranteeing access to the Bois de Vincennes.

The third network: the outer districts

In the last years of his mandate, Haussmann began to prepare the districts created on the site of the old communes annexed in 1860. He thus created a very long and winding road that affected the XIX, XX and XXI districts: rue de Puebla"),[11​ rue des Pyrénées"), avenue du Général-Michel-Bizot").

Some of the axes connected the grand boulevards of Louis

On the left bank, as the "boulevards du midi" [midday], which pass through the Place d'Italia ("Place d'Italia (Paris)"), Place Denfert-Rochereau and Montparnasse were too far from the center, the idea of ​​another road crossing in an east-west direction prevailed. Haussmann folded the Rue des Écoles"), drawn by Napoleon III, in his personal project: the Boulevard Saint-Germain, which extended the great boulevards of the North Bank on the left bank.

Other axes such as Boulevard Malesherbes or even Boulevards Barbès and Ornano"), both towards the Gare du Nord, made it possible to cross the external arrondissements in the direction of the center.

The squares-roundabouts

The interconnection between the major circulation axes – boulevards, avenues or others – imposed the creation of tailored squares. The Place du Châtelet, designed by Davioud, was the crossroads between the two great axes that crossed Paris from north to south and from east to west. Haussmann's works reconditioned other large squares already existing throughout Paris: the place de l'Etoile, the place du Château-d'Eau") or the place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville.

Others were created from scratch, such as the squares Malesherbes, de l'Alma, Pereire, Puebla, du Prince-Eugène or even l'Opéra.

Railway stations

Haussmann had the Lyon station built in 1855 by François-Alexis Cendrier and the Gare du Nord in 1865 by Jacques Hittorff.

He dreamed of interconnecting the Parisian stations by railways with each other, but he had to content himself with facilitating their access by connecting them with important axes. From the Gare de Lyon, rue de Lyon"), the boulevard Richard-Lenoir and the boulevard de Magenta thus allowed you to reach the gare de l'Est. Two parallel axes, rue La Fayette&action=edit&redlink=1 "Rue La Fayette (Paris) (not yet drawn up)") and boulevard Haussmann on the one hand, rue de Châteaudun") and rue de Maubeuge") on the other, They link the neighborhood of the Gare d'Est and the Gare du Nord with the Gare Saint-Lazare. On the left bank, the rue de Rennes") connects with the Gare Montparnasse, then located on the current site of the Montparnasse Tower.

The monuments

Napoleon III and Haussmann marked the city with prestigious achievements. Charles Garnier built the Garnier Opera in an eclectic style and Gabriel Davioud conceived two symmetrical theaters on the Place du Châtelet.

The Hôtel-Dieu, the city barracks (which will become the police prefecture) and the Commercial Court") replaced the medieval quarters of the Île de la Cité. Each of the twenty new Paris arrondissements received its own town hall.

They are in charge of including these monuments in the city, providing great perspectives. Thus, the avenue de l'Opéra was designed to provide a magnificent setting for Garnier's building, but the latter found it too narrow and had to enhance its façade to combat the excessive heights of the buildings around it, while the houses that blocked, according to them, the Notre-Dame cathedral gave way to a large esplanade.

In the religious domain, the Second Empire saw the advent of the Church of St. Eugene (now église Saint-Eugène-Sainte-Cécile"), the church of the Holy Trinity&action=edit&redlink=1 "Église de la Sainte-Trinité (Paris) (not yet redacted)"), the church of St. Ambrose "Church of St. Ambrose (Paris)") and the Church of St. Augustine "Church of Saint Augustine (Paris)").[12] The latter is notable for its high vault without buttresses, made possible by the use of a metal structure, and its iconic location at the intersection of several main boulevards.

Modern public facilities

The renewal of Paris was intended to be global. The healthiness of the accommodation implied better air circulation and also a better water supply and a better waste disposal network.

In 1852, drinking water came mainly from the Ourcq River. Steam engines also extracted water from the Seine, whose hygiene was deplorable. Haussmann entrusted the engineer Belgrand with the creation of a new water supply system for the capital, which involved the construction of 600 kilometers of aqueduct between 1865 and 1900. The first, the Dhuis, provided water collected near Château-Thierry. These aqueducts poured their water into tanks located in the capital. In the capital itself and next to the Montsouris park, Belgrand then erected the largest water tank in the world at the time to receive water from the Vanne&action=edit&redlink=1 "Vanne (river) (not yet written), the Montsouris reservoir").

