Trucks are forced to turn around. Access to the Paris-Austerlitz worksite is blocked this Friday morning on Boulevard de l’Hôpital (13th arrondissement). Extinction Rebellion activists, accompanied by local residents, have taken positions where vehicles usually enter the construction site. There are about twenty of them, holding banners, flags, and a few smoke canisters, demanding the halt of a “useless and polluting” project.
This project is the renovation of the Austerlitz district. It notably includes the construction of a 300m building along the train station to accommodate a shopping center “the size of 5 hypermarkets”, 50,000m2 of offices, and housing. The whole project is estimated at nearly one billion euros. “More concrete,” whispers Sacha, a member of Extinction Rebellion. “This will create a heat island, the opposite of what we need.”
Several elected officials have participated in the operation this Friday morning. “This is a very useful action: when you delay supplies by several hours, you disrupt everything in a construction site for a week,” says Émile Meunier, a (EELV) advisor to the Paris Council. “We will experience more significant heatwaves in Paris. It is nature that will cool the city.”
Alexandre Florentin, an elected official from the 13th arrondissement, acknowledges the need “to renovate the train station and develop gardens.” But the (EELV) advisor condemns the inconsistency between “the political consensus on the climate cause and the completion of this project, with a huge basin (a 50,000m3 basin to store rainwater, Editor’s note), and square meters of office space when others in Paris are vacant.”
The Austerlitz collective, which continues its fight against this urban development project, is also concerned about the consequences on the historical heritage of the neighborhood. “A 37m high wall will crush the neighborhood, the train station hall, and the Salpêtrière as well,” remarks Olivier Le Marois, spokesperson for the collective. “Not to mention the ecological aspect. We will pour 150,000 tons of concrete; we are walking on our heads.”
At the beginning of the year, this collective, which brings together residents and shopkeepers of the 13th arrondissement, had been received by the Élysée Palace. A few weeks earlier, fifty personalities signed an article titled “Mr. President of the Republic, impose the cancellation of the Austerlitz project on AFD (Agence française de développement, which funds 80% of the project, Editor’s note).” Despite the opposition, it will indeed be implemented.
