THE URBAN PLANNING PROGRAMME

that Paris would like to see its elected officials carry out

Parisian elected officials are too often judged on their political statements; they should be judged more on their actions, in terms of public hygiene.

In a city like Paris, with its countless overcrowded houses, its crowded inhabitants, and the producer of a formidable mass of waste of all kinds, visible and hidden, the concern for public health should be, for the elected officials of the City, the first of all.

The municipal statistics services have conducted a survey on housing conditions in the Paris metropolitan area. Out of 2,800,000 inhabitants housed within the city walls, 1,300,000 (nearly half) live in housing declared inadequate by the City services. Nearly 300,000 live in unsanitary premises where, at night, they are crammed up to seven or eight per room. More than three thousand families made up of more than four people live in furnished accommodation, in a single room. Finally, ten to twelve thousand others, made up of four people, each live in lodgings, in a single room.

In the suburbs, the situation is almost as bad. Indeed, while the metropolitan population seems to have reached a degree of saturation that can no longer be exceeded, the suburbs, on the other hand, have had to accommodate 350,000 new inhabitants in the space of a few years. Since there is virtually no more building, we can imagine the conditions in which the newcomers are housed.

After the problem of housing, there is that of the street which should be kept in a state of strict cleanliness. Copious and suitably spaced flushes should, at night, sweep and sanitize the surface. Here and there, in selected places, large squares should be provided, real reservoirs of air.

Special gardens for children and playgrounds for schoolchildren and adolescents should be dotted around the site of the old fortifications.

Is the city's water supply abundant enough? Have the necessary sums been provided to increase it?

The surveillance of food products is another problem posed by town planning. Ensuring that a population fed on imported foodstuffs has real control over what it consumes is a necessity. The current organization of the markets is still imperfect. "If the public knew what goes on in the basement of certain halls where the operation of the storeroom is carried out," wrote Mr. Herriot last year, "it would make them feel sick." »

There is still the problem of the healthy home, that of the protection of early childhood, that of hospital assistance, that of the fight against epidemic diseases.
I have only listed the main subjects of concern of our elected officials. It is incomplete. The day when the public will be interested in these subjects, the municipal administrators will be forced to take into account the opinion and to work as hygienists for the greater good of the city.

Dr MAURICE LEBON.