These being the most influential 300 square-feet in the whole country, they look remarkably frugal. The lamps and ubiquitous candles form a choreography of asymmetric shadows on the pastel-coloured walls. If it were not for the copies of local and international dailies scattered on the mid-century teak desk, it would be hard to guess that this is the office of the editor-in-chief of the most important newspaper in the country.

I am about to be seated on one of two opposing dark-brown leather armchairs next to the desk, and I ask to have a glimpse of the majestic view from the corner office onto Copenhagen City Hall Square. Alas, I do not get to breathe any of the self-importance I had anticipated: the square has been transformed into a gigantic crater for the construction of a new subway line. It has been a frustratingly long project, marred with delays and minor accidents. Most Danes are fed up with the Italian contractors widely blamed for the blunders – even though afterwards they are immensely proud of the unmanned metroline they have delivered. “I really can't say”, answers the soft-spoken secretary with a smile, when I ask when they will be finished.

Before serving at the helm of Politiken, Denmark's leading daily, Bo Lidegaard had done most other things. A career diplomat, he was a top advisor of successive prime ministers and embodies the glorious technocratic tradition that sustains democratic institutions in Europe's North. As a historian, he has chronicled the origins and development of the modern Danish state and the life of some of its most defining statesmen. His best-known book Countrymen recounted the story of the rescue of Danish Jews in 1943, and was a bestseller translated into several languages. His name does not appear on the ballot paper (though the surname does, as Lidegaard's younger brother was Denmark's foreign minister). Yet this diverse background makes him something of a polymath of Danish democracy.

Newspaper editors are legendary for their short attentionspan and even shorter fuse. So precious is time in blue-chip journalism, that the Financial Times at one point offered one-to-one chats with the editors in end-of-year charity auctions at Christie’s. Here I did not have to bid in order to obtain a full 45-minute conversation starting with the origins of modern Scandinavian statehood in the nineteenth century.

Let us go back for a moment where this journey started, in Copenhagen. After that disgraced climate summit of 2009, most governments would have probably lain low for a while. At a time of economic downturn and austerity, it was not apparent that climate investments were an “insurance policy” on the future, as the Danish government kept billing them. Even for an obsessively eco-friendly public, it was not self-evident why Denmark or Europe should take a worldwide lead on climate, when no-one else is there to follow.

Yet, the tiny kingdom hosting that tragic display at the Bella Conference Center begged to differ. Denmark had made of climate policies a hallmark of its global image; what issue could be better to brand a small nation at the top of Europe than saving the planet from deliberate self-destruction. After such a debacle, anyone would be forced to reconsider priorities. But over the past decade Denmark's climate policies have been nothing if not ambitious. Since the COP15 summit failure, Copenhagen first reached its greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets at 20 per cent in 2020, then raised them to 40 per cent for 2030. Officials have no qualms in admitting that meeting this objective required heavy public investment. But after it outpaced its own 2020 target of reaching a 30 per cent share of renewable energy, Denmark set a 55 per cent target for 2030. A broad cross-party coalition has ensured the goal of phasing out all fossil fuels production by the year 2050. In 2019, Copenhagen set out to become the first carbon neutral capital in the world by the year 2025.

Where it gets interesting is in the means necessary to support these policies. There are the familiar things, such as improving efficiency and extending financial incentives in renewables. But Denmark is also seeking ways to stimulate innovation and to make green investments attractive for companies. Together with South Korea and Mexico, in 2013 Denmark launched a Global Green Growth Forum (3GF) to marry bottom-up ideas from corporate and research actors with top-down government support. Companies such as Samsung, Siemens and General Electric joined forces with the likes of University of California, Berkeley and WWF, aided by governments that pledge to create a stable environment for green investments. Civil society, businesses and the media are part of the endeavour at all times.

“Crawl back under your rock!” There is not much diplomacy left to spare in Margot Wallström. The then Swedish foreign minister will be remembered as one of her country's most respected statespersons of the beginning of this century. She has embodied the values of openness, equality and tolerance that we associate with Europe's North. Among other initiatives, she pioneered a “feminist” foreign policy, to promote equal opportunities in all aspects of Sweden's international projection. And it is precisely in relation to this that she clearly lost her cool. The target of the fury that led her effectively to compare him to a snake is Jordan Peterson, Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, who had earned a reputation and a large following for his politically incorrect positions, in particular on gender issues.

Peterson was in Sweden to promote one of his books and found himself entangled in a dispute on equal opportunities with Swedish feminists. Peterson's thesis, which he argues is supported by a quarter of a century of quantitative research in social psychology, is that countries like the Nordic ones which have reached the highest standards in terms of gender opportunities, have produced the most unequal results in terms of actual choices, for example in the workplace. In other words, given the best possible opportunity to choose, women tend to select certain kinds of jobs as compared to men, with women usually picking jobs on the lower side of the employment pyramid and men choosing those on the top.

