Latest news with #MairiedeParis
New European
29-03-2025
- Politics
- New European
Paris versus the populists
Soon, both Parisians and out-of-towners will be able to enjoy a greener, quieter and less polluted city. On Sunday, residents took part in a referendum and 66% of them voted in favour of pedestrianising and 'rewilding' 500 streets, to be distributed across the various neighbourhoods. Though the next steps will take time – individual arrondissements' city halls will now have to identify the suitable roads in their patch – it feels like unalloyed good news. Paris is changing again. As the pandemic receded, residents of the capital and tourists alike rediscovered the city, and found it to be considerably more amenable to cyclists than it once had been. Last year, those attending the Olympics and Paralympics were pleasantly surprised to find the metro cleaner, and mostly rid of its formerly persistent urine stench. Paris, unlike London, doesn't have many parks and substantial green spaces, and any effort to introduce more trees (and fewer cars) to the capital should be applauded. That the referendum even took place is also worth discussing. The votation, as the Mairie de Paris calls it, is a yearly event which was announced in 2020, and is now entering its fourth year. Though the votes are technically 'public consultations', and thus non-legally binding, they provide Parisians with a chance to have their say on their local areas, and what happens there. The first referendum, held in 2023, asked people if they were pro or anti self-service electric scooters. The answer couldn't have been clearer: as it turned out, 90% of respondents supported a ban. As a result, the scooters were removed from the streets of Paris. Last year, Parisians were asked for their opinions on SUVs, and whether to try and curtail their use in the inner city. Again, residents decided that people shouldn't be encouraged to buy the large, heavy, polluting vehicles, and voted to create a specific parking charge for them, costing triple the amount of regular parking. The vote was closer – only 55% agreed with the motion – but it did pass, and the city carried it out. On top of Paris-wide questions, the capital's arrondissements are also welcome to use the votation system as a way to make local decisions. This year, for example, 72% of residents in the 14th arrondissement agreed to launch a food bank in their neighbourhood, while over in the 19th, 58% voted in favour of building a memorial garden for pets. Five other districts voted on their own issues, and every motion passed. Isn't that neat? There is, it should be said, one dark cloud hanging over this relatively new initiative. Last week, only 4% of Parisians took part in the referendum, the lowest figure out of the three votes. Mayor Anne Hidalgo, whose brainchild it was, doesn't seem to have figured out a way to get more people involved, even though the texture of their very neighbourhoods is at stake. It is a frustrating state of affairs, and is also the line of attack now favoured by the right-wing opposition who have branded the exercise a 'sham'. But that doesn't mean it should be written off. We live in cynical times, and people across the world keep complaining about their governments feeling too distant, and unrepresentative of the very people voting for them. Any effort to try and bring democracy back to street or neighbourhood level should be seen as a good thing, even if people are still getting used to it. As the Brexit vote showed on our side of the Channel, voters will lash out if they feel they're not being listened to, and aren't given a say in how their world is run. Electric scooters, SUVs and pedestrianised streets may not be what national governments rise and fall on, but they can and do change people's day-to-day lives. In fact, London's Sadiq Khan, Manchester's Andy Burnham and other metro mayors should be looking at Hidalgo and wondering whether something similar could be introduced in their cities. The changes they would bring wouldn't exactly be life-changing, but, bit by bit, they may give residents the feeling that they are being heard, and their wishes are being respected. It wouldn't kill populism dead on its own, but really, it should be worth a try.
Local France
25-02-2025
- Local France
The French cities cracking down on Airbnb with key box bans
The picturesque and popular southern French city of Avignon became the latest to officially ban key boxes from the streets, in an attempt to clamp down on short term property rentals. 'The Wild West of Airbnb is over!' declared the city's deputy mayor for urban development, Paul-Roger Gontard, at the launch of a campaign to remove boxes that have been placed on public property earlier this month. The policy employed by Avignon is far from unique. It's a variation on a theme repeated numerous times in a number of other French cities, including Paris, Lille, Annecy, Saint-Malo, Biarritz, Marseille, Besançon, Nice, and Wimereux, Pas-de-Calais. All of them insist that their firm stance will make it harder for rogue short-term property rentals. Key boxes, according to the website of the Mairie de Paris, 'are used in particular in the context of renting furnished tourist apartments, a phenomenon that has grown disproportionately in recent years', before posting pictures of one of their agents using a cordless angle grinder to cut off illegal key boxes. Pour permettre à tous les Parisiens et toutes les Parisiennes, d'accéder à un logement au prix abordable, la Ville de Paris lutte contre les abus de la location de meublés touristiques et propose une série de mesures concrètes, dont la destruction de boîtes à clés dans l'espace public. — Ville de Paris (@ February 18, 2025 at 3:54 PM But the laws themselves, despite the hyperbole of those behind them at each and every campaign launch, are actually pretty limited. What is a key box? A key box is – as the name suggests – a secure, sealed cabinet designed to hold one or more keys that can be fixed to an interior or exterior wall, and some can be installed on a gate or fence. It is, to all intents and purposes, a small combination safe - most of them have a four-digit code to access, and the usual practice is for the landlord to message the tenant a few hours in advance with the code, allowing them to open the box and then let themselves in to the property. More modern ones still may be secured, activated or deactivated by smartphone. But cities are banning key boxes. Why tell us about them? Because the bans are quite limited in their scope. You have every right to install a key box on property that you own outright. Next to the back door of your house? No problem. At the side of a garage on your land? That's fine. In a public place, or in a shared area of a copropriété (such as an apartment building) however, things start to get complicated. Legally, copropriétés are divided into common and private areas. Common areas include entrance hall, doorways, exterior walls – and you cannot, without the express permission of the building management, install a key box in a common area … even if the co-ownership regulations allow for tourist rentals. But you could put one inside your apartment in a copropriété, if you want. Okay, what about in a public place? Street furniture is managed by a public authority for the benefit of the inhabitants of a territory, municipality or department. As these are public facilities, attaching any kind of device to them – such as a key box – is strictly forbidden. Additionally – and this is where the city bans kick in – some municipalities have issued decrees formally banning key boxes in the street, a public space, on street furniture such as lampposts, bike racks, electricity cabinets, poles and lamp posts. Key boxes attached to the outside of a building are a dead giveaway that the place is being rented out on a platform such as Airbnb. It's perfectly legal to do this, provided you declare your earnings to the French taxman and apply by any local bylaws on tourist rentals. People who, for whatever reason, don't want to advertise that they are renting out their property often attach key boxes to a nearby piece of street furniture such as a bike rack or railing - and this is why city authorities say that this will help with illegal rentals. One more thing . . . Insurance. Your insurer may take a dim view of key boxes for home security reasons. In the event of a burglary committed after thieves have got hold of your house keys by breaking into a key box, insurers may invoke a warranty exclusion clause (article L113-1 of the Insurance Code) to refuse to pay out on claims.