A second network, dedicated to non-potable water, also took water from the Ourcq and the Seine for cleaning the streets and irrigating green spaces. To achieve this, an inverted siphon installed under the Pont de l'Alma) allowed the canals on the left bank to pass their waters to the right bank.

The evacuation of dirty water and waste went hand in hand with the bringing of drinking water. Once again, it was the Second Empire that gave the decisive impetus to the modernization of the Paris sewage network. "The law of 1852 made it mandatory for buildings to be connected to the network when the street had one. Streets that did not have one will benefit from the installation of a fully accessible sewage network: more than 340 kilometers of network were built under the direction of Belgrand between 1854 and 1870. The network was unitary: The rainwater flowed through the same channel as the sewage. The drains stopped pouring into the Seine in the heart of Paris, and emptied much further downstream, in Asnières.

These two networks, extensive and perfected over the following eras, are still in use today.

Napoleon III also reorganized gas distribution in Paris. In 1850, he entrusted a concession to a single company, the Compagnie parisienne du gaz[13]​, always maintaining control of prices. The consumption of lighting gas, a by-product of the (polluting) transformation of coal into coke, which had appeared in Paris under the July Monarchy, increased significantly. The industrialist and chemist Payen warned:

At the same time, Haussmann entrusted Davioud with the creation of the street furniture that is still present today on the sidewalks and gardens of the capital.

green spaces

Green spaces were rare in Paris, a city that had always developed within its walls which, despite successive extensions, ended up restricting it.

Seduced by the vast parks of London, Napoleon III entrusted the engineer Jean-Charles Alphand, Haussmann's future successor under the Republic, with the creation of several parks and forests. The Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes bordered the city to the west and east. Inside the Thiers wall, the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont and the Parc Montsouris offered walks to the inhabitants of neighborhoods too far from the large outer forests. The Monceau Park, former property of the 'Orléans family, was partly divided into lots and built. Each neighborhood also received small squares&action=edit&redlink=1 "Square (lieu) (not yet written)") (around 80 squares for the 80 neighborhoods of Paris, the intention being that any inhabitant of Paris could find a square within a ten-minute walk of their home[14]​), while rows of trees lined some avenues (the number of trees planted in the streets of Paris is estimated at 80,000 during that period[14]​).

City that inspired Haussmann

Before assuming the position that Napoleon III would give to Haussmann, he was the prefect of the Giróns region. He lived in Bordeaux, a city with wide avenues whose width was proportional to the height of the buildings that flanked it, therefore when he took the reins of the capital, he did so with the idea that Paris would look like Bordeaux.

Balance

Louis Lazare shows that the work had eliminated 57 streets or passages, 2,227 houses demolished to the ground and more than 25,000 inhabitants, almost all workers, forced to leave the city center were pushed to the outskirts. This displacement, which followed the progress of work in the center of Paris, was a forced migration. The population left predominantly to the neighborhoods neighboring the former wall d'octroi"), mainly towards the faubourgs du Temple"), Saint-Antoine") and Saint-Marceau")[15]​ but also in the suburbs, mainly in the communes of Belleville&action=edit&redlink=1 "Belleville (Seine) (not yet written)"), Ménilmontant&action=edit&redlink=1 "Ménilmontant (quartier parisien) (not yet drafted)"), Charonne&action=edit&redlink=1 "Charonne (Seine) (not yet drafted)"), Ternes"), Montrouge, Vaugirard&action=edit&redlink=1 "Vaugirard (Seine) (not yet drafted)") et Grenelle&action=edit&redlink=1 "Grenelle (Seine) (not yet drafted)").

Artistas y arquitectos como Charles Garnier denunciaron la monotonía sofocante de esta arquitectura monumental. Políticos y escritores acusaron la extensión de las especulaciones y de la corrupción (La Curée, de Zola) y algunos acusaron sin razón a Haussmann de enriquecimiento personal. Las numerosas críticas se referían no obstante a cuestiones de fondo y van a acabar por hacer caer al prefecto.

El debate sobre la obra de Haussmann.

Antes de nada deberíamos decir que en el caso de París y de Haussmann, las actuaciones que finalmente quedan a la vista son menos importantes que otras cosas que creó desde su puesto y que son calles que se pueden ver cada día. En este sentido podríamos decir que la intervención de Haussmann se apoya en un pilar fundamental que es la reforma en la forma de gestión y en la actividad administrativa de los poderes públicos.

