Architecture: Paris anger as planners reach for the skyline

The famously flat skyline of France's capital could soon be a thing of the past, after the city council voted to consider building tower blocks on the city's outer limits, a suggestion that prompted cries of protest from green campaigners and devotees of low-rise architecture.

The decision is a victory for the socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, who has long touted taller buildings as the solution to Paris's housing shortage. In the coming decade, six sites around the edge of the city could accommodate tower blocks two-thirds the height of the Eiffel Tower.

While admitting yesterday that Parisians had yet to be persuaded, Delanoë promised that any new buildings would be "on the scale of the city".

The height limit for buildings in Paris is 37m (121ft) and, with a few exceptions such as the unpopular Tour Montparnasse, authorities have stuck to the regulations.

Yesterday's move to raise that limit was greeted as a step in the right direction by French architects, one of whom, Michel Angevin, said: "This is just the beginning. Paris is going to change, and will look very different soon enough."

But for many, that change will be for the worse. The Green party argues that tower blocks take up too much energy and that, in terms of population density, they are no more effective than Paris's Haussmann-style buildings.

"Tower blocks are to urbanism what 4x4s are to the car," said the Green deputy mayor, Denis Baupin. "They will not ... solve the [housing] shortage in Paris."

Jean Nouvel, however, the architect who is to build a 301m tower in La Défense, has urged the council to go even further skyward: "We need to stop thinking of Paris as a museum city," he said.