City infrastructures and city dwellers: Accommodating the automobile in twentieth-century Paris

Journal of Transport History

Volumn 27, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 93-114

  Flonneau, Mathieu ^a  

^a UNIVERSITÉ PARIS 1 PANTHÉON SORBONNE   (France)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY; URBAN REGION;

EURASIA; EUROPE; FRANCE; ILE-DE-FRANCE; PARIS; VILLE-DE-PARIS; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 33750304689     PISSN: 00225266     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.7227/TJTH.27.1.7     Document Type: Review

References (112)

1. Walter Benjamin, Paris : capitale du XIXe siècle (Paris, 1989);
2. David Harvey, Paris: Capital of Modernity (New York, 2003).
3. Jacques Donzelot, 'La ville éclatée', in France ; les révolutions invisibles (Paris, 1998), pp. 181-92, p. 183.
4. See the extensive work done by Alain Cottereau, including his recent 'Les batailles du Métropolitain ; la Compagnie du chemin de fer du nord et les choix d'urbanisation', in Métro-cité : le Chemin de fer métropolitain à la conquête de Paris, 1871-1945 (Paris, 1997), pp. 75-84.
5. Jean-Pierre Bardou, Jean-Jacques Chanaron, Patrick Fridenson and James M. Laux, La Révolution automobile (Paris, 1977)
6. trans. as The Automobile Revolution: the Impact of an Industry (Chapel Hill NC, 1982). Although the entire greater Paris region obviously deserves to be studied in this perspective, only Paris intra muros is the subject of this analysis. It remains a coherent space, and although the debates of its town council are quite lengthy they are nevertheless easier to study than those of the eighty suburban municipalities.
7. The philosopher Pierre Ansay notes, not without a hint of provocation, that 'The introduction of the car into the culture [occurred] not after long and relentless political debates, but through the sum and the structuring of economic acts, the acts of consumers, of producers and of sellers.' Le Désir automobile: essai sur la ville (Brussels, 1997), p. 138.
8. This amounts to treating the automobile as a theme of urban history, which French historiography has not yet done, unlike certain American authors, including Paul Barrett, The Automobile and Urban Transit: the Formation of a Public Policy in Chicago, 1900-1930 (Philadelphia, 1983)
9. or Clay McShane, Down the Asphalt Path: the Automobile and the American City (New York, 1994).
10. Surprising as this might be, it was indeed the case for the first regulatory texts of the Plans d'occupation des sols (published in 1997) that did not specifically mention the automobile.
11. Impensé social: this expression, applied globally to town planning, comes from Rémi Baubouï, in Annie Fourcaut (ed.), La Ville divisée : les ségrégations urbaines en question, France, XVIIIe-XXe siècles (Grâne, 1996).
12. Shalom Reichman, Les Transports : servitude ou liberté ? (Paris, 1983), p. 198.
13. 'L'automobile à la conquête de Paris : formes urbaines, champs politiques et représentations', 3 vols (Sorbonne, 2002);
14. L'Automobile à la conquête de Paris : chroniques illustrées (Paris, 2003);
15. (with Jean-François Doulet), Paris-Pékin : civiliser l'automobile (Paris, 2003);
16. Paris et l'automobile : un siècle de passions (Paris, 2005).
17. Gilbert Simondon, 'Du mode d'existence des objets techniques' (1958)
18. as quoted in Michel Gariépy and Michel Marie, Ces réseaux qui nous gouvernent f (Paris, 1997).
19. In 1908 the Ford Model T was launched and General Motors Corporation was founded following a process of concentration that did not occur for French automobile manufacturing until mid-century. About the industrial process, see also Gijs Mom, The Electric Vehicle: Technology and Expectations in the Automobile Age (Baltimore MD, 2004).
20. On the American industry, John B. Rae, The American Automobile: a Brief History (Chicago and London, 1965)
21. and Michael L. Berger, The Automobile in American History and Culture (Westport CT, 2001).
22. Patrick Fridenson, Histoire des usines Renault : naissance de la grande entreprise I (Paris, 1972).
23. Reports and documents at the Town Hall of the City of Paris, report by Paul Escudier on behalf of the Third Commission (Voirie de Paris, public works affecting public roadways), No. 142, 1903, 'Sur la circulation des vehicules automobiles dans la ville de Paris et dans les communes du ressort'. The first words in this report signal the arrival of the automobile in the debates of town councillors in the capital. About the enumeration of the first builders see my Ph.D., 'L'automobile à la conquête de Paris', pp. 45-6.
