How Paris redesigned itself to be a city of bikes—not cars

Over the last 12 years, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo fundamentally reshaped the City of Lights. As she leaves office, this is the story of how she reclaimed the city’s public spaces from cars, covered the city with trees, and made it a cycling paradise. It’s 8:45am on a rainy weekday morning in Paris, and I’m standing in what used to be a traffic lane in a busy neighborhood near the city’s largest train stations. Less than a block away, cars are streaming by in the rush hour commute. But here, workers have torn up the pavement and replaced it with a newly-planted park with trees, a protected bike lane, and a wide gravel path for pedestrians. Where cars once drove, someone is walking his dog.