Peterson should have never gone there. The Swedish public, usually civilized and measured, burst into a collective bout of disdain. But the Canadian psychologist, now stained as a chauvinist of the worst kind, doubles down: his interpretation of the data is that the moment the barriers between men and women are lowered, the biological factor is decisive to explain gender behaviour and ultimately differences. Put another way, once the structural constraints disappear, natural differences between genders emerge, for example in professional settings. Plainly, this point reinforces stereotyping and discriminations, such as those that see men more inclined to relate to objects and mechanics, while women's innate sociability is reflected in jobs in the healthcare sector.

The room is cramped, the air is stale, the nylon carpet dotted with coffee stains. The setting is the Bella Center, a clumsily named conference facility in the suburbs of Copenhagen. Outside it is a freezing December evening, and the 2009 United Nations summit on climate change is just about to spectacularly collapse. The gathering in that room was not even supposed to take place: with a snowstorm incoming, the Indian prime minister had already announced his departure for the airport. But there he still is, deep in conversation with the Chinese Premier, the Brazilian president and his South African counterpart. US president Barack Obama peeps in and pops an innocent, five-word question: “Are you ready for me?” There was no space at the table, recounts a reporter, so Brazil's president “squeezed round allowing Mr Obama to pull up a chair and sit down”.

“Copenhagen” has since become a byword for global discord. Whatever the five leaders talked about back in 2009, it did not save that most hyped and inconclusive of meetings from miserable failure. The summit, colloquially known as COP15, had effectively collapsed months before it even started, under the weight of irreconcilable differences between the North and South of the world.

Climate deniers had long been at work to disparage the urgency of an agreement on carbon emissions. If not in its substance, then certainly the form the summit took was reflective of a cynical stance: I, for one, had never seen so many gas-guzzling, armoured SUVs bulldozing through Copenhagen as in those two fateful weeks. Compounding a general sense of anarchy, surprisingly poor organization left delegates by the thousand freezing outside an overbooked conference centre. Stories of heads of state unrecognized by security guards and sent to the back of the entrance queue made the rounds on the internet. To top it all, the ultimate irony during a negotiation on rising temperatures: it was absurdly cold. In the midst of this mayhem, Obama's polite request to join that conversation with the other heads of government would appear a routine act of courtesy. In reality, it better serves as the unwitting formula of the new world disorder.

The Nordics have their own Alexis de Tocqueville. In the 1930s, a young American correspondent and later Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist named Marquis Childs undertook a journey to Sweden to examine the bold new experiment being pursued there in offering a cradle-to-grave welfare state. Not unlike Tocqueville, the nineteenth-century French diplomat whose Democracy in America captured the spirit of the nascent United States, Childs's account of the emergent Nordic social model produced an unlikely classic entitled Sweden: The Middle Way (1936).

Against the background of a looming struggle between fascism and democracy, capitalism and communism, Childs’ short book chronicled the ways in which effective democratic governance could overcome ideological confrontation and deliver results. Through a detailed study of the cooperative system, Childs demonstrated how Sweden, and the Nordics by extension, fared between the “concentration of economic power in the hands of a few men” in the United States and “the trials and hardships in Russia”. While firmly in the Western camp, Sweden had somehow managed to intercept and absorb the revolutionary winds blowing from the East. The subtitle – The Middle Way – would become a cliché of centrist politics.

The book made a splash. At the time, the New York Herald Tribune reviewed it enthusiastically: “[It] reads like the best political news in years. [It] sounds gloriously like what we used to think of as American: a method of sane compromise and steady progress, each step tested by the sole criterion: does it work?” US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in the midst of that most ambitious of middle-way kind of experiment, the New Deal, sent a delegation to Sweden. He reasoned thus:

“I actually feel pretty comfortable in New York. I get scared, like, in Sweden”. Lou Reed, the frontman of the Velvet Underground is thinking aloud while playing himself as the dishevelled city-dweller in the movie Blue in the Face: “It's kind of empty, they’re all drunk, everything works. If you stop at a traffic light and don't turn your engine off, people come over and talk to you about it. You go to the medicine cabinet and open it up and there will be a little poster saying: ‘In case of suicide, call …’. You turn on the TV, there's an ear operation. These things scare me. New York? No.”

I would not know if the show on otolaryngology ever took place. To make up for it, there has been another, on the first channel of the Norwegian state television, which showed logs burning in a fireplace for 12 straight hours. The debate in the television studio centred on issues such as chopping, stacking and the best music to accompany the log burning operation (“nerdy” items, by the producer's own admission).