24. A basic interpretive framework was provided by Nicolas Spinga, 'L'Introduction de l'automobile dans la société française entre 1900 et 1914 : étude de presse", M.A. thesis (University of Paris X - Nanterre, 1973).
25. See also Catherine Bertho-Lavenir, 'Autos contre piétons : la guerre est déclarée', L'Histoire 230 (1999), 80-5
26. and C. M. Merki, Der holprige Siegeszug des Automobils 1895-1930. Zur Motorisierung des Strassenverkehrs in Frankreich, Deutschland und Schweiz (Vienna, 2002).
27. Exposition universelle de 1900, Congrès international d'automobilisme tenu en l'Hôtel de l'Automobile club de France du 9 au 16 juillet 1900 (Paris, 1903). This work permits quite detailed knowledge of the car owners of 1899, as it provides their addresses, titles - many were noblemen - and sometimes their occupations. It also reveals that an 'International' of car owners was already being drawn up at this point in time, as nearly fifty foreigners signed up, thus answering the wish of the president of the first session: 'As early as next year, all those in the entire world who are interested in the advancements of this industry should get in contact, find out about one another and, joining their efforts, mark a productive step in the development of mechanical road locomotion at the beginning of the twentieth century' (opening speech).
28. This indication disappeared in 1943, whereas the chateaux and yachts remain to this day.
29. Monique Pinçon-Charlot and Michel Pinçon, 'Des communautés peu ordinaires: élites sociales et comites de defense dans les beaux quartiers', in Nicole Haumont (ed.), La Ville : agregation et segregation sociales (Paris, 1996), pp. 55-66.
30. Séverine Beaucreton sees the Code de la route as the 'last avatar of books of morals': 'La rue saisie par le droit : l'automobile et la réglementation juridique à la Belle époque', in La Rue : lieu de sociabilité? Rencontres de la rue (Rouen, 1997), pp. 123-32, p. 131.
31. Baudry de Saunier, L'art de bien conduire (Paris, 1934), p. 6.
32. In the very ideological context of the 1970s Luc Boltansky's critique attests to a resurgence of this line of the social front. 'Les usages sociaux de l'automobile : concurrence pour l'espace et accidents', in Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 2 (1975), 25-49.
33. Catherine Bertho-Lavenir, 'Lutte de classes et d'influence', Cahiers de médiologie 2 (1996), 131-40.
34. See also 'Normes de comportement et contrôle de l'espace : le Touring club de Belgique avant 1914', Mouvement Social 178 (1997), 69-87.
35. Chapters VII and VIII of a recent work make use of these ideas: La Roue et le stylo : comment nous sommes devenus touristes (Paris, 1999)
36. and Stephen L. Harp, Marketing Michelin: Adverstising and Cultural Identity in Twentieth-Century France (Baltimore MD and London, 2001).
37. 'Le Paris des nouveaux venus', in Paris des hommes de bonne volonté (Paris, 1949), p. 180
38. reprinted in the collection Capitale (Paris, 1991).
39. In any case, this city does not really exist in Europe before the mid-1920s, nor in Paris before the mid-1950s. Also, in the United States, by the mid-1910s considerable progress had been reached with regard to traffic control. Clay McShane, 'Roots of Modern Traffic Control, 1897-1933', paper presented at the nineteenth International Congress of the History of Science (Zaragoza, 1993)
40. published as Clay McShane, 'The origins and globalization of traffic control signals", Journal of Urban History 3 (1999), 379-404.
41. The term 'trucking' (camionnage) was used by those opposed to these services. Most of the time camionnage included transport provided by taxis or voitures de place, light individual vehicles. The term was regarded as patronising by the drivers themselves. Archives of the road network, Régie autonome des transports parisiens médiathèque, 1 R-337.
42. See, for instance, the call made on 16 December 1933 'to the working population of Saint-Denis, Mutualité, Villetaneuse, Stains' by the Chambre syndicale des cochers chauffeurs de la Seine, a trade union of the taxi drivers of Saint-Denis. Archives of the road network, Régie autonome des transports parisiens mediathèque, 1 R-337.
