(mikael colville-andersen) look at the ship! the barge. what's the name on the back? sandra? sandra the barge. it could be like a children's book. what do you think about paris, lulu? (lulu colville-andersen) it's a nice city, and there are too many cars. (felix colville-andersen) i think it's funny how grandpa only honks the horn maybe five times a year, whereas the taxi drivers maybe do it 100 times in one drive. (mikael colville-andersen) paris is a storied city. more than most others in the world. it's a city that's synonymous with inspiring change. fighting for it, demanding it, forcing it. this is a birthplace of revolutions, and right now,

a new revolution is underway... an urban revolution. i brought my kids here to embed ourselves, right here in the heart of this rebel metropolis. (mikael colville-andersen) france's mythical capital has been immortalized in countless novels and films. alphaville. jules et jim. les amants du pont-neuf. belle de jour. paris is a city that allows you to dream, think and feel... while drinking wine. but

beyond the glittering lights of the eiffel tower is a hidden paris, one of struggle and hard work, one of solidarity and inventiveness. and that's the paris i've come to explore with my two city-savvy kids: lulu-sophia and felix. the life-sized paris, far from the world-class restaurants and the high-end boutiques of the champs-elysées. first stop: a corner café in the bastille neighbourhood. this is where parisian filmmaker cédric klapisch shot his landmark film, when the cat's away, back in the mid 1990's. of course, bastille hasn't escaped the clutches of the city's gentrification. but cédric's neighbourhood still has the village-like feel he loves so much. - monsieur klapisch! - bonjour! - bonjour! - for me, paris has the perfect scale. it's 10km from the north to the south. - it's only 10? - only 10, yeah - périphérique to périphérique ? - yeah, and i think it's probably 12km east to west. - i didn't even know that it was that little. - yeah, so it's small,

and it's crazy because i'm 55, and i've always lived here, and i don't know everything in paris. you know, it's always a city that i need to discover every day, every month. i think paris is more friendly today. - despite all of the terror attacks? - yeah, because i think it brought everyone together much more than before. it was really a sad time, but at the same time, something very enthusiastic happened. - after the attacks on bataclan and the other places, we heard internationally that the next day, or a couple of days later, parisians went out and demonstrably sat at the café and maybe were a little nervous inside. but was that true? did people really say: "no, we're not going to take away the streets." - yeah. that's what we're doing today. so, we had to say that we have to defend our way of life.

we want to have drinks. we want to drink wine. we want to drink beer, even if other people don't like that, we want to enjoy life. and you know, i went there, at place de la république. four million parisians were there and you can't imagine what it is to meet four million people in the street. it was very strong. it's probably one of the strongest things i've ever lived. and it was a relief for me to say that we don't live in a dangerous place. we live in a place where people like to be peaceful. (mikael colville-andersen) felix, if you feel freaky, you get behind me, right? (felix colville-andersen) yeah! absolutly. (lulu-sophia colville-andersen) careful! (mikael colville-andersen) so felix, you're kid. you ride on the bicycle infrastructure of copenhagen. what's it like to ride here, now? (felix colville-andersen) kind of spooky. (mikael colville-andersen) spooky? (felix colville andersen) and confusing. woah. (mikael colville-andersen) i'm in what's technically a cycle lane. this is counterflow. you can cycle one way

with the cars, but you're actually allowed to cycle the other way as well. we're traffic coning. we're actually doing something good for the city of paris, which is calming the traffic. look at this intersection: you got cars, you got bikes, you got 18 million pedestrians, you know. somebody's out of place here. (felix colville-andersen) yeah. - william! - hi! - hello! nice to see you. - welcome to les grands voisins. - thank you. - this used to be a hospital. 500,000 parisians were born here. - really? - yeah. - like half a million, almost. - yeah. half a million. absolutely. it was one of the main maternity ward. - and we really are in the middle of paris. we rode our bikes here, and all of a sudden, you turn to the right and you're in this huge, almost like a park in a way... it's so massive. - for years, this 365,000 square-foot space was left

