Paris

This article presents the Atlas of Paris and the Paris Region, completed after five years of work. Comprising 92 plates, 350 maps, and 950 pages of commentary, the atlas integrates statistical and governmental sources with comparative cartography and historical analysis to examine Paris’s natural environment, population, transportation, and economic structure. It shows that Paris is relatively small among major world cities but exceptionally dense, while urbanization has transformed its waterways, topography, and climate. Despite decentralization policies, industrial, administrative, and commercial functions remain highly concentrated in the capital region. The atlas also documents intensifying flows of people, goods, and transport between Paris, the rest of France, and the wider world. It therefore constitutes a major reference for understanding metropolitan change and regional planning.

The article presents the first comprehensive atlas of Paris and its region, scheduled for publication in autumn 1967. Directed by J. Beaujeu-Garnier and J. Bastié, the five-year project combined administrative records, door-to-door surveys, and field measurements. Its 85 plates and 600-page commentary use multiple scales to map population, agriculture, industry, and the tertiary sector, revealing spatial concentrations in activities such as automobile manufacturing, chemicals, and publishing. If sales repay the public subsidies, subsequent revenue will support research on the Paris region.

This review evaluates the Atlas de Paris et de la Région parisienne, directed by Jacqueline Beaujeu-Garnier and Jean Bastié, as an unprecedented attempt to represent exhaustively a metropolitan region of 8.5 million inhabitants. Prepared over five years by nearly one hundred geographers, cartographers, statisticians, and technicians, the project drew on administrative and corporate archives, field surveys, and, in some cases, building-by-building investigation. Its output comprises a large-format atlas containing roughly four hundred color maps and a 961-page commentary volume that explains sources, methods, technical difficulties, and substantive results. The maps employ scales ranging from 1:25,000 to 1:1,000,000 and combine raw observations with calculated indices and relational measures. The atlas first situates Paris within its physical and global setting: the agglomeration is exceptionally dense, occupies a strategic position in Western Europe, and functions as a major worldwide crossroads. It then reconstructs the historical formation of streets and buildings, revealing an aging housing stock, small and poorly equipped dwellings, and a severe shortage of green space. Maps of suburban expansion show growth progressing along roads and railways before motorization and postwar housing estates filled intervening spaces, while reinforcing the dominance of the central city. Demographic analysis identifies a high proportion of adults and women, increasing concentrations of managerial and clerical workers, displacement of younger and lower-income households toward distant suburbs, persistent immigration, and extensive commuting organized in concentric zones. Detailed treatments of transport and energy expose congestion, uneven accessibility, and differentiated consumption patterns. Although urbanization has reduced agricultural land, farming remains significant on the district’s periphery. Industrial maps document strong concentrations in automobiles, precision metalworking, jewelry, and cultural production, alongside a trend toward industrial dispersal and the continued centralization of offices and tertiary activities. The service sector receives the most extensive coverage, including commerce, business districts, health, education, culture, tourism, religion, government, and diplomacy; the maps notably trace the westward shift of the central business district toward the Champs-Élysées and La Défense. Further sections demonstrate Paris’s national influence over food supply, agricultural specialization, holiday travel, second homes, professional training, and its international commercial and intellectual reach. Concluding with the 1965 regional development plan, the review argues that the atlas achieves an exceptional synthesis of empirical breadth, cartographic ingenuity, visual quality, and analytical commentary. It therefore constitutes both a model of comprehensive regional cartography and one of the outstanding achievements of French geography.

This review evaluates the Atlas of Paris and the Paris Region, a monumental collective work directed by Jacqueline Beaujeu-Garnier and Jean Bastié. Based on five years of research, extensive statistical processing, and sophisticated cartographic methods, the atlas examines the physical setting, urban structures, population, transport, agriculture, industry, services, and Paris’s national and international roles. Detailed maps reveal the historical layering of housing, east–west residential inequalities, peripheral and southern urban growth, land-use patterns, population decline in dense central districts, migration, employment, and industrial decentralization. Each plate combines original data, geographical interpretation, and methodological guidance. Despite its cost, weight, and limited portability, the atlas is praised for its exceptional technical precision, visual clarity, and analytical richness. It constitutes both an authoritative reference for understanding metropolitan Paris and a scientific model for urban geography, cartography, and regional planning.