43. Archives of the road network, RATP Médiathèque, 1 R-338.
44. Decree of 19 April 1934. Concerning the national context, Nicolas Neiertz, La Coordination des transports en France de 1918 à nos jours (Paris, 1999). In the medium term this desire to ignore the problems related to a lack of transport concerning notably the above-ground network would lead to a veritable crisis of urban transport in the 1960s. The Laville report signalled that 'The period from 1920 to 1960 was characterised by an almost total absence of strategic decision making, with one notable exception, the creation of the RATP in 1949' (Société française d'exploitation des transports urbains, SOFRETU, 5 February 1976, Archives of the road network, RATP Médiatheque, 1 R-349).
45. Romains, Paris des hommes, p. 110.
46. Christophe Studeny, L'Invention de la vitesse (Paris, 1995).
47. For more details see his dissertation, 'Le Vertige de la vitesse : l'accélération de la France 1830-1940' (Paris, 1990).
48. Henri Bunle, 'Migrations alternantes dans la région parisienne', Annuaire statistique général de la France (July-September 1932).
49. There were 500,000 private cars circulating in the Paris region in 1939.
50. Alain Faure, '"Nous travaillons dix heures par jour plus le chemin" : les déplacements de travail chez les ouvriers parisiens 1880-1914', in Susanna Magri and Christian Topalov (eds), Villes ouvrières (Paris, 1989), pp. 93-107.
51. See the numerous articles by Dominique Larroque drawn from his dissertation 'Les Transports en commun dans la région parisienne : enjeux politiques et financiers' (Paris, 1980).
52. For the cited sentence see 'Transports urbains et transformation de l'espace parisien', Région parisienne : approche d'une notion 1860-1980, Institut d'histoire du temps present (IHTP) 12 (1989), pp. 41-56.
53. Few works of historiography have taken on this topic, with one exception: Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (Cambridge MA, 1996).
54. For the German case see Kurt Möser, Geschichte des Autos (Frankfurt and New York, 2002).
55. Louis Chevalier, L'assassinat de Paris (Paris, 1977), p. 68; repr. Paris, 1997.
56. Claudine Fontanon, 'Mobilité citadine et transports en commun, Paris 1855-1914', Annales de la recherche urbaine 14 (1982), 99-117.
57. The Direction régionale de l'équipement and Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE) have conducted this survey three more times, in 1976, 1983 and 1991.
58. That income became progressively less important as a factor in households becoming motorised was proved by these statistics. 'L'Équipement des ménages en automobiles, enquête transports', INSEE (1972)
59. and Pierre Merlin, Les Transports en région parisienne (Paris, 1997).
60. During the launch of the Renault 4CV in 1946 Pierre Lefaucheux, president of Renault, spoke during a press conference of the necessity of 'democratising the automobile', following the example of North America. Quoted in Patrick Fridenson, La 4cv au Salon de l'auto 1946 (Paris, 1987), p. 17.
61. Renault, recently nationalised, was confined to the production of utility vehicles by this plan. Archives nationales AN F 12 10103.
62. At this date, with the war still very recent, contemporaries opined that continuing to use a car was suspicious. Archives of Union routière and archives of the Prefecture of Police DA 433.
63. André Siegfried's papers include traces of a debate about the use of the terms véhicule particulier or véhicule de loisir (pleasure car) to characterise the car. J. Chalopin, general delegate of the Fédération nationale de l'automobile, du cycle, du motocycle et des activités qui s'y rattachent (National Federation of the Automobile, the Cycle, the Motor Cycle and Related Activities), in a letter dated 4 December 1957, noted on the manuscript of an upcoming work by a member of the Académie française: 'We are trying to widen the use of the expression "private car" instead of "car of tourism".' Archives of the Fondation nationale des sciences politiques 1Si 19/dr1.
64. Éliane Mossé, 'Autonomie de la demande dans un mouvement de croissance industrielle : la demande d'automobiles en France depuis la Guerre", Revue Économique (1958), 645-64.
65. This is the specific subject of a number of his publications, including three books: L'Opinion publique (Paris, 1956)
66. Mythologies de notre temps (Paris, 1965)
67. and above all Les Quatre Roues de la fortune (Paris, 1968).