for dead, right in the heart of magnificent paris. and this made no sense to william dufourq. so with his friends, he took over. he transformed the place into a vibrant community they call les grands voisins, the good neighbours. the project now hosts a shelter for the homeless that accommodates more than 600 people, 30% of which are undocumented refugees. but also, a restaurant, a brewery, pop-up markets, artist studios, startups, and even an urban campground. from the hip parisian to the homeless, people from all walks of life come together here every day. (mikael colville-andersen) see the chickens? what's the perception of the people living in the neighbourhood? are they like: "awesome!" or are they going: "no, why do you have to do it here?" - well, it's very mixed. when we arrived, people didn't know us and people were very much afraid of us creating a bubble of poverty in the middle of paris. they were afraid of drug abuse, of people who didn't behave, of the price of the housing going

down, so we had to discuss a lot with the neighbourhood. now, today, it's working very well. when we do markets, food markets or whatever, a lot of people come from the surrounding neighbourhood. so over the last year and a half, the general feeling around us has improved a lot. - what's amazing here is that the project isn't just about sharing space. it's more about creating a deep sense of community. everyone here, from the undocumented refugee to the struggling artist, has to pitch in their share of volunteer work. (william dufourq) the people living here who don't have the money to go and buy food in a restaurant, by working an hour and a half, they can get a meal. we don't want the general public to go and eat in the restaurant and then for the people whom we're housing, for them just to stay in the centres and eat the food which we are providing. the idea is for them to be able to change and go eat there, so they can get back in a position as a consumer. for one hour, you can get pants, you can get a phone for 50 minutes,

you can get a t-shirt, you can get a bag in the restaurant la lingerie. it says: "one hour, you can have the cake." generally, one hour is equivalent to 10 euros. - o.k. so you look at the european average. that's a fair price. - yeah, absolutely. - he said five hours of work for a bag of chips. is that o.k? - yeah. - alright. (william dufourq) this is our main restaurant. that's where we have our concerts in the evening. that's where we have the balls. well, one of the balls. - bonjour! - bonjour! - you're going to dry or you're going to wash? this is a strong economical activity for us: selling food and drinks helps us to balance the budgets, people get back to work. from a relationship point of view, for ex-homeless people, it's quite good to be behind the bar serving other people. there's a good contact between people. (mikael colville-andersen) that has to be dry. i'm going to go put these on the coffee machine. i have to work too, right?

so it was like 15 minutes of work, i don't know if it's... yeah, there's no dinner basically. it was only 15 minutes. (william dufourq) it's worth a coffee. (mikael colville-andersen) it's a coffee! when it's really, really hot, you can have a quick little shower to cool off, right? - today, the kids and i are helping to build a small edible garden in front of the former doctor's quarters, transformed into a community space. like everything here, the work is done collectively, pushed along by residents, tenants and even visitors. (mikael colville-andersen) do you work here, or do you volunteer? - you're working here. - landscape architect. - so you're creating a little aromatic garden, but it is also urban farming.

- right, o.k. we're ready to camp, sonia. - o.k. - do you have a tent for us? - yeah. - all right. lulu. felix. and me. does anybody remember the number of the tent? - yeah. - 21. - no, it was 11a. - 11a. that's cool. you can sleep in there. - yeah. - yes, we camp. the organization behind this urban campsite has pushed social diversity even further, by bringing tourists into the mix. you can spend the night here for 10 euros, by far the cheapest accommodation in paris. and it includes a hot shower... if you're lucky. - all right. who's taking the cold shower? - you. - me? - yeah. - me? - yeah. - oh, it's warm.

showtime! - that was cold. all right, shut up and brush your teeth. let's go. this has been an amazing experience here at les grands voisins, the grand neighbours. these old hospital grounds converted by many, many passionate people into something quite spectacular. it's an amazing experience: in the heart of paris, in a densely populated neighbourhood, we're camping. but we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow, so it's time to say... (colville-andersen family) good night! (mikael colville-andersen) watch out. piste cyclable! ah. the river.

