Paris Rues aux Écoles — Pedestrianised School Streets Across Half of Paris's Primary Schools

Paris's 'rues aux écoles' close or pedestrianise the street in front of nursery and primary schools, with around 100 redesigned with depaved surfaces and planting. The City reports more than 300 such streets as of September 2025, covering about half of nursery and primary schools; the 2020–2026 works budget was reported at about €110 million.
A spring 2024 study by the associations Respire and AirGones, as reported in secondary summaries, found NO2 decreases of 10–30% depending on site. A 2026 peer-reviewed analysis (Marcel Moran, Journal of the American Planning Association/SAGE) visited 272 active sites and used remote sensing, reporting an average surface-temperature difference of about 5.0°C between cooling-pavement school streets and adjacent control streets.
Caveats: the air-quality study came from advocacy associations; city pages state objectives more than measured outcomes; and evidence on traffic displacement, child safety outcomes and equity across arrondissements remains limited.

Read the full analysis: https://www.paris.fr/pages/57-nouvelles-rues-aux-ecoles-dans-paris-8197