The point, so bizarrely illustrated by Lou Reed, is that the Nordics are different, in ways that are so perfect as to seem to some extent inhuman. Authors Henrik Berggren and Lars Trägårdh even wrote a book asking the somewhat disturbing question: “Are the Swedes humans?”3 As a “Southerner” living in these lands, I have often been tempted to associate the Nordics’ sophistication, disarming simplicity, precision and ruthless pragmatism, to übermenschian qualities. In this, Nordic societies remind me of an operating room or a chemistry lab: everything is pristine, sanitized, shiny, stainless steel. Bespectacled scientists in their immaculate white overcoats are free to experiment on humanity's next frontier.

Theoretically, a united Europe was supposed to attenuate these differences. For sure in the North they will continue to consume beer and butter, while in the South we reclaim the superiority of wine and olive oil. In the disorganized South, improvization is a necessity that becomes a virtue. Mistrust is a trait that is almost somatized in the way we obliquely look at each other. Yet, for the vast majority of the two million Europeans that constitute the Erasmus generation, Europe is a mindset and a way of life. The opening of borders and the common currency are epochal achievements.

Île-de-France faces most of the problems that confront other big metropolitan regions in the West, and has to respond to largely similar challenges. The size of the metropolis, its density and its economic power mean that – as with London and New York – it is primarily attractive for economic rather than residential reasons. In this chapter, I propose to set out the main problems and challenges facing Île-de-France in terms of a fundamental tension between, on the one hand, an economic attractiveness and competitiveness that some consider to be in decline and, on the other hand, a rise in social and territorial inequalities that is perceived as a threat to the development of the metropolis. This choice is explained by the fact that these two problems and challenges are espoused by powerful coalitions of actors of roughly equal strength, which have long championed different views on what public policies to follow, on their territorialization and on reforms in the governance of Île-de-France, as we will see in the upcoming chapters.

More recently, the environmental question has become part of the debate, but that debate remains dominated by the dichotomy between competitiveness and rising inequalities, and it will also be presented in the light of that division. Unsurprisingly, it is questions of housing and transport that lie at the heart of the matter. In this sense, Île-de-France is no different from its big international rivals. These questions, which I will tackle in greater detail below, relate both to the doubts concerning the French capital's economic performance and to the emergence of an increasingly less inclusive city. They form a system.

For this reason, this chapter is divided into two parts. The first provides a summary of the main issues affecting the region today: housing, mobility, environment, socio-territorial inequalities, attractiveness and competitiveness are all covered, one by one. The second part shows how these problems generate challenges in terms of economic attractiveness and competitiveness, on the one hand, and the fight against inequalities, on the other. Questions such as air pollution, climate change and the region's resilience to different risks are tackled in the next chapter, which deals with the policies implemented to combat these problems and challenges.

A series of escapes

For more than a decade, European states and societies had been rocked by severe disruption. Unprepared, unprotected, they withstood it as best they could.

Four acute crises caught the collaborative venture off guard: the banking and euro crisis (2008–12), the Ukraine crisis (2014–15), the migrant crisis (2015–16) and the Atlantic crisis of Brexit-&-Trump (2016–20). Four times the patiently constructed decision-making factory that served the market, the currency and freedom of movement was pummelled by divisive forces. Four times government leaders, ministers, commissioners and central bankers hurried to Brussels, Luxembourg or Frankfurt for “last chance” consultations, in which they reshaped the European Union. Four times too, all across Europe, a polyphonic public climbed onto its seats to jeer or applaud, occupied squares, waved flags and won back the power of the ballot box in renewed, intense engagement with the political drama taking place on the European stage.

Riding the waves of each crisis, prophets of doom announced the end of the Union. The most eager among them provided a date. “In a matter of months” the euro might well be finished, predicted top economist Paul Krugman in May 2012, while his colleague Willem Buiter spoke of “weeks, it could be days”. In early 2016, when one European internal border after another was shut in response to chaos on the external borders, Commission president Juncker imagined in his New Year press conference the end of Schengen, the internal market, the euro. After a majority of British voters decided in June that year to leave the Union – and even more so when, the following November, American voters elected Donald Trump president – many were again certain that the hour had come. Member states would fall like dominoes – Brexit Nexit Frexit – until no Union remained.

Yet the European Union survived those four formidable crises. The euro is still with us. How come? Observers always underestimate the invisible glue that holds the club together.

The purpose of this chapter is to give an overview of the state of the Île-de-France economy at the beginning of the 2020s, to show its significance as a global metropolis and to shine a light on the specificities of the Paris region in comparison with cities of the same importance at the world level.

