This was the case in New York in the 1980s

The great debate of the current parliamentary term will open but it may be once more poorly done. The Mayor of Paris, wished that a number of Parisian sites, essentially, located between the boulevard of the marshals and the device would be implementation of towers.

This new architectural will out conveniently at a time when the President of the Republic accelerates the construction of the Grand Paris wants the sidereal gap found in this area since 2001. The new Paris urban plan is indeed part of a cautious approach to a capital introverted, locked behind its peripheral, unable to register itself with a new perspective of metropolisation.

This plan leaves little room to the initiative and creativity of designers. It puts the horizontal development of Paris by lowering the density but also the vertical development of our capital by limiting the height of the buildings to a maximum of 37 metres. By lowering the permitted density, the current team gave to implement a major principle of sustainable development, which promotes the Organization of modern cities as cities dense, efficient in space and infrastructure. This is because Paris is a dense city, she was able to build a better network of transit in the world and develop a full range of services, which is a major asset in the international competition.

It is also the concentration of human and economic potential that has helped make Paris a large capital world.

The debate of the towers should therefore not hide the only issue that is sustainable: is it that our capital enrols in the "revenge of the cities", as says the Guy Burgel Planner or wish is simply to limit his ambition for the preservation of a "néo-bourgeois paradise" in the device

Major world capitals have already chosen their mode of development for the next twenty years. The option is the return of economic activities in the heart of the urban system. This was the case in New York in the 1980s. London also has ten years of the amazing transformations by its magnitude (Canary Wharf) that will accelerate the preparation of the Olympic Games of 2012.

It need only cross the device to see a dynamic of development unrelated to Paris. Momentum builds on the choice of a new urban model advocated by the pattern of development of the Ile-de-France region (SDRIF) and based on the concept of "principled and chosen density".

The towers are only one of the elements of this scheme: as the alpha and the Omega of the Parisian urban revolution appears to raise more than a political tactic to a genuine urban strategy. Paris now has 75 towers of which 40 devoted to housing. Most of these sets are derived from the 1960s and 1970s, urban planning today condemned to disappear gradually. Apart from the Front of Seine and the sector of the Olympics, these tall buildings were built in isolation: there is not now in our capital of urban planning of tours; He must invent it.

With the loss of 270,000 jobs, over the past fifteen years and the increase of 15 of the number of applicants for housing under the last term 2001-2008 there is now urgent to invent a new urban model for Paris. In this puzzle extremely complex which combines intervention on the old fabrics and new rights-of-way management, towers are only one of the elements of structure. It would be perfectly ridiculous to an obsession, although as said Ferrier architect "in megacities, the one-time verticality is a necessity."

No do not a prerequisite to any reflection on the future of Paris because the tower only remains an iconic form if it is not part of a genuine policy of broader urban development. Let us not forget that skyscrapers do not find density in a city: buildings haussmanniens of the centre of Paris have a density built 4 while the La Courneuve buildings have a density less than 1.

Bertrand Delanoë projects do not integrate in a more comprehensive reflection on the role of our capital city in the Grand Paris. Rather, it is a juxtaposition of way to urbanization without neither economic nor environmental consistency.

The main question remains unanswered: how to find the density required for a modern capital while practicing a sustainable urbanism, in a dense and complex urban fabric Like the large global metropolises, Paris must register in urban modernity retaining its heritage and cultural richness. Over the centuries, Paris said its dynamism and originality in accepting deep transformations combining modernity and heritage of the past. Let us again this challenge in the 21st century: if Paris needs daring, it is in this area.