what i want to do is try and get down to the river side where something really, really interesting is happening in paris. something visionary. i just have to figure out how we get down there. yeah. all right. wait. i seriously don't know how to get there. o.k. we're here. this is the georges pompidou expressway, one of the classic urban planning mistakes from the 1960's. normally, cars are driving here, but pas just decided, a week before we came here to film, that no more cars will be allowed on this section of the road. it's going to be transformed into an amazing urban space. it's going to give the people of paris the river back. (lulu-sophia colville-andersen) shut up! (mikael colville-andersen) never let your kids win.

look at the map. cool. there's our ride, guys. this is kind of cool. early morning, saturday in paris, using the ancient waterways of the city. we're going to put some stuff onto the barge and sail it down the canal. a paris! (benedict rickey) marché sur l'eau is the only charity or organization in the paris region to transport fresh produce by the canal. mostly, the canal is used for tourism.

- christelle and her team of marché sur l'eau like to make it clear. they didn't invent anything. this canal was built in the early 1800's to s this puose: transporting food to paris. (benedict rickey) all of the produce are from a place called seine-et-marne. it's a county. - with this vintage solution, christelle is tackling a very modern problem: traffic. and she's not alone. the city is in the midst of a radical 10 years traffic reduction plan. (mikael colville-andersen) are there other people who see this and think: "oh, we want to do it too?"

- this project feeds 700 people a week, with fresh fruit, vegetables, cheese, milk and meat, in three cities along the canal de l'ourcq: paris, pantin and sevran. that's 4 to 5 tonnes of produce each and every week with only one boat. (benedict rickey) if you go to the market and try and buy the same produce for that price, i think you're looking at about the same price. you can do an experiment if you want. go to the market, try and buy 6 or 7 kilos of vegetables. - o.k. cool, so the price doesn't change. there's not a markup for... no ideological markup. - no, absolutely. a couple could buy medium-sized amount of vegetables. it's 15 euros. that's two times the minimal wage in france. two hours of minimal wage in france. there's no reason why people couldn't buy this.

(mikael colville-andersen) we've reached the end of the line on the canal here. we have a second team ready to take the produce off the barge and distribute it to the families who will come down and pick up their weekly or biweekly box of produce from the farms of paris, just 40 kilometers from here. it just makes sense. (christelle touzart) let's go! let's go! (mikael colville-andersen) hustle it! those are really big courgettes. oh, man!

- it's amazing how so many cities around the world suffer from short-term memory loss. amazing highways were built 100 years ago by napoleon to serve the transport needs of paris and they are largely forgotten now. this one project here... they are the only people using the waterways as they were meant to be used. the potential for using these canals, the potential for exploiting the farmlands around paris to serve the needs of the people who live here is amazing. - we're in the morning rush hour in paris. - yes. - we're in a bus lane. - on a bus lane opened to cycling.

- now we have a huge bus right behind us. - you want to feel safe and be safe, you just look straight ahead and pretend they don't exist. - and pretend they don't exist. - yeah. - riding a bike in paris is like playing a video game. you know, you always have an obstacle. - yeah. but you only have one life, so careful! - yeah, o.k. - charles maguin is the chairman of an advocacy group called paris en selle, paris by bike. - we don't really want to make stuff for cyclists. we want to make stuff for future cyclists. - right. - we want everyone, the mother with children, to be able to feel safe on the street. - cycling was already part of the initial traffic reduction plan put in place by the city. in 2015, paris adopted the bold plan vélo, the cycling plan, through which it promised to invest 150 million euros to double the span of its biking network. plain and simple, paris was to become the

cycling capital of the world, but the plan was unofficially shelved because of the overwhelming amount of bureaucracy and a lack of political will. unfortunately, the result, at least for now, is nothing like the original plan. - do you see this here? this is a bike lane. - yeah? where the cars are? just have a look, there. you can see... - yeah, the symbols are there. - the symbols are there. the bike lane is never there, because there are trucks every day unloading stuff for these shops i guess. - so now, we're on a street with no bicycle infrastructure. - it's le grand boulevard. very important street, and very important to connect people, but there is no cycle lane indeed. although, if you look on the map they give on the plan vélo, they say it's already planned or done. - this is nice. it's a bike lane. it's protected from the cars, but it's kind of narrow. - on sundays, it's pretty o.k. here. but when you're a commuter and some are coming and

