Projet Triangle
Image courtesy of Herzog & de Meuron
Along with Rome and Washington, D.C., Paris is one of the few remaining mid-rise world capitals. Offering glorious walks along the quais beside the Seine, with the Cathedral of Notre Dame ahead and the low Paris horizon beyond, Paris is also the world’s most-visited city, with some 28 million visitors a year.
With the blessing of the Mayor and the Paris City Council, however, developers are poised to attack Paris from within. In July of 2008, the City Council decreed that six skyscraper projects of up to 50 stories should be built at the city’s gates. Now is the time for world opinion, Parisians themselves, UNESCO, and the World Monuments Fund, to raise an outcry so loud that it stays the backhoes.
If you oppose plans for skyscrapers in Paris, please join me in the SOS Paris anti-towers letter-writing campaign and make it viral! Mail your letter on November 24 in the U.S., or on December 1 in Europe. Tell your friends! We want to have a million letters opposing the skyscrapers to land on Mayor Delanoë’s desk the first week in December. That’s right before our next anti-skyscrapers demonstration, which will be held on December 8.
Here is the address:
Mr. Bertrand Delanoë (Note the two dots over the E)
Mayor of Paris
Place de l’Hôtel de Ville
Paris, France
75004
U.S. postage is $1.05 or three Forever stamps. Be sure to include your
return address inside and on the envelope.
Here are three templates:
Dear Mr. Delanoë,
There is no advantage in making Paris look like every other city in the world.
Paris is unique!
Paris is Paris!
Skyscrapers will diminish Paris in the eyes of the world.
Please let Paris be Paris!
Sincerely, (or it you prefer, Sincerement)
Your name
or
Dear Mr. Delanoë,
Ville-Musée – Non!
Ville-Bijou – Oui!
No Towers, SVP
Sincerely,
Your name
or
Dear Mr. Delanoë,
Ne gâchez pas Paris.
Do not spoil Paris.
No Towers SVP.
Sincerely,
Your name.
For information about plans for skyscrapers in Paris, here is my recent article on the Classicist blog: http://blog.classicist.org/?p=5475. And here is a short video I made about skyscrapers in Paris: bit.ly/Lta0eH.
Born and raised in Chicago and trained as a lawyer at Harvard, Mary Campbell Gallagher is a professional speaker, the owner of a business, BarWrite® and BarWrite Press, that offers Continuing Legal Education classes and prepares candidates for the bar exam, and a writer dedicated to the prosperity of New York City’s economy and to the preservation of Parisian urbanism.
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