Paris launches ‘manifesto for beauty’ after #TrashedParis hashtag goes viral

City authorities respond to #SaccageParis (’trashed Paris’) hashtag

Rubbish bins on the Champs Elysee, Paris (Getty Images)

Paris’s city council has announced a “Manifesto for Beauty” that outlines plans to tackle unsightly streets and restore elegance to the French capital.

It comes after the hashtag “#SaccageParis” (#TrashedParis) gained momentum with locals in the city, who took to posting less than beautiful city views of overflowing bin bags, lopped-off tree trunks, vandalism and garish street furniture on social media.

Emmanuel Grégoire, deputy to Paris’s mayor, addressed the hashtag on Tuesday, saying that it “has been useful in the way that it forced us to question ourselves and react.”

“What they are criticising is true but sometimes false because they are reposting some photos ad nauseam,” added Grégoire.

The Manifesto will take a zero-tolerance approach to dumping rubbish in public, as well as overturning past government policies such as allowing locals to plant mini gardens around the bases of public trees. It will also remove bright and garish road markings in yellow and green and locally despised “mushroom seats” from pavements.

Police are expected to clamp down on graffiti and illegal posters, too.

Just last spring, Emmanuel Grégoire had called the social media campaign a “travesty of reality”, protesting that Paris was no dirtier or blighted by modern eyesores than any other major city.

“If you take a picture every day of the worst moment of your daily life that isn’t reality. You have to draw a distinction between occasional issues of cleanliness and the slant of political protest,” he told RTL Radio in April.

Local campaign Changer Paris welcomed the plans.

“All these announcements from the deputy mayor amount to recognition that the criticism from #SaccageParis was well-founded while the council kept talking about a political attack,” its spokesperson, Nelly Garnier, told Le Parisien.

Unfortunately, she said, “some of their damage will not be able to be repaired”.

“We are paying for years of irresponsibility. With a budget of €9bn and 55,000 civil servants, the state of the city is deplorable. It will be difficult to restore trust with Parisians,” she added.