In the French city of Nantes, the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the city’s long-anticipated railway station was a big event.

The socialist mayor, Johanna Rolland, presided over the unveiling of the eco-friendly station, which had been hailed as a marvel of architecture and engineering. The town’s councillors applauded its ‘natural ventilation’ system, which was supposed to make air conditioning unnecessary in hot summer months. Also present at the inauguration was celebrated French architect Rudy Ricciotti, the recipient of France’s highest distinctions, including the Légion d’honneur. He designed the station’s thermally self-regulating mezzanine. Its price tag was €37.5 million (£32 million).

That was six years ago. Today, the thermal ventilation system does not work. In hot weather, the Nantes railway station becomes an inferno. In last week’s heatwave, the shops in the glass mezzanine – including Starbucks – were forced to close. Local authorities hastily installed fans, but rail passengers preferred to sit outside to wait for their train.

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The failure of Nantes’s eco-efficient train station is a case study of the catastrophic consequences when urban planning is driven by fashionable ideology instead of sound engineering. It’s one of many structural failures in France that have failed to protect the population from the effects of scorching heatwaves (‘canicules’ in French).

In last week’s canicule, elderly patients in French care homes and hospitals suffered and died in temperatures above 40 degrees. Schoolchildren stifled in classrooms equipped only with fans and misting water bottles. In the Paris transport system, commuters were jammed into crowded buses and Métro trains with no........

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