Foreign Policy > France

Paris in 1853 Provides A Lesson For Trump in 2026

Sometimes, systems are so rotten that you need to break them down and start from scratch to create beautiful functionality.

Vince Coyner | May 13, 2026

In 1853, Paris was far different from what it is today. While it had the Louvre, Notre Dame, and the Arc de Triomphe, it also had virtually no sanitation and was congested, rife with disease, and regularly struck by fires that consumed whole blocks at a time. It was also overcrowded, with narrow crooked streets that were often little more than bogs of mud and waste, both human and animal.

Another part of the problem was the revolutionaries. Since the French Revolution in 1789, Paris has experienced in no fewer than half a dozen revolutions/uprisings, during which protesters/rebels easily blocked streets by strategically setting fire to a few barrels and carts. The then-Emperor, Napoleon III, who had been elected after one such coup in 1848, understood that to fend off uprisings, troops needed to be able to go wherever they were needed, via robust roads that could not easily be barricaded.

Thus, in 1853, Napoleon III gave Georges-Eugène Haussmann carte blanche to remake the city from the existing dysfunctional chaos. Haussmann would spend the next 17 years doing exactly that, razing over 20,000 buildings and building 30,000 others. Entire neighborhoods were flattened, and thousands of families had to abandon the city for the suburbs. Simultaneously, he built the world’s most sophisticated sewer and sanitation system. The entire city was a giant construction zone for almost 20 years straight.

Haussmann didn’t actually build any of it. He wasn’t an architect or an engineer; rather, he studied law and music. But he was the architect who got it done, despite constant outrage and conflict.

The result of Haussmann’s work was simply extraordinary. Parks, grand boulevards, state-of-the-art buildings, and a sanitation system unlike any other. Go there today, and........

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