El interés que tiene el plan de Haussmann radica en ser el primer ejemplo de una acción, sobre una trama ya existente, lo suficientemente amplia e importante como para mantenerse con el paso de los años y de las transformaciones sufridas posteriormente por la ciudad. Pero esta forma de actuar fue criticada en su tiempo. Si los liberales le criticaban sus “métodos financieros“, los intelectuales y artistas no le perdonaban lo que ellos entendían como la destrucción de los ambientes del viejo París y la vulgaridad de las nuevas construcciones. En general el plan de Haussmann funcionó perfectamente durante muchos decenios, pero luego llegó a quedarse inadecuado y “pequeño“ para las necesidades crecientes de los nuevos tiempos, con el agravante de que aquel enorme dispositivo se mostraba como un ente que carecía de flexibilidad y que oponía una gran resistencia a cualquier modificación. En el fondo Haussmann piensa que París puede ser “reordenado“ de una vez por todas y que esa reordenación deberá hacerse con criterios de regularidad geométrica y simetría aceptando en este punto los convencionalismos de la cultura de la academia.

Haussmann no puede actuar como lo harán los urbanistas barrocos sino que su acción es un continuo estímulo y coordinación de las múltiples fuerzas que actúan de modo siempre variable sobre la formación urbana.

The widening of streets as a weapon of an authoritarian regime?

Napoleon III's contemporaries accused him of having hidden an essentially police project under social and hygienic concerns: the construction of wide roads would have had as its main objective to facilitate the movements of troops and the establishment of straight streets would have allowed cannon fire on the mutinous crowd and its barricades.

The very breadth of the work showed that Napoleon's goals could not be limited to the aspect of public safety: beyond the opening of the boulevards, which was the most spectacular part, the transformation involved the establishment of modern underground networks, the installation of effective street furniture on the surface and the harmonization of architecture along the new streets. It is true, however, that Napoleon wanted to establish strict order. Haussmann did not hesitate to explain that his openings would facilitate the maintenance of order to promote his projects before the Council of Paris" or before the local owners. The strategic dimension was therefore present, but constituted only one element among others. It was possibly the most important when it came to linking the main barracks together.[16] This concerned the Boulevard Voltaire and the Rue Monge, Gay-Lussac and Claude-Bernard, according to Pierre Pinel.

Haussmann was not responsible for the police. His mandate corresponded, on the contrary, to a weakening of the prefect of police") in favor of the prefect of Paris, who recovered powers such as problems related to unhealthiness, public lighting and street cleaning.[17]​.

The breakdown of social balance

Despite the social ideals that initially partly animated the transformations of Paris in the spirit of Napoleon III, numerous contemporary observers denounced the demographic and social effects of the urban operations carried out by Haussmann.

Louis Lazare"), author under the prefect Rambuteau of an important dictionnaire des voies parisiennes") [Administrative and historical dictionary of the streets of Paris and its monuments], estimated in 1861 in the Revue municipale that Haussmann's works contributed to the disproportionate growth of the population in need of assistance, attracting a poor population to Paris.[18] In fact, Haussmann himself He slowed down work to a certain extent in order to avoid an excess influx of workers to Paris.

On the other hand, critics denounced, since the 1850s, the effects that the renovations had on the social composition of Paris. In a somewhat schematic way, a portrait of the pre-Haussmannian Parisian building was drawn as a synthesis of the Parisian social hierarchy: bourgeois, on the first floor; officials and employees, in the second and third; workers, in the room; service personnel, students and the poor, in the attics. All social classes thus coincided in the same building. This coexistence, which of course had to be qualified according to the neighborhoods, would have largely disappeared after Haussmann's work. These would have had two effects according to the habitat distribution plan in Paris:

In response, Haussmann put forward the very complex creation of the Bois de Vincennes, intended to provide the working population with a walk comparable to the Bois de Boulogne. On the other hand, it should be noted that the unhealthy neighborhoods “nettoyés” by Haussmann hardly housed bourgeois people.

Thus a form of zoning was established that always dominated the distribution of inhabitants and activities in Paris and its nearby banlieue: in the center and in the west, the offices and bourgeois neighborhoods, to the east and on the periphery the poorest inhabitants and industrial activities.

The crisis of the financing system

At the end of the 1860s, the financing system already experienced dysfunctions. The annexation of the neighboring communes in 1860 had been very expensive: the work to be carried out in these suburban neighborhoods was more important than in the city center, which was already provided with some equipment. The planned credits were, by far, insufficient. On the other hand, the flexibility of the political regime itself made expropriations more difficult; the jurisprudence of the Council of State and the Court of Cassation") almost always intervened in favor of the owners.

