PROS AND CONS

Yes. To resolve the housing crisis in the cities, and especially in Paris, there is only one means, the one that Mr. Pierre Dupuy indicated in Le Petit Parisien the day before yesterday... We must seek, outside from the city, near the city, the home that is no longer found in the apoplectic city. We have to move on. We must take space where there is space, where there is still space, cheap and healthy space, where there is land which is still land, which is not is not yet asphalt, cinema-palace, furnished hotel or garage... In Paris, it's full, it's crowded, it's full. Common sense dictates that we should strike elsewhere...

Six million inhabitants would like to find accommodation in Paris today. It is not possible. The city which is not made of rubber and which was foolishly put in a cage under the pretext of granting, was made for around two million inhabitants... Our bureaucracy, which is not only administrative, which is also commercial, industrial and private, having everywhere doubled, tripled, quadrupled the number of its offices and pharmacies, we can even say that there is less space at this time in Paris than in 1870 when there was no there were only 1,800,000 inhabitants...

We must get out of Paris and build, outside of Paris, new homes for the homeless, homes that will be airy, that will be cheerful, that will be large where children can be born and grow up... It's the truth itself and the only truth...

... However, for these new Parisians from the greater Paris and from outside Paris, we need rapid, numerous, practical transport... For these Parisians from outside Paris and for Paris itself, for commerce and the life of Paris there must be constant, regular, easy, normal communication, between Paris and the suburbs, between the boulevard and the small rustic house, between Madeleine and Seine-et-Oise, between Montmartre and Seine-et-Marne... Parisians obliged to stay outside Paris must be able, at any time of the day or evening, to go to Paris. They must be able to return home at any time... It's obvious...

... But the evidence has nothing to do, undoubtedly, with administrations and railways... For the moment, apart from a few privileged and already overpopulated corners, the Parisian suburbs are as inaccessible to Parisians as the Andorra Valley... Prehistoric tramways. Paralytic trains. Medieval amenities... This is what poor Parisians who have found nothing in Paris currently find outside Paris. It's not the suburbs. It's banishment. These are not “the surroundings of Paris”. These are the outskirts of nowhere, the tragic and sepulchral no man's land... When there are trams and trains, there will be houses outside Paris... When there are houses, there will be people happy... And there will be no more housing crisis in Paris... How many centuries will we have to wait?....

Maurice PRAX.