Urban upkeep in Paris under Anne Hidalgo and talk of her presidential ambitions

In places, Paris really does look like a field of ruins. The paving on the Place de la Concorde, for instance, now looks just so. Public works are perhaps the most frequent complaint my Parisian acquaintances make against the administration of Anne Hidalgo, who has run the city since 2014 and was elected to a second six-year term in 2020. The prospects of Hidalgo's presidential ambitions, much gossiped about on the eve of the 2022 French presidential election, look interesting in this light. Madame Mayor herself, however, has declared that she has no intention of standing for the presidency