68. Michel Lévy, Alfred Sauvy, compagnon du siècle (Marseilles, 1990), p. 129. Sauvy never drove, but he did have a chauffeur at the Institut national des études démographiques (INED).
69. Of those who claimed to have expertise specifically concerning Paris, one has to mention Emile Massard, W. P. Eno, Eugène Hénard and Félicien Michotte.
70. See the 1926 edition of Annuaire des conseillers municipaux
71. His entire campaign indicates that he intended to make the Place Pereire into a replica of the Place de l'Étoile by equipping it with the very latest in traffic assistance, i.e. traffic lights! Émile Massard, Quatre ans à l'Hôtel de ville : les intérêts de Paris, les intérêts du quartier (Paris, 1912); Union des républicains nationalistes de la Plaine-Monceau, report of the term of office 1908-12.
72. See Paul Escudier, quoted above. Escudier, another town councillor convinced of the automobile cause, was elected by the ninth arrondissement, which was also well represented in this survey.
73. In this matter to the present day the context of Paris is still specific, as responsibility for traffic control is conferred on the Prefect of Police.
74. Two years before his death, in an interesting moment during the ceremony entitled Commémoration des 25 années de mandat de Emile Massard (MS, Imprimerie Municipale, 1930), the prefect praised the town councillor as 'this lover of order!' endowed with 'such an acute sense of modern life'. See also the file of general information, archives of the Prefecture of Police, 144 365.
75. A journalist by profession, he was communard, guesdiste (editor of Égalité), then boulangiste, before finally ending up frankly reactionary, and he wore numerous military decorations. Incidentally, in the course of his life he won seventeen duels! Armand Massard, who succeeded him in the district, attempted to continue his father's legacy on these questions of traffic, yet with less success. Armand Massard, Faits et méfaits divers : confessions d'un vieil enfant du siècle (Paris, 1970). His report also contained the results of an inquiry made up of twenty-seven people and institutions asked about the specific problems encountered by drivers. Among those who were invited to give their views: the automobile or high-tech industries (including De Dion-Bouton, Louis Blériot, 'MM. Farman, specialists in aeronautics'), mechanics, merchants, an 'American' (W. P. Eno), representatives of collective transport companies, journalists. Among the latter, sports writers were overrepresented, including one from L Auto.
76. Reports and documents of the Town Council of the City of Paris, proposal No. 101, 1929, submitted by Georges Prade, included 'different measures of general order to bring about bold solutions called for by public opinion to the problem of traffic in Paris, and to restrict the job of car park attendant to those pensioners qualified for reserved employment'.
77. At this stage, research on this informal group still contains gaps. To conclude that there was an active 'lobby' on the fringes of the recognised commission and committee would be quite premature and no doubt exaggerated. Nevertheless, the authors of reports aiming to facilitate traffic in Paris during the inter-war period all belonged to this group: Noël Pinelli, Victor Bucaille, Fortuné d'Andigné, Ambroise Rendu, Fernand Laurent and Adolphe Chérioux, among others.
78. Maurice Levillain was a mechanic. Paris runs to eighty districts and as many councillors.
79. Chevalier, L'Assassinat, p. 69.
80. Some of them even lived on into posterity, for instance, Officer Leclerc, who wore a long beard and worked on the Grands Boulevards. White batons and whistles thus became a part of the urban landscape: cf. Mathieu Flonneau, 'Circulation', in the Dictionnaire et histoire de la police (Paris, 2005), pp. 608-12.
81. Before the war nine such underpasses existed, at Porte d'Italie, Dauphine, Maillot, Courcelles, Champerret, Clichy, Clignancourt, La Chapelle and La Villette. One could also be found in the Avenue de Tokyo (today's Avenue de New-York) and another on the Quai Voltaire.
82. Reports and documents of the Town Council of the City of Paris, proposal No. 101, p. 8.
83. Reports and documents of the Town Council of the City of Paris, proposal No. 97, 18 December 1930
84. by Auguste Besombes, 'relating to the problem of petrol distribution in Paris".
85. Reports and documents of the Town Council of the City of Paris, proposal No. 122, 1928, submitted by Louis.
86. The activities of the philanthropist Gabriel Voisin, builder of aeroplanes and luxury cars, obviously provided a dazzling symbol.
