Is Paris the eternal horizontal city? Plan for 180-metre tower rejected

Wary of a public that has never forgiven them for blighting their view with a skyscraper 40 years ago, Paris authorities have narrowly rejected plans for a 43-storey triangular-shaped building.

The 180-metre Tour Triangle was supposed to go up in the southwestern corner of the city by 2017, but local lawmakers on Monday blocked the proposal by 83 votes to 78 in heated scenes at city hall.

Mayor Anne Hidalgo said she would launch a legal appeal against the vote, accusing councillors of displaying their voting cards in what was supposed to be a secret ballot. "The law has not been respected," she said.

Her deputy in charge of urban architecture, Jean-Louis Missika, said either the votes that were displayed publicly would be declared void, or the entire vote would have to be redone.

The Tour Triangle project was supposed to create 5,000 jobs, with construction costs put at €535 million (HK$5.2 billion) in 2011.

But many lawmakers will have been thinking of the scorn that is still directed towards the Tour Montparnasse - a brown slab opened in 1973 that remains the only skyscraper in the city centre. Its unpopularity has made it all but impossible for developers to win approval for future high-rises.