‘The time of the whole car city is over’: How is Paris encouraging walking and cycling?

It’s a beautiful day for it. The sun bounces off the white squares of the picnic cloth which runs from the Arc de Triomphe to Avenue George V. Traffic lights are still turning from red to green, conducting no one.

Elodie and her partner are among 4,000 lucky ticket-holders to the free grand pique-nique des Champs-Élysées held on 26 May. They’re enjoying the novelty of relaxing on the road that they usually cycle down for work, dodging cars and selfie-absorbed tourists. 

“We are Parisian, and this is a place we have been driven out of,” says the 51-year-old writer. “It’s not a museum, not Emily in Paris or Disneyland.”

It’s an understandable sentiment, but the scene is almost theatrically French. Before thousands of guests take their places, the head chef poses proudly in spotless whites, while men from the Champs-Élysées committee tell reporters that picnics are a treasured national pastime.  

Among them walks Anne Hidalgo, Paris’s green-crusading mayor, smiling and shaking hands with chefs at the food trucks. The council she heads up didn’t organise this private event, but it’s apiece with her vision for the city - tackling pollution and reimagining streets for pedestrians and cyclists. 

The Arc De Triomphe has played backdrop to various such events over the years, including the annual car-free day Hidalgo inaugurated in 2015. And with the city hosting the Olympics this summer, the council is looking to show its green initiatives in the best light. 

“We see it as a way to show to the world a vision of a new way to host the games, and a vision to live in the city by 2040 [under] climate change,” a spokesperson for the city hall tells Euronews Green. Here’s what’s changing in the city of lights.

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