France's mayor overturns ban on building skyscrapers

 Eiffel Tower in Paris, 324 metres tall, significantly higher than the new height limit Paris – Arab Today Paris' wide boulevards and elegant buildings date from the 19th century. But now a ban on building height has been overturned, and the city is set to get 12 new skyscrapers. Will this threaten the city's identity?
The Tour Montparnasse, constructed in 1973, is building that rises like a 59-storey black gravestone where a neighbourhood of political dreamers, artists and poets once stood. After this office block was built the outcry was so loud, that construction of new buildings was restricted to seven stories high. But the mayor has recently overturned that ban on locations outside the city centre. The skyscraper builders are back in town.
It was reported by DW that Jerome Coumet, the mayor of one Paris district said: "A city is something that constantly renews itself. I'm convinced that just as people go to visit the new parts of London, people will come to see extraordinary new architecture in Paris."
Coumet said he's glad that some of the new skyscrapers – including one by French architecture star Jean Nouvel - will be going up in his part of town.
"Some detractors talk about Paris as a city-museum. Well Paris is a city-museum. It is the city that attracts the greatest number of visitors anywhere in the world. That is an important economic resource. But it's not the only one," Coumet said. "Paris is also competing hard with other cities like London as an international capital… economically and architecturally. French architects work all over the world. They should also be able to express themselves in Paris."
Up in the north of Paris, a hydraulic breaker gets busy on a huge site of railway wasteland. Here it's Italian architect Renzo Piano who is about to express himself with a 160 meter-high tower of four steel and glass boxes. It will house law courts. The transparency is a metaphor, Piano says. He was one of the architects who designed the Pompidou art centre… the one with the pipes on the outside. And the Shard, the building that now dwarfs London's Tower Bridge.
Olivier de Monicault, the president of the anti-skyscraper pressure group SOS Paris has a name for this sort of building: "rupture architecture." And he says he hates it.
Paris City Hall stresses that the city around the Seine river is not about to become Dubai. The new height limit of 180 metres (590 feet) is still a good deal lower than the Eiffel Tower, which tops out at 324 metres (1,063 feet). Officials say they just want to provide office space for the internet age. Their opponents are asking what the demand for office blocks ten years from now will be like.
Locals have differing opinions. Some applaud the effort, as it will foster more jobs. Others lament the loss of a modest skyline.
The debate's set to get heated during City Council elections next year. The main right-wing challenger for the mayor's job has just said she is against the building of new skyscrapers in the city, but for now, the buildings will continue.
Source: John Laurenson/Deutsche Welle