Reasons To Be Cheerful · 14 hours ago

Unearthing Paris' Mythical Second River

For over a century, Paris buried its second river - the Bièvre - sealing it beneath concrete and integrating it into the sewer system, as though, in the words of historian Raphaël Morera, "it was the river's fault." Now, nearly four kilometers of that ancient waterway have been restored, and fish, birds, and butterflies have returned to stretches that were once hidden several meters underground. The project is driven not only by ecological urgency - cooling an overheating city, absorbing floodwaters - but by something quieter: a reckoning with what was lost when urban progress severed a community's relationship with the natural world. "In Paris, the evocations of the river, even if they are only little parts, can give a sense to urban life, to remind us of the past and the place of water in the city," Morera reflects. There is something instructive in the patience this requires - the slow, expensive, incomplete work of undoing what took decades to destroy, done in the faith that even a glimpse of flowing water can change how people see where they live.