passing us, it can be a little bit frustrating. - yeah, it looks like there's a sharrow for us to go there. - oh god. are you going that way? - yeah. i'm sorry. i know it's difficult for you, but you have to anticipate when you're cycling in paris. we turn left actually. when you want to change direction on a street like that, it's very difficult. - i mean, when you look at best practice for bicycle infrastructure, which is 100 years old, you don't throw cyclists out in the traffic. - so, this is the only place where the crossing has been treated with green paint. - oh, o.k. copenhagen style, right? - yeah, and there is a cycle box where you can see a lot of scooters and mopeds. you can see them. - yeah. - they are now allowed of course to be there, but they are. there's one cyclist. he can't access the bike box. - i mean, the green paint across the intersection is something that has been in place in denmark for many years, and it has

proven to increase visibility, so it's great that that's here. - it's considered a gain. - right there. it's what you see. this is a car city. what's the network like here? can you cycle all over paris? - no. there is no bicycle network, to be very honest with you. i think they don't believe in bicycle as a solution to move people around. so they don't make a bike line, like a metro line or a tram line. think from a to b and never stop, and it's always the same design, or at least you try to have something consistent, coherent. - right. so this is a classic bike share rack here in paris. it's the fourth largest bike share system in the world. it really is, and has been for a while the gold standard for bike share systems. - it's a very nice system. it helps a lot of people hop on a bike and try and see that it's nice. - there are cities all over

the world that have 1% of the population riding bikes. cities struggle desperately to get to 2%. paris, in under 10 years, went from basically 0... - to 3% to 5%. - 3% to 5%, inside the périphérique. - everybody says vélib' has a good share in this improvement of cycling, and it's true. and then, there's probably the fact that there's too much traffic and that the underground is completely full of people. it's not a very pleasant commute. - it's at capacity, the underground. - capacity is at the maximum. so people are starting to think that we need another solution. and we can see that people are taking up cycling, even though the city doesn't make an infrastructure. i wanted to show that to you because that's the design they want to apply to most of the cycle network on big streets. - on street, bidirectional, we threw that out of our best practice 20 years ago. it's simply not safe enough. what if i want to go

over there, right? all these destinations are inaccessible. - that's the last generation of cycle lanes here in paris. we talked to the politicians, but now we also really want to talk to the people and say: "you can decide that the city will become cyclable." we hope it can show the politicians that the people care about it. it really is our main angle: show the politicians that the people care about cycling. - which arrondissement are we in right now? - we are in the 14th. - the 14th. - the very edge of the 14th. - so you're at the edge. you're near the périphérique, but you still feel like you're very much in paris. - yes, yes. it's very symbolical and psychological. when i lived in malakoff, it's actually 200 meters from here, over the périphérique.

i was not inside paris. my postal code was not 75. - marie darrieusecq is one of the most prolific authors of her generation. compared to kafka by critics, she has written more than 15 books translated into 40 languages. she's fiercely passionate about paris, the city in which she became such a successful writer. - you say we're inside the walls right now. - yes. it's a castle. the périphérique works like the moat around a castle. - so there you go. that's mobility. that's how a big city works, isn't it? or what? - i hate it. - yeah. so when you moved here from the provinces, was it to become a writer? you already felt that you wanted to do that then? - yes. it was my dream to come to paris when i was a child. i wanted to leave my small village, and i finally managed to come to paris at 19. wow, and life began, really.

