Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Paris public trash cans


Today I wanted to show you a typical parisian garbage can! Not very glamourous eh?! Wouldn't you think that, in a city like Paris, they would try to make them as discrete as possible and melt them into the scenery? Welll... In 1995 we've had a serie of terrorist bombings and most of the bombs were hidden in garbage cans. Therefore very quickly the authorities removed the cans - even in the metro. But as it was not very convenient to keep a city like Paris clean without garbage cans, they came up with this solution: install transparent plastic bags instead of regular trash cans so that big bulky bombs would be more difficult to hide.

13 comments:

  1. when we all thought paris was a place packed with people in fancy big-name clothes and joked that even trash cans in paris would be so much fancier than those in other places, we are hit by the reality *eyes pop out of my head*

    but well, your provided reason is fair enough. damn those bombers!! x#$%&?!

    by the way, i love the style of your blog!! a photo of a city a day tells so much more about the city than a zillion words.

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  2. It actually took me a while to figure out that Paris had switched to this type of trash cans because of terrorism. Yes, it is terribly unsightly, but I assume that it's effective.

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  3. Not very nice looking, but I'm sure that it is necessary. We sometimes have to sacrafice a little beauty for a little peace of mind and security.

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  4. What an amazing concept Eric. Very well done!!

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  5. I found your site cliking next blog in the upper right corner and was a great and only surprise. Congratulations. I put Paris daily photo in my Bloglines.

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  6. Mais si pragmatique...

    Au fait, p'tite pub : mon nouveau blog photo, isido666.blogspot.com/.
    Critiques bienvenues !!!

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  7. > Annabanana (what a name! - Yes, I know why I visited your site!!). Well "when we all thought Paris was a place packed with people in fancy big-name clothes..." LOL! I am sure some famous clothes designer will come up with a fancy idea to dress these garbage cans!

    > Elisabeth. So far they're effective... Cross your fingers.

    > Rock. True! BTW, what happened to your Columbus photo blog???

    >dfl. Are you talking about the cans or the blog?

    > Englebert. We have a saying in French - that you possibly have in spannish also - "le hasard fait bien les choses" ("La casualidad hace bien las cosas") Don't laugh my Spanish is terrible! Anyway, come back here anytime and thanks for the link.

    > Jean-Michel. Romance is everywhere in Paris, even with such terrible garbage cans!

    > Isido. Et ben tu ne sais pas dans quoi tu as mis les pieds - et les mains! Mais bravo.

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  8. Paris needs to install some transparent art decco garbage cans!

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  9. I don't know. I cannot access either the blog or the admin panel.
    I had three blogs on Blogger and all are in the same state - gone.

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  10. pretty garbage cans? well, I guess it would be more attractive to have nice garbage cans but when you think about it, it really would be a waste of resources.

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  11. maybe they should invest in pretty garbage bags! I just started working on a streetscape design project in brooklyn so I understand the limitations of city design. We are not allowed to have any planters on the street, but big garbage cans are okay. hmm.

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  12. I have been looking for sites like this for a long time. Thank you! » »

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