From deindustrialization to internationalization: the birth of a global city region

With a GDP of €709 billion in 2018 (Choose Paris Region 2020), the Île-de-France region is one of the most powerful and one of the richest in the world (see Table 4.1). Yet its GDP growth is fairly low (averaging 1.3 per cent a year between 2000 and 2015), which distinguishes it from cities such as London (2.4 per cent) and New York (1.6 per cent), where GDP growth has been higher (Parilla, Marchio & Leal Trujillo 2016).

From deindustrialization to tertiarization

By and large, the recent economic history of the region is common to most cities of the Global North, moving from a period of deindustrialization, in parallel with a tertiarization movement, to a gradual internationalization.

Deindustrialization, which began in the 1960s, was initially slow, with the Île-de-France losing “only” 100,000 industrial jobs between 1960 and 1975. This trend accelerated in the following decade, with the region losing 300,000 jobs – i.e. 25 per cent of its industrial workers. Between 1985 and 1994 the decline continued, with an even sharper loss of 350,000 jobs. Then it slowed, but between 1960 and 2000 the haemorrhage of employment was huge, with the region losing more than 50 per cent of its industrial jobs. Since then this process has slowed down, with the region losing only about 100,000 industrial jobs between 2005 and 2018 (Institut Paris Région 2020a).

In parallel, the regional economy followed a tertiarization process. Since the mid-2000s around 87 per cent of added value has come from the service sector (see Table 4.2).

As for Île-de-France's working population, it has been incrementally but steadily increasing since 1999, and stood at more than 6.3 million in 2018, showing a net increase of almost 27 per cent, far above the population growth of 11.4 per cent over the same period (see Table 4.3).

National and local government have developed a multitude of policies to tackle all the problems and challenges that Île-de-France faces. As with the previous chapter, I have chosen to divide them into two: on the one hand, policies designed to combat social and territorial inequalities; on the other hand, those designed to enhance regional competitiveness and attractiveness. This dichotomy does not encompass all the measures that have been taken, however, particularly those relating to the environment. That is why these are tackled separately, as are a number of measures – notably in the spheres of housing and mobility – that were designed mainly as a response to emergency situations.

The previous chapters showed the importance of central government in the establishment of Île-de-France and in its development over the last few decades. It is therefore unsurprising that this importance is also reflected in the policies pursued. Central government is everywhere, and in many domains the main player. First, through its national policies, particularly in the fields of education, health, social affairs, economic development (e.g. industrial policy) and the environment. These nationwide measures do not specifically target Île-de-France but obviously have a big impact on the region. In addition, central government has developed policies that directly target the region and its specific problems, for example in transport, research and development and spatial planning.

As a general rule, public policies, whether national or local, are organized and implemented in most domains through plans and contracts. They can have a variety of names (plans, schemes, strategies, etc.) and may or may not be legally enforceable, depending on the case. One important example is the Île-de-France regional master plan (SDRIF), which we will be looking at in this chapter and the next.

The main plans cover the following areas: housing (local housing plan: PLH), climate (climate plans), mobility (urban travel plan), economic development (regional development scheme), etc. In the case of Île-de-France, they may be municipal, intermunicipal, departmental or regional, depending on the competences specific to the different levels of local government. They also cover different time frames, although they are generally between five and 20 years.

A threefold response

As an event the coronavirus crisis is reminiscent of those concentric ripples that form when a stone is tossed into a pond. The first circle represents the immediate impact of the virus: fear, sickness, death. The next stands for the initial protective response, such as the closing of borders, while the third expanding circle is that of increasing unemployment and shrinking economies. The fourth and final circle represents geopolitics. How great powers manifest themselves on the world stage during such a crisis – which depends in part on how successfully they have tackled it at home – can determine essential global strategies for years if not decades to come.

A chronicle of the European response to the first three consequences of the pandemic – for public health, freedom of movement and economic activity – makes clear how, in essence, events-politics works. The fourth consequence, its geopolitical impact, deserves a separate analysis, which follows in Chapter 5. In the unprecedented dilemmas with which the Covid crisis confronts policy-makers, these three consequences can rarely be addressed separately, yet the lens of events-politics focuses best when they are each taken in turn; this is why the chronicle in this chapter proposes separate timelines, in part parallel (within each Act), in part sequential. To absorb and parry the shock to public health, the Union, poorly equipped, could at the start do little other than improvise a response. In recent crises it had gained experience in border politics and financial policy, so in those two areas we should in theory have been able to expect a more rapid and effective performance.

Each government is responsible for the health of its own citizens, according to the rules of the Union. What