"Searching for the Grand Paris." "When did the phrase Grand Paris come into existence?" -The phrase "Grand Paris" is an invention from the beginning of the 20th century. It is mostly supported by a circle of Parisian reformers which revolves around an institution called the Musée social. The Musée social was created in 1894 and it got a hygiene, social, urban and rural section, in 1908. They healed, or at least tried to heal, the ills of urban society, well, urban civilisation, and in particular, the tensions, the difficulties, and also the necessity to pacify the areas that were becoming more and more segregated. This relates to the Parisian suburbs in particular. So, it is an invention from the beginning of the 20th century which is supported in a reformative circle, and which progressively became established, still in the early 20th century, with the creation of the Commission for the Extension of Paris, whose project was, in some ways, about rethinking the Paris-suburbs relationship. I would say thinking about the Paris-suburbs relationship, but beyond that, taking action to reduce the social, regional and urban inequalities which are prevalent in this remarkable metropolitan area that Paris urban area is. So, the expression Grand Paris was already in use, used by politicians and government, by these reformers from the beginning of the 20th century. "What are the main stages in creating the Métropole du Grand Paris?" The history of... The main stages leading up to the creation of what we now call the MGP, the Métropole du Grand Paris, go back to the start of the 20th century. They have a political epicentre, the general council of the Seine department. The general council of the Seine department is a deliberative assembly, which brings together municipal councillors from Paris and general elected councillors from the suburbs. So, to start with, you have inequality in terms of representation of these two worlds, the councillors from the suburbs and from Paris. Of course, the elected representatives from Paris dominate the Grand Paris scene, the political scene of the Grand Paris. But, progressively, from the 1920s onwards, and during the 1930s, a rebalancing takes place, with a more favorable representation of the Parisian suburbs policy. Then, we do not quite reach representative parity between the elected officials from the suburbs and Paris, but the disparity lessened significantly. It is important because the more the political power of the suburbs is represented in this deliberative assembly, which decides on urban policy made by the Seine general council, an instance of the Grand Paris, the more we can come up with urban policy that responds to and includes the needs of the suburbs' residents. And so, this political body, the general council, was a driving force that lasted for almost a whole century, until its abolition in 1964 with the departmental reform on 10th July 1964. But before this important date, this disruptive date, in the history of the Paris-suburbs relationship, there was only one political assembly, which is important to highlight because it was this that implemented a large network sanitation projects, they promoted social housing, and in particular, the HBM project with the Seine departmental office, which went on to construct the first large-scale garden cities, the largest garden cities in France, around ten of them. It was this body who also went on to promote public health, or contributed to it at least, with the promotion of social hygiene and sanitation in the suburbs of Paris. I must emphasize the importance of the Seine general council because of their driving force in the creation and the promotion of new urban policy. One consequence of this was charging the wealthiest taxpayers, that is, essentially, the Parisian taxpayers, for the public services in the whole metropolitan area, which goes on to serve the less wealthy part of the local population, and in particular, the people from the suburbs and the working-class areas. Among the stages in the history of the Grand Paris, it is also important to highlight the creation of interconnected communities. These interconnected communities come into existence alongside the inter-authority charter, which was behind the creation of Sivus, "Syndicats intercommunaux à vocation unique". It was the start of, in a way, an active response to the issue that existed in France because of its 40 or 36 000 communes. So, it was supposed to interact with rural France. In reality, the Parisian metropolis seized this notion of interconnected communities, made it a urban interconnection, to create new services, new networks, which strengthened and extended what was available in the city centre and brought it out to the suburbs. Among these networks, for example, there is the creation of one of the most important inter-community trade unions in the Parisian suburbs, the gas trade union, founded in 1904, followed by the union of funeral service operatives, in 1905, followed also, at the beginning of the 1920s, by the major trade unions of electricity and water. So these interconnected communities still exist today, although when they were created at the start of the 20th century, their aim was to balance the power dynamic with these large companies which had a kind of monopoly and who set the prices, the major water companies, electricity companies, gas companies, which refused to roll out these networks where they would not guarantee cost-effectiveness. Yet thanks to the creation of these interconnected communities, the mayors of the suburbs, through these interconnected communities, could stand up to these large industrial groups and impose specifications which allowed for an extension of these technical networks to serve the suburbs, and particularly to serve these flawed housing estates that made their mark in the history of the area and which represent, in a way, the infancy of urban sprawl, or at least a significant element leading up to the growth of Paris area, during the interwar years. So, the general council was a pivotal authority in terms of compromise, metropolitan compromise, and these interconnected communities which played an important role in uniting the Parisian suburbs, which were characterized by a geopolitical divide between the municipal socialism, which started to spread at the end of the 19th century, the residential suburban areas, which have a more conservative mindset, and the so-called red suburbs, which started to appear at the beginning of the 1920s, which would have their golden age, in 1935, with their victory in local elections, in May 1935. This corresponded to the success of the Popular Front in 1936. It is also important to highlight that, in the major stages of the history of the Grand Paris, there is also the foundation of training colleges for jobs in administration and urban planning. The foundation of the School of Urban Studies in 1919 was supported by the Seine general council and became the Paris School of Urban Planning in 1924 and this was where the first generation of urban planners and municipal administrators were trained. We tend to forget that fact.
