40 Black and White Photos Capture Street Scenes of Paris in 1969

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In the 1960s, the population of the city and the surrounding suburbs had grown to 8 million inhabitants, and 150,000 migrants were arriving each year, both from other regions of France and abroad. Automobiles, very few in number in the 1950s, become more and more common; yet the French state had built only 29 kilometers of highways; portions of the autoroutes to the west and south and to Sceaux. No highways came into the center of Paris.

A regional transit system, the RER (Reseau express regional) to serve the suburbs had been begun in 1961, and the first line began to operate in 1969, but the planners had underestimated the number of passengers; the passengers coming by the RER to the Gare de Lyon and to Chatelet, the main stations connecting to the metro, jammed the metro stations and cars.

Five of the eight new cities were constructed between 1969 and 1973: Évry, Cergy (1969), Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (1970); Marne-la-Vallée (1972), and Melun and Sénart (1973). The new cities were expected to hold a total of five million persons within twenty years.

The 1960s had also seen a gradual departure of industry from the Paris suburbs to just outside the Paris region, to Rouen, Le Mans, Orléans, and Reims. Between 1962 and 1968, the number of employees in Paris, particularly industrial workers, declined by 1.2 percent, while it grew in other regions of France.

These black and white photos were taken by Robert Rynerson that show street scenes of Paris in December 1969.