4. Paris, from Les Halles to La Défense and the Grand Louvre

4.1 Les Halles

Les Halles was the first of three development projects (see table 2 ) with a strong underground content that followed one another in Paris in the second half of the 20th century. It was the brainchild of GECUS (Groupe d'études et de coordination de l'urbanisme souterrain), founded by Édouard Utudjian in 1932. While it resurrected the concept, dear to many urban planners, of a central station for the entire national network, its main aim at the time was to reduce the development of automobile traffic, thanks to the intersection of two new lines of a faster, more extensive metro (remember that in Paris, as in London, the terminal stations of the radial lines were established individually on the outskirts of the...