The Rivoli Experiment

The centre of Paris, like many cities in old Europe, was not designed for the motor car. Napoléon Bonaparte conceived the arcaded Rivoli walkway in 1802, naming it after his victorious battle near Turin. In 1855, the east-to-west Rivoli artery was finally finished by Baron Haussmann. It was built for promenading and horse-riding, not the internal combustion engine. 110 years later, Prime Minister Georges Pompidou facilitated a programme of radical works to serve the motor car. The car-loving ultra-modernist yielded up the historic city to the automobile, saying “It is not for the car to adapt itself to the city, but the reverse”. Since her 2014 election, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has effectively been reversing Pompidou’s reverse thinking. Rapidly.

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The first major symbol of Hidalgo’s car-free Paris was the 2015 closure of the scenic dual carriageway along the river Seine (named after Pompidou). Once Covid 19 had accelerated the momentum of low-carbon transport, Paris’ car-free flagship became the ZTL (Zone à Trafic Limité) of rue de Rivoli, sometimes described as a laboratory test site. Immediately after this summer’s Olympic Games, the ZTL experiment is set to be extended in central Paris.

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The arrow-straight rue de Rivoli continues the east-west line of the Champs-Elysées for just over three kilometres. There are three distinct characters across three separate arrondissements; the western arcades near Concorde (in the 8th), the busy central area around Les Halles (1st) and the eastern stretch near le Marais (4th). It is the scale of the Rivoli Experiment which makes this test remarkable and unique in comparison to other global metropoles. In Bordeaux, a car-free urban centre has been successfully created by exceptional public transport, but Rivoli is a major axis in a densely populated global city.

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The disruption of behaviours brought about by Covid was the big catalyst for change - as Parisians embraced fresh air and bicycles. To meet the sudden user demand for low-carbon transport, the Ville de Paris quickly supplied pop-up bike lanes. When Hidalgo was re-elected in 2020 on a bike-friendly manifesto, she retained and expanded these ad-hoc ‘Coronapistes’. Rivoli was restructured to house a double cycle lane in each direction, segregated from a single westbound lane for authorised motor vehicles such as buses, taxis, and delivery vans. Today, it is quite a sight. The colourful fleet of users comprises scooters, rollerbladers, delivery bikes, rental bikes, electric bikes, and just ordinary cyclists. Some with helmets, some with headphones, some with kids. After years of enduring mild biking peril, some parents are now even prepared to take their children cycling along Rivoli.

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Today’s sustainable Rivoli is making images of the recent past feel unsettling. In a grainy picture of 1960s Rivoli, several hundred Renaults, Peugeots and Citroens stand at a red light in six straight lines - behind two cyclists and a gendarme. Nearby, the handsome Tuileries gardens are veiled in smog. Similarly, today’s (relative) silence makes the 2019 YouTube video footage of Rue de Rivoli sound surprisingly dated.

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Politics are naturally key to shaping a street which is home to the Hotel de Ville (town hall) itself. An apocryphal story has it that in the 1980s, Mayor Chirac so disliked seeing tourist buses outside the Louvre that he financed an underground car park by backing permission for the Carrousel du Louvre shopping gallery on Rivoli. Mayor Hidalgo is a polarising politician who makes things happen swiftly. With both population and car ownership declining, the Ville de Paris has recently removed over half of the on-street parking spaces within the boulevard périphérique. Political resistance has been fierce in a country where the violent gilets jaunes protests were triggered by a fuel tax. Powerful lobby groups such as 40 millions d’automobilistes claim the ‘sustainable ideology’ of the Rivoli ZTL simply pushes noise and air pollution a few hundred metres away.

Twelve months ago, the Paris city authorities commissioned a JLL retail impact study to help measure the effects of the Rivoli Experiment. Headline conclusions from a wide panel of retailers and customers were that, in the last year, footfall is up and shop vacancy is down. Despite the sustainable mobility, JLL found that shoppers do still wish for a safer, greener Rivoli. The real potential game-changing conclusion for the authorities is that when customers shop on foot, by bike or by metro, they may be more in the mood to spend money. Outside the impact study, however, insiders report that occupiers see falling sales.

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Shopping is naturally the most public of Rivoli’s mixed uses and the one most familiar to me as a former retail property consultant. Twenty years ago, I knew mass market Rivoli as a fixture in Paris’ Top Six high street addresses. Like all retail property, much has changed since. Until recently, Rivoli’s strong position with brands was slipping, partly because of the empty buildings of the street’s traditional department store anchor (La Samaritaine) between 2005 and 2021. Perhaps more damagingly, Rivoli’s many mass-market fashion shops were in a sector heavily impacted by online retail, with a risk that shopping here could be defined by tourist tat.

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Recent major investments in both public and private spheres have changed that narrative and even added some luxury. LVMH, the owners of la Samaritaine, have upmarket merchandising in their newly opened stores whilst Fondation Cartier has chosen to move to the Louvre des Antiquaires. Meanwhile, the mass-market Forum des Halles, one of France’s three most visited shopping centres, was given a major recent renovation by owners Westfield. The BHV (refitted) and IKEA (new) are now both strong Rivoli shopping attractions.

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The subject of rue de Rivoli, however, is far broader than current retail trends, anchor stores and rents in terms of Zone A. 500 years ago, long before Napoléon conceived the Rivoli artery, the Louvre and Notre Dame cathedral anchored this city centre location. They still do. The Rivoli Experiment is at the epicentre not just of Paris’ twenty arrondissements but of the whole country. “Kilometre Zero” is here - the point from which all French road distances are measured. France, officially, starts here.

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Mayor Hidalgo’s bold town planning experiment may yet be reversed after the 2026 elections. The 2024 Jeux Olympiques will likely determine her chances, which means that public perceptions of this Olympic summer will shape the future of The Rivoli Experiment. My own future connection to Rivoli will be as a volunteer during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Engaged by Ville de Paris as ‘ambassadors for the city’, my team will be based opposite the Louvre – in the heart of this key venue in Paris’ past, present and future.

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