Parisian Greenspace Resistance (But not really)

In the decades following the Second World War, Paris’s municipal parks, gardens, and squares enjoyed a reputation as spaces of resistance against modernity through their eternally Second Empire style, idealized image as socially porous sites, and continued presence in defiance of a modern, rational occupation of the city’s ever-more-valuable built real estate. But were they? I would especially like to discuss the example of the City Council’s Lafay Law, intended as a compromise to guarantee both greenspace and development of the formerly fortified zone, whose sponsor saw it primarily as a bulwark against l’urbanisme sauvage. This law illustrates how greenspace can also represent the extension of dominant forces.