Paris

Paris’ Resilience Journey

Paris is a global icon and center for economic and cultural activity. It is home to 2.2 million people, and 38 million visited the city in 2019.

Disasters have marked the history of Paris. Exceptional floods have regularly swept through the city over the centuries, epidemics have decimated its population, and fires have periodically destroyed emblematic districts and monuments.

But crises do not belong only to Paris’s past. In the Île-de-France region, 83,000 inhabitants live in flood zones, and another two million could be affected by power cuts if a major flood occurred. Recent major shocks include the terrorist attacks in 2015 and 2016, floods in 2016 and 2018, heatwaves every summer since 2016, major social conflicts, waves of migration on an unprecedented scale, and the fire at Notre-Dame de Paris in 2019.

Paris is also subject to chronic stresses. Air pollution, congestion, increasing inequalities, and lack of low-cost housing are all latent tensions that weaken the city and disrupt the daily lives of its inhabitants.