France
July 2023 - July 2024
After a year's work, the second promotion of the Citizens' Assembly of Paris presented its results at a session of the Paris Council alongside Mayor Anne Hidalgo on 9 July 2024. Since July 2023, 100 Parisians have been helping to shape municipal action by drafting a citizens' resolution on homelessness and a wish concerning garden streets.
100 Parisians, aged 16 or over, selected at random. 15 of them are residents of non-EU nationalities, in order to reflect the population as closely as possible.
Paris is the capital of France and a local authority with special status. Divided into twenty arrondissements, it is the capital of the Île-de-France region and the seat of the Greater Paris metropolitan area. Paris intra-muros covers an area of 105 km2 and had a population of 2,133,111 on 1 January 2021. Its conurbation covers an area of 2,846 km2 and had a population of 10,890,751 on 1 January 2021, making it the most densely populated conurbation in France and Western Europe.
The Assembly includes 100 Parisian citizens aged 16 and over, regardless of nationality, for a one-year term of office. This year has seen a number of improvements over the first promotion:
- The first group tackled the challenges of homelessness, selected from three topics proposed by the executive, and produced a deliberation, equivalent to a law for the City of Paris, requiring a monthly commitment on Friday evenings and Saturdays.
- The second group focused on greening issues, with members taking it upon themselves to formulate a wish, involving a monthly mobilisation.
To produce these documents, the members took part in plenary sessions attended by the Mayor and the Paris Executive, workshops, field visits, outreach work and hearings, as well as meetings with Parisian elected representatives and municipal directors. Their work was carried out in three phases:
The members produced a deliberation on the conditions and levers to enable a sustainable exit from the street, adopted by political groups from various backgrounds. In addition to the explanatory memorandum and the draft resolution, this document includes a plan with 20 action measures for the City and a plea to the State, which has already been discussed with the chief of staff of the Prefect of the Île-de-France Region.
The action plan adopted by the city focuses on two main areas: intervening at key moments in the lives of homeless people and removing obstacles to social support. The Citizens' Assembly places particular emphasis on :
The citizens' wish, also adopted by a large majority of the political groups, aims to increase the greening of the city, proposing in particular the creation of 100 garden streets by the end of the term of office, with a main criterion of 50% permeability. This resolution defines the concept, criteria and uses of garden streets.
The commitment of the members was remarkable this year, with very little attrition. In addition to the plenary meetings and group training sessions, activities included 11 workshops, 3 site visits, a meeting with the Prefect of the Île-de-France region, and the Nuit de la solidarité et des maraudes for the workshop on homelessness, as well as 6 workshops and 5 site visits for the workshop on revegetation.
As with the first promotion, this work will benefit from regular monitoring, committing the City to bringing current and past members together each year to assess the progress of each measure contained in the documents produced.
Sources of information (in French):
View the council meeting of 9 July 2024 :
Draft deliberations of the 2nd promotion of the Paris Citizens' Assembly
More information on the 2nd promotion of the Citizens' Assembly
More information on the first Citizens' Assembly
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