PARIS — The diminutive French leader with expansionist dreams made a grand pronouncement: He would seek a "Greater Paris" that would reach all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, more than a hundred miles away.
Napoleon Bonaparte would be thwarted in his territorial ambitions. Two centuries later, President Nicolas Sarkozy, who shares more than a few attributes with his hard-driving predecessor, hopes to succeed where the emperor failed.
Sarkozy, armed with a vast project called Grand Paris, is saying that Parisians should "prepare for the future."
It's too late to stretch the capital's official borders; few would agree to such sacrilege. But Sarkozy hopes the project will fade current boundaries to form a larger territory with improved housing and transportation, a region that would foster the arts and, perhaps most important, outshine other capitals.
Paris "is not only the capital of France. She is also the rival of London, New York, Tokyo and Shanghai . . . but she can lose her standing if we aren't careful," Sarkozy said in late April as he inaugurated an exhibit of 10 architectural and urban planning proposals at the City of Architecture and Heritage museum.
"To stay in the first rank, you have to see far, you have to see large," he said with his characteristic grin, jutting his chin forward for emphasis.
The international teams involved in the proposals also had the challenging task of leveling out the sharp imbalance between the saturated, wealthier capital and its impoverished, relatively isolated suburbs, or banlieues.
But just as Napoleon had his skeptics, critics of the plan worry about losing their local identity to a larger metropolis.
"What matters is to cultivate your identity, not your rivalry," said Jean-Marie Rouart, a member of the French Academy, France's language preservation group, and author of "This Opposition Which Is Called Life," which analyzes Sarkozy's "herculean" work method.
Many visitors to the exhibit also expressed concern.
Regis Briday, 28, couldn't help dropping his jaw, laughing and covering his face in horror at the "grotesque propaganda." He derided what he called Sarkozy's territorial "megalomania" despite agreeing that something had to be done to improve living standards in outlying suburbs.