Furthermore, Parisians were already suffering badly from the works that had paralyzed the city for almost more than twenty years. The networks of boulevards that saturated the outer districts with construction did not have as obvious a usefulness as the opening of the Boulevard de Sébastopol or the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

Jules Ferry made a name for himself thanks to a series of press articles grouped together under the title Les Comptes fantastiques d’Haussmann (The fantastic accounts of Haussmann). He denounced the exaggerated ambition of the latest projects and their uncertain financing. These projects were in effect financed, not by the loan, but by delegation bonds issued by the Caisse des travaux de Paris [Paris Works Fund], outside the control of Parliament.

Haussmann was finally deposed from office in early 1870, a few months before the end of the Second Empire, which he had served for its entire duration. The debts incurred were finally absorbed by the Third Republic "Third Republic (France)").

Haussmannian aesthetics: the “street-wall”

"Haussmannianism" was not content only with laying out streets and creating appropriate facilities. He also intervened in the aesthetic aspect of private properties.

The street front of the block "Manzana (urbanismo)") (in French, islet, îlot) was conceived as a homogeneous architectural ensemble. The property was not autonomous and had to contribute to a unified urban landscape with the other buildings supported by the new openings. However, the Haussmannian block remains heterogeneous: only the plots located in the new openings were affected by modernization, and the other plots of the previous block were not destroyed; The buildings from previous centuries coexisted with the new buildings, and the randomness of the unbuildable plots revealed the back part of these constructions in patios or in the new alignments.

The Paris Urban Planning Regulations and the easements imposed by the public powers favored a typology that completed the classic evolution of the Parisian property towards the characteristic façade of Haussmannian Paris:.

The façade is organized around strong horizontal lines that often continue from one building to the next: balconies, cornices, perfect alignment of façades without significant setbacks or protrusions. The Rivoli street model is extended to all the new Parisian streets, at the risk of standardizing certain neighborhoods. On the façade, progress in sawing and transportation techniques allowed ashlar stone to be used in a "large rig", that is, in the form of thick blocks and not as a simple cladding. The streets produced a monumental effect that exempted buildings from resorting to decoration: sculptures or moldings would not multiply until the end of the century.

Posterity of Haussmannianism

The Haussmannian transformations improved the quality of life in the capital. The great epidemics, especially those of cholera, disappeared (but not those of tuberculosis), circulation was improved, new buildings were built better and more functionally than the old ones. But having intervened only occasionally in the old neighborhoods, there were still unhealthy areas, which explains the resurgence of hygienist ideas in the following century, and then the radicalism of some urban planners of the 19th century.

The Second Empire marked the urban history of Paris so much that all subsequent architectural and urban planning movements will be forced to refer to it, either to adapt to it or to reject it, or even to try to repeat certain elements.

The end of "pure" Haussmannianism can be dated to the Paris urban planning regulations of 1882 and 1884, which broke with the uniformity of the classical street by allowing the projections and the first fantasies at roof level, which will develop considerably after the regulation of 1902. However, it is still only a "post-Haussmannianism", which rejects nothing more than the austerity of the Napoleonic model without questioning the general disposition of the streets and the blocks.

After the Second World War, however, new housing needs and the advent, a century after Napoleon III, of a new voluntarist power with the Gaullist Fifth Republic opened a new era of Parisian urban planning. This almost completely rejected the Haussmanian heritage in favor of Le Corbusier's ideas, abandoning the alignment on the street, the limitation of the clearance and the street itself, abandoned to the automobile to the detriment of pedestrian spaces in "Dalle urbanism" (reconstruction urbanism after the Second World War). This new model was quickly called into question in the 1970s, which marked the beginning of the rediscovery of the Haussmanian heritage: the return to the multifunctional street was accompanied by a return to the limitation of the clearance and, in certain neighborhoods, by an attempt to recover the architectural homogeneity of the blocks of the Second Empire.

Parisian public opinion today has a positive view of the Haussmannian heritage, to the point that certain suburban cities, for example Issy-les-Moulineaux or Puteaux, have built neighborhoods that claim even in their name ("Haussmannian district") the Haussmannian heritage. These neighborhoods are actually pastiches of the post-Haussmannian architecture of the beginning of the century with their "viewpoints" and their logias "Log (architecture)") (spacious balconies, mostly covered, containing a closure on one of their sides).