Strategic planning in the Paris region and French urban policy

Abstract

Many of the imbalances which the successive strategic plans for the Paris region sought to correct have persisted, whether in employment location, transport access or structure and location of the housing stock. The reasons for these relative failures can be found, in part, in the content of the strategies, in housing, land and transport policies and in shortcomings of the urban planning and economic planning systems. The weakness of the Paris Region as the strategy's executor in relation to the central and local governments and public corporations cannot, however, be underestimated. In the first part, French strategic planning is assessed within the urban planning system, followed in the second part by a detailed study of the failures of plan implementation in transport policy and housing and office location.