Paris’s Champs-Elysees Launches Revamp Efforts to Win Over Locals’ Hearts

The Champs-Elysees, the famed boulevard sweeping across downtown Paris filled with cafes and stores, connects the Place de la Concorde in the east to the Arc de Triomphe in the west in a single, breathtakingly straight line.

But one thing seems to be missing among the tourist’ crowds: Parisians.

A true Parisian is rare on the Champs-Elysees, which, as one resident put it, is unsurprising.

“There’s no place for us — no garden, nowhere to sit,” Xavier LeBrun, 35, told AFP during his cigarette break as he watched tourists pass by on the almost two-kilometer (1.2-mile) route.

He described the Champs-Elysees as “where Parisians cross to get from one place to another, and that’s it.”

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The Champs-Elysees is a popular tourist destination, but locals have steadily abandoned it due to worries that it is too noisy, unclean, and expensive, with luxury labels displacing smaller, independent shops.

However, this could change if a committee eager to re-establish the Champs-Elysees’ appeal to Parisians is successful.

After five years of work, the “Champs-Elysees Committee,” which has a budget of five million euros ($5.4 million), released a list of 150 recommendations this week, including expanding green areas, cutting pollution, and organizing cultural events to “revive” the famous avenue.

The Champs-Elysees Committee, an alliance of industry and culture representatives, began with the “alarming” realisation that the world-famous street was “no longer loved, no longer likeable, deserted by Parisians, and feared by foreigners,” according to the committee’s report.

“Everyone was fleeing,” they reported.

A giant open-air picnic conducted on the avenue over the weekend was one example of how the committee intends to solve the issue.

“It’s a way of telling Parisians: come back to the Champs-Elysees,” committee chairman Marc-Antoine Jamet remarked.

With stores and historic cinemas disappearing along the route due to rising rents and declining sales, “innovation is an absolute necessity,” he stated.

The 1,800-page plan tries to reverse the decline while balancing the requirements of inhabitants and tourists.

The committee believes the cost will be 250 million euros, but Jamet said the additional tax money generated by the changes would be enough to cover all or some of the project.

“These are not costs but investments.”

Jawwad Channa, 33, a self-proclaimed Paris “superfan” who has traveled from Pakistan 22 times, said he always visits the Champs-Elysees, and this time he is bringing four friends who are excited to shop.

“It’s very crowded, but the shopping is amazing,” added his 32-year-old companion Ali Syed.

Shopping will remain a cornerstone, but important to the committee’s proposal is adapting the avenue to global warming and decreasing its carbon footprint by a third over 50 years, with plans to cut traffic by increasing pedestrian space and doubling bike lanes.

The committee also hopes to reduce the avenue’s average temperature by one to seven degrees Celsius, providing a “climate sanctuary” during the city’s increasingly common heatwaves.

Proposals include planting 160 trees, constructing benches and fountains, and transforming 20 hectares (49 acres) of unkempt grounds into a “true Parisian park”.