87. See Gabriel Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II (Cambridge MA, 1998)
88. trans. as Le Rayonnement de la France : énergie nucléaire et identité nationale après la seconde Guerre mondiale (Paris, 2004).
89. On Concorde: André Turcat, Concorde : essais d'hier, batailles d'aujourd'hui (Paris, 2000).
90. Roselyne Chenu, Paul Delouvrier ou la passion d'agir (Paris, 1994). The Gravier-style logic was a zero-growth policy regarding the Paris area.
91. This viewpoint was shared inside the town council. 'Discussion d'une communication de M. le Préfet de Police sur les problèmes de circulation et de stationnement à Paris', Bulletin municipal officiel, 20 July 1960, pp. 433-76, Debates of the Assemblies, session of 7-8 July 1960. Intervention by Mme Alexandre-Debray: Transport is, in this period of the twentieth century, a necessity, and almost a public service that requires large technical and financial inputs', p. 459.
92. Never before had the technical services of the City of Paris and of the Prefecture of the Seine numbered as many graduates of the École polytechnique among their staff. Numerous interviews were conducted by this author with these people. Alas, André Herzog has since passed away.
93. The period of exceptional growth that France was then experiencing meant that this sort of expense was accepted without question. Pierre Rosanvallon, L'État en France de 1789 à nos jours (Paris, 1990).
94. Manuscripts by Christian de La Malène kept in the Administrative Library of the City of Paris (hereafter Manuscripts de La Malène), MSS 1481-5.
95. Manuscripts de La Malène, MS 1476.
96. Paradoxically, the Left Bank expressway project was supported by a much larger margin and it was abandoned only because of Valéry Giscard-d'Estaing's refusal to continue with it just after the 1974 presidential elections. Cf. Mathieu Flonneau, Paris et l'automobile, chapter 6, pp. 215 ff.
97. Die sogennante Energiekrise oder die Lähmung der Gesellschaft, trans. into French in 1975 as Énergie et équité
98. in a collection of which the general title alone forms a sort of manifesto: 'techno-critique' (Paris, 1975).
99. Bulletin municipal officiel, Debates, session of 20 June 1974.
100. Jean-Marie Beauvais, Coût social des transports parisiens (Paris, 1977), introduction.
101. Introduction to the report entitled L'Automobile et la cité presented by the Commission mixte État-Ville (Paris, 1976).
102. Luc Tessier, Étude prospective de la circulation automobile dans le centre de Paris (1969)
103. and Luc Tessier, Effets des voies rapides proposées au schéma directeur de Paris : étude prospective de circulation dans Paris, tests et comparaisons de diverses hypothèses (1970), APUR, Service d'analyses des données urbaines.
104. Quatre heures de transport par jour, presentation by Roger Prioret (Paris, 1970). The subtitle tried for dramatic effect by announcing 'The denunciation of a world of suffering, of a Kafkaesque universe, of one of the great scandals of our time'.
105. Marcel Roncayolo in Michel Margairaz, Histoire de la RATP : la singulière aventure des transports parisiens (Paris, 1989), afterword.
106. Archives of the Prefecture of Police, DA 663.
107. In any case, this period can be described as extremely vigilant, as indicated by the cancellation of the large-scale projects of the North-South Axis, the Superpériphérique, 3R, LASER, etc. Archives of Direction de la voirie et des déplacements.
108. Gabriel Dupuy, Les Territoires de l'automobile (Paris, 1995), p. 55.
109. The author distances himself from the long-held nostalgia for the 'lost city' and the 'engulfed village'. Alain Faure, 'Urbanisation et exclusions dans le passé parisien 1850-1950', Vingtième siècle : revue d'histoire 47 (1995), 58-69.
110. Mathieu Flonneau, 'L'ordre des automobiles, situations du XXe siècle parisien', Transports urbains, mobilités, réseaux, territoires (April-June 1998), 25-8.
111. Sheila Hallsted-Baumert, 'Le Métropolitain : technologie, espace et création d'identités urbaines dans le Paris de fin du siècle', Ph.D. dissertation (EHESS and New York University, 1999), p. 2.
112. Michel Margairaz, Histoire de la RATP, afterword.