Paris, aerial view

Parisian construction ranges from an urban fabric inherited from Renaissance Paris and the Classical era, with the oldest buildings dating from the beginning of the 16th century, the 19th century fabric known as “Haussmannian” and “Post-Haussmannian” built between 1850 and 1914, the HBM low rental housing built between the two wars on fortification sites, the large “modern” housing complexes built during the “Thirty Glorious Years - Trente Glorieuses -” (1945-75) in renovation sectors, and more recently the new complexes built since the 1990s, with the transformation of the extensive disused railway sites and those abandoned by industry. 80% of this building stock of approximately 133 million m2 was built before 1945. Today, the greater part of the transformation of Paris, takes the form of about 100,000 already existing buildings being transformed.

The number of inhabitants in Paris is currently around 2.2 million and is moving towards a stabilisation of the population by 2030. 30% of Grand Paris Metropolitan inhabitants live on 13% of the territory. 1,200,000 Parisians are employed, that is nearly 56% of the population. Added daily to the residents of Paris are 1,059,900 people who work there, 269,200 students and 356,100 people who live in Île-de-France who go to Paris every day and conversely, 331,400 Parisians leave Paris every day to go to work elsewhere, mainly in a metropolitan municipality, 65,700 Parisians study outside Paris and 128,100 Parisians leave Paris each day for other reasons. A total of 3.5 million people are present in Paris every day, that is 59% more than the resident population.

Those “present” represent a density of almost 400 people per hectare. Paris is also a cosmopolitan city: 314,300 foreigners live in Paris, representing 176 nationalities. They form 14% of the Parisian population compared to 7% in that of France. Finally Parisians are characterised by an over-representation of young adults. 20-34 year olds make up 27% of the population compared with 18% in France as a whole. This over-representation is at the expense of the under 20s and over 65s. The age and gender structure of the Parisian population has changed very little over the last 50 years. This stability can be explained by a large renewal of the population which is very specific to Paris. Each year, numerous young adults move to Paris while certain older Parisians move away.