Management of a major city: The example of Paris

Abstract

Paris is the biggest city in France. It counts 2250000 inhabitants. The municipal public power is present as the City of Paris. We aim in this paper to study the management of the City of Paris. In order to act efficiently and relevantly on every subject going under its competences, the City of Paris is split geographically into several districts, and by topic into several poles and directions. The complexity of the resulting organization is then to manage. Because complexity is costly and can even be counterproductive when blurry or badly designed. The more actors are involved, the longer time it can take to proceed, the harder communication is, the higher is the risk of loosing or distorting information. And lack or information or misanderstanding quickly lead to wastage of efforts and money. In this paper, we aim to study how the City of Paris is organized and functions, i.e. how it assures a performant management of the city and improves it. The first part go through the institutional arrangement, clarifying the roles allocation between the different actors. The second part presents the organization of the services provided by the City of Paris. The third part link the two precedents part by focusing on the coordination issue. Then, we will cover the finance control in the fourth part.