Contenu du sommaire : Mesurer et construire Paris

Paving expenses of the Domaine of the City of Paris in the 15th century show that most investments were focused on the roads leading up to the gates of the wall of Charles V. However, other streets, some of smaller size, increasingly tended to benefit from paving repairs from the second half of the century. Moreover, over the same period, each part of the street paving process (i.e. the delivery of paving stones, transportation of raw materials, and the actual paving) became a specialised trade, perhaps because an improvement in the economic environment made such specialization possible. The accounts receiver and clerks had to adapt their bookkeeping techniques to these various innovations.

Measuring buildings is a traditional task for builders of all sorts, be they masons, architects, or engineers. In the late 17th century, royal institutions and guilds decided to tackle misuses of measurements used to assess buildings, and thus increase control of construction costs. The toisé, that is to say a measurement using an instrument called the toise, was to be transformed into science and therefore had to be regulated. This was the subject that the architects of the Royal Academy, such as Pierre Bullet, had been debating since the beginning of the 18th century. They had to choose between two methods practised by masons: ‘‘la toise bout-avant sans retour'' (a sort of measurement that did not consider irregular or decorative elements) or the method ‘‘according to the Customs of Paris'' – or even to create a more efficient technique. The second method, which was favourable to architects, would be normalised by the academic teaching from Antoine Desgodets' courses and by the transformation of the status of surveyors, which shows very clearly the political and legal stakes raised by this question. The professor of the Academy would have preferred to reform the building measurement methods completely through the use of geometric tools, but he was not allowed to do so. Such a complete overhaul would not occur until the early 19th century.

Urban real estate markets are generally analysed using selling prices. However, the extraordinary concentration of ownership in major cities in 17th and 18th century Europe indicates that rental transactions were in fact what drove the housing market trend. Most Parisians were tenants (nearly 90-95 %): buildings were a source of income, even more than a capital investment. This is so clear that real estate appraisals were usually made using the denier. This simple method of multiplying the income by a predetermined factor (usually 20) could be used by everyone, from the craftsman to the architect. By focusing on rents to explain trends in the housing market, we can cast light on phenomena that are less obvious than the law of supply and demand in a context of residential competition. Rising rents in the 18th century in Paris were thus attributable to the proliferation of shops, to the entrenchment of income-based taxation, and to the central role of the primary tenant. The latter was actually a real estate entrepreneur, competing with landowners to capture the land rent.

In 1786, after debating the matter for several years, the City of Paris began to demolish houses built on the bridges of the city. Thanks to exceptionally abundant sources (including archives, as well as images, notably Hubert Robert's paintings which are virtually a documentary resource), this building project offers a unique perspective on building and public works projects of the era. From the contract bidding and awarding process to the final stages, including the actual demolition phase, we can see the spatial impact of the building project and its organisation, the trades involved, their working hours, corrupt dealings of some entrepreneurs, disruptions affecting the neighbouring areas, and accidents. Due to the substantial changes it created in the central Paris landscape, its complex organisation and financial arrangements, this last major Ancien Régime building project already foretold of the major works that would take place in 19th century Paris.

Regulations affecting building sites in Paris in the final years of the Ancien Régime show an urban area under pressure. Growth in the building sector intersected with the increasingly determined reformism of the police. In the public space, building sites created traffic, safety and hygiene problems that authorities had difficulty controlling. Undeniably, the city had to adapt to new technical and economic configurations. However, while many urban projects hit snags, the Paris authorities – and chiefly the Lieutenant General of Police – successfully found compromises in order to regulate the various daily problems caused by this economic sector of vital importance for the city. The example of the production and use of plaster shows how the authorities' role was essential, and the inertia of the preceding years illustrates how urban life was disorganised due to the absence of ambitious policy.

Since the 1990s, the urban history of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine has cast light on the aesthetic and urban qualities of anarchic suburban settings. From the Interwar period until the end of the 20th century, the district was accused of suffering architectural and urban delays, creating unfit and insalubrious housing, questioning urbanism and architecture. Therefore, after the Second World War, town planning aimed to promote urban renewal and architectural modernity so that suburban districts could fulfil the needs for housing, comfort and leisure. In 1961 , a new master plan was implemented to reshape Paris, threatening the district until urban history brought the Faubourg Saint-Antoine's qualities to everyone's notice, changing Parisians' point of view, leading to more respectful architectural and urban concepts. Detailed master plans were soon established while the municipality, architects and town planners adapted their work to reconcile urban memory and modernity.

The discontinuity of time, from the fall of the Empire to the Second Restoration, is reflected with particular acuteness in the fights over signs and symbols, linked with shifts in sovereignty, real or hoped for. Before the age of ‘‘statuemania'', these visual signs (flags, cockades, busts, etc.) became more discreet, less spectacular, but also more widespread. In a post-revolutionary moment, when opinions are expressed as much by signs as by words, their place is decisive in the control of the urban order. The article deals with this ‘‘police of signs'' in French cities, between 1814 and 1816. It permits a better understanding of the urban order and disorder in times of crisis, the control of visible political identities, forms of dissidence, and the appropriations of sovereignty in action.