i loved paris. and it was very difficult. i didn't have enough money, etc. but i just stayed. now, my relationship with the city is more ambivalent, but i still love it. this sort of shabby little gardens are made by the parisians. they try to have plants everywhere, in all the little, mini spots. - so somebody actually takes care of this. - yes. some neighbour takes care of this. you've got to have a license to have the right to plant things. and they hate dogs. - and they hate dogs. yeah, o.k. fair enough. - this is a collective garden. before, it was a beautiful... how do you call that? a terrain vague. - like an empty lot. - empty space. yes, an empty lot. so this empty lot was full of wild apricot trees, fig trees, apple trees. all the things that people had casted away, you know? - yeah. and it grew an orchard. - and it grew, yeah. the railway owners, they cut

all the wild trees and they put these very clean, sterile green sheets of plastic. - oh you're kidding. really? - and all the neighbours got very furious. and so after a long battle... i don't know if it's typical or not of paris, i don't know, but the neighbours managed to have this garden. i'm not part of it, but i think it's a very good idea. - darrieussecq isn't living in an ivory tower. after the paris attacks, she joined charlie hebdo to stand in solidarity with her fellow citizens. she now has a column in the socially engaged newspaper. - was my reaction as a citizen. all i can do is write. so i wrote them and i said: "guys, if i can help..." it's all i can do. i don't know if i always agree with them, but that's what i like. - how do you think parisians have reacted to the obscenely grotesque terror attacks? - i had a reaction of love. i really cherished the wounded city, and i wanted

to stay even more. it's new, that it's a wounded city. it's bizarre. it was a very proud city. it's never been a victim, paris. never. all i know is that in my novels, i now integrate in the characters, now, in their day-to-day life, this fear. this tension. it's new, but i cannot write my novels as if nothing had happened. look, permis de végétaliser. you see, somebody applied for permission to plant. he or she hasn't started, obviously. - so there will be... they can do whatever they want. they can plant food? - yes, yes. tomatoes, whatever. - yeah. so we're walking past all sorts of nice gardens. how does this impact life in paris? is it just a little cute thing, or do you feel like there is a... - oh no, i think it's very important. it's much more than cute. people gather, they talk together, they decide what to plant. i think there's a lot of talking. there's a lot of reunions. that's why i'm not in it. - oh, right! o.k. - but it's good. people meet for good reasons! to plant things. it's nice.

- early sunday morning in paris, and we're going to investigate one of the primary issues facing cities around the world: family life. we're going to meet vianney and his family, and talk about the challenges they face living in paris, the heart of europe's largest city. - salut! - hello! - hi there! - mikael. - vianney. - the average price of an apartment in paris is 800 euros per square foot. with the same budget, you can buy an apartment twice as big in berlin or vienna. the incredibly small size of the average parisian apartment is especially difficult for families, and inevitably pushing more and more of them to the outskirts of the city, where home ownership is still possible. - go this way. you'll see the kid's room, which is

actually like a dormitory in a boarding school. - yeah, o.k. - this is the kitchen. so it's cool. it's nice, it's charming, but it's tight. - so you still like it. i mean, we're not arguing about the size. - we do love it. we love the neighbourhood, we have many friends. - and how long have you been living here, did you say? - 15. - 15 years. - yes, 15 years. i'd say that in the last 10 years, all of my friends now have left for the suburbs. - they couldn't afford to stay. - they couldn't afford to stay in paris. and some of them even go 40 or 50 kilometers away, which is what we're more or less thinking about. this very arch used to be the gate to paris. - this is the gate to paris. - yes. - wow. - under louis xiv. - today, the gateway to paris is the périphérique. beyond the huge highway circling paris lie the suburbs. from there, millions of workers

commute to the city every day on public transport. from the heart of paris, we are now heading out into the distant suburbs, the second ring around paris. and you have bought a house out there. you have to tell me why you have this double life. - we had no possibility to buy something in paris, so we bought something in what will be paris in maybe 20 years. paris and its suburbs are the biggest construction site in europe, and will stay so for the next 15 years. 200 kilometers of railway tracks to construct. 100 round station to be constructed in the suburbs. the life, the designs, the landscape will be totally changed. - how do you bring the urban experience with you? - with a few friends, a few years ago, we decided to create a blog which is called enlarge your paris, focusing on cultural venues in the first and second rings. you have more theatres in the suburbs than in paris. we are traveling touring the suburbs, and our purpose