Review: Atlas of Paris and 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.