ABSTRACT
The chapter interrogates the relationship between the past and the future in the specific context of mid-nineteenth-century Paris. It shows the value of seeing the Paris boulevard through a past futures lens, namely, a lens that considers the multiple alternatives of change in the past; weighs the significance of taking the long view when exploring the features, meanings, and associations which the boulevard as a historical object encapsulates; and highlights the