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French President Nicolas Sarkozy is following a French presidential tradition of developing a grand architectural project in Paris. The World’s Gerry Hadden has more on Sarkozy’s proposed “Grand Paris” project.

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LISA MULLINS: Way south of London, France is considering a very ambitious project – the transformation of Paris. The project is called Grand Paris. It’s the brainchild of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The ideas include adding green spaces, improving access to troubled suburbs, even connecting the capital to the sea. The World’s Gerry Hadden has more.

GERRY HADDEN: French Presidents like to leave their mark on Paris. Francois Mitterrand built the pyramid at the Louvre. Jacques Chirac created a museum for primitive art along the left bank. But President Sarkozy is thinking bigger – a lot bigger. He wants to give the city itself a total makeover and extend its boundaries all the way to the Atlantic port of Le Havre, about 120 miles away. Actually Sarkozy’s borrowing Napoleon Bonaparte’s idea but when Sarkozy unveiled Grand Paris earlier this year he spoke like a visionary.

NICOLAS SARCOZY: [SPEAKING FRENCH]

HADDEN: He said in order to draw the center of Western Europe’s economy towards the south we must develop metropolitan Paris along the banks of the Seine River all the way to the sea in the northwest. By doing so he said we can reverse the flow of goods moving towards Northern Europe.

The Seine is already an important commercial waterway. Barges move along it all day long. But Sarkozy would boost its capacity and compliment it. He envisions high-speed passenger train lines along the same corridor and more freight hubs for goods. The city of Rouen would be such a hub. One longtime resident is an Englishman named Michael Towers. Towers works in international business. He welcomes Sarkozy’s idea. He says Rouen’s roads take too much of a beating as things stand.

MICHAEL TOWERS: If you look at that motorway there, that bridge there, this is the north-south link to go to England and Belgium and Holland with products from Spain and Portugal. So every single truck that comes through France probably crosses that bridge. That bridge never stops 24 hours a day. And you’ve got to think about these things you know. It can’t sustain continually maybe 500 trucks an hour. That’s impossible.

HADDEN: But Grand Paris isn’t just about moving freight; it’s ultimately about making Paris and its surroundings more livable. To that end, the new Seine corridor also calls for a chain of parks overlapping outdoor art installations. In short, one long, happy greenbelt. Rouen resident Nicole Buvy is out strolling the Seine. She says the local government has already improved parts of the river bank here. She hopes Grand Paris will finish the job.

NICOLE BUVY: [SPEAKING FRENCH]

HADDEN: She says lots of people now come down to the river to walk or rollerblade or ride bikes and now we need to do the same thing on the other bank.

But Grand Paris is not without its detractors. At a corner café in Rouen two locals who won’t give their names say they’re suspicious of any project coming from Paris.

ROUEN LOCALS: [SPEAKING FRENCH]

HADDEN: This is Normandy, they complain, and we want it to stay that way. When people from Paris show up with big plans taxes always go up. Grand Paris is not a good idea. France can’t afford this project they argue.

And they’re right. The economic crisis will likely temper the scale of Grand Paris considerably. Architects and analysts believe that most of the money for Sarkozy’s legacy will be spent within Paris itself where serious social problems exist.

SARCOZY: [SPEAKING IN FRENCH]

HADDEN: Sarkozy acknowledged this during Grand Paris’ unveiling. He said we know how to communicate instantly with anybody in any part of the world yet we have trouble living together in our own neighborhoods or tolerating those from other neighborhoods. The president was referring to the Parisian suburbs, or banlieus, where hug immigrant communities live isolated and frustrated. Police helicopters and patrols were out in the suburb of Bagnolet just last week. Young people burnt cars there after an 18-year-old was killed in a crash after fleeing a police check. Four years ago a similar police chase sparked weeks of riots and there’ve been regular disturbances since then. One of the burning problems in the suburbs is access to Paris is ringed by major highways and rail lines that literally cutoff the poor periphery from downtown. Grand Paris would address that issue by putting the transport lines underground and putting parks atop them – parks that would serve as bridges – both physical and psychological – into the burbs. Today one of the only ways into Bagnolet from downtown is over a concrete bridge that crosses an eight-lane highway. One Bagnolet resident named Marie crosses on foot.

MARIE: [SPEAKING FRENCH]

HADDEN: She says she prefers the Grand Paris vision for the suburbs because she says Parisians hold a bad view of the people here. She says I don’t know exactly how Grand Paris will go but just image if this highway were underground in a tunnel with lots of trees on top. That would be beautiful. For The World I’m Gerry Hadden, Paris.

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