Planning the Greenspaces of Nineteenth-Century Paris by Richard S. Hopkins (review)

The five chapters of this richly detailed study provide a broad range of insights into the administrative and sociocultural circumstances of the artificial greening of Paris under the Second Empire and the Third Republic. Richard S. Hopkins’s groundbreaking analysis of the role of Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand and the Service des promenades et plantations in shaping Parisian life is thoughtfully orchestrated around four themes: the influence of philosophy and science in the development of greenspace; the public versus the private; the rights of stakeholders and visitors; and the spatial practices that contributed to the shaping of greenspace. The customary perception of ‘mid-century urbanism as merely a top-down process’ (p. 2) is broadened by Hopkins’s evocation of ‘the way in which city residents at all social levels understood and addressed the challenges of rapid urbanization, exercising agency and fashioning their environment’ (ibid.). The consideration of the importance of greenspace understandably takes Michel de Certeau and Yi-Fu Tuan as key referents for the journey towards a horticultural outlook on ‘the diversity and dynamism that characterized the French capital city during a time of tremendous urban growth and economic, social, and political change’ (p. 159). Chapter 1 emphasizes the commemorative and financial worth of greenspace development in municipal and national contexts: ‘the parks were not only a reflection of France; they made a significant contribution to economic prosperity’ (p. 34). Chapter 2 analyses the health benefits of the expansion of parks in relation to positivist discourses and treatises by scientists such as Jean-Baptiste Boussingault, whose ‘experiments on precipitation in Paris during the 1850s showed that the rain, snow, fog, and dew in the city had levels of the nitrogen compounds such as ammonia and nitric acid three times higher than rural areas’ (p. 49). Chapter 3 focuses on the circumstances of workers ranging from concessionaires to guards who pursued a mediatory existence that was determined by the Service’s preoccupation with ‘the great expense and difficulty of engineering these ostensibly natural spaces within the unnatural environment of the city’ (p. 81). Chapter 4 makes use of six maps to demonstrate tensions between ‘the public’s perception of “rights” to city space’ (p. 96) and the attitude of the Service to different types of park-goers. Chapter 5 channels Victor Turner’s theorizations to contemplate the adaptation of greenspace according to societal demands and the challenges of urbanization: ‘within the emergent mass society, groups [ . . . ] from all over the city found in greenspaces centers for their own particular brand of communitas’ (p. 152). The extensive research and synthesizing of information at the heart of the study is attested by the twenty-nine pages of notes, eleven pages of primary bibliographical references, and seven pages of secondary sources. The accessibility of the work is heightened by the detailed classifications in the six-page index. Hopkins’s book is ultimately a highly engaging and enlightening exploration of the managed ecology of nineteenth-century Paris, founded on a wealth of anecdotal and archival information meriting further scrutiny.