The Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme (APUr) announced that it will present plans to renovate the Champs-Élysées around the new year.
The famous thoroughfare is home to many luxury brands like Cartier, Louis Vuitton, and Hugo Boss—the latter has thankfully ceased its unnerving and poorly reviewed runways shows on the avenue itself—but hasn’t seen much in the way of aesthetic improvements in the last two decades. One of the biggest changes that may come to the avenue, thanks to Mayor Hidalgo’s successful journée sans voitures, is turning some of the busy street into a pedestrian promenade. Jean-Noël Reinhardt, president of the Comité Champs-Elysées, told Le Parisien that the “onslaught of vehicles makes the avenue unbreathable.”
The addition of bike lanes and clean-technology public transportation aims to alleviate the problem of congestion and pollution, and a synthesis of studies on traffic patterns in and around the Champ-Élysées may lead to new ideas on how to make the area flow more efficiently while also being more conducive to foot traffic.
The group hopes to bring a “harmonious aesthetic” to the area, and Hidalgo’s deputy in charge of city planning wants to make the avenue a place not just for tourists to shop, but for Parisians to enjoy. The proposed changes—whatever they end up being—will be rolled out by 2025.
