Our Man In Paris: The only way is up for downtown

For a city whose trademark is a tall building, one of the most striking things about Paris is its lack of tall buildings. Eiffel Tower apart, there are few skyscrapers in the French capital. They are confined to the northern edges of the city, the monstrous Tour at Montparnasse and a couple of brutal, high-rise plantations at the extremities of the Left Bank.

For the most part, the architectural style of Paris remains as planned more than 140 years ago by the Emperor Napoleon III and Baron Eugène Haussmann, the prefect of the département of the Seine.

In the 1860s, to the disgust of the novelist Victor Hugo and others, Baron Haussmann flattened much of what remained of medieval Paris. He carved out sweeping avenues and boulevards and imposed the pattern of eight-storey stone apartment buildings that gave the city the pleasing unity of appearance which it has to this day.

Is all that about to change? To the alarm of some Parisians, the Socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, is starting to show Haussmann-like urges. The city, already by far the biggest landowner in Paris, has been buying up immense amounts of property, ranging from apartment blocks to derelict railway sidings.

M. Delanoe, a popular and effective mayor, is also looking upwards. He has started to think aloud about lifting the ban, imposed in 1977, on the construction of tall buildings within the city boundaries.

The present rules ban new buildings taller than 37 metres (12 floors) in the outer districts of the city and anything larger than 25 metres (eight floors) in the centre. M. Delanoe suggests a change to allow new outcrops of architecturally interesting buildings in the non-touristic, eastern part of the city. There would be no question of skyscrapers in the centre of town. The Île de la Cité would not become Manhattan island.

The mayor argues that Paris, if it is to remain commercially and spiritually dynamic, cannot stay stuck in the 1860s. Under the present rules, it would be impossible for Paris to build the wonderful Guggenheim museum in Bilbao. "All the world's great architects are building in all the world's great cities - except Paris," he said.

Part of the mayor's concern is economic. Paris has a glut of elegant, old, office space but a shortage of the large, open-plan, heavily wired offices which companies demand. As a result, French businesses as well as businesses from abroad are moving their headquarters to new tower blocks just outside the city boundary.

The city faces the prospect of becoming, commercially, "a suburb of the suburbs": a tourist's delight, the bastion of goverment, a residential area for the rich, but stripped of the vitality - and taxes - which should go with its status as economic capital of France.

M. Delanoe's ideas have, understandably, provoked a wail of protest, from residents' pressure groups, from the centre-right opposition on the city council and even from his Green allies. He was forced to concede last week that the height restrictions will remain untouched in a new city plan which is to be formulated next year.

In return, the mayor won approval for a consultation exercise: a series of public meetings to examine the pros and cons of tower blocks, maybe even a referendum.

The mayor's ambitions to re-shape the city are horizontal as well as vertical. He plans to create new parks and an Olympic Village for 2012 by reclaiming the derelict railway land north of the Gare de St-Lazare, Gare du Nord and Gare de l'Est.

Paris, proper, covers a relatively small area, about six miles by six, not much bigger than London within the Circle Line. M. Delanoe is probably right. To preserve its character, accomodate new open spaces and create large quantities of modern offices, Paris, or parts of Paris, must eventually expand upwards.

Many of the places which define Paris - the Eiffel Tower, the avenues radiating from the Étoile, the Grands Boulevards - were opposed and hated in their day. A city is a living thing, which must grow and change, or become a kind of urban museum or theme park. Would a few elegant high-rises destroy the most beautiful capital city in the world?

Why Chirac speaks with an American accent

Tony Blair spoke in French on the French TV news last week after his summit with Jacques Chirac. Several people told me how startled and delighted they were to hear a British leader speaking their language.

Mr Blair's French - learned when he worked as a waiter in Paris as a young man - is good but it is no better than Jacques Chirac's English. Curiously, M. Chirac also honed his linguistic skills while working as a waiter, or rather a "soda-jerk" in a Howard Johnson hotel in Boston in the 1950s.

Unlike Mr Blair, M. Chirac refuses to give interviews or speak publicly in English. He can certainly still speak the language. A couple of years ago, I watched an unedited TV tape of M. Chirac showing the actor Paul Newman around a French children's home. For 40 minutes, he chattered away in excellent English, with an American accent.

The President of the Republic told the actor that he still has a certificate, signed by the original Howard Johnson, declaring that "Mr Jack Chirac" made a first-class soda jerk.

In for a penny...

Since I mentioned that I needed only one coin to complete my collection of euros, I have been showered with Dutch one cents. Three to be precise.

I would like to thank Peta Babcock-Kwint and Wayne Evans, and Stephen Castle of The Independent's Brussels office. I shall not reveal which one-cent coin I put in my collection. The other two I will put aside to purchase my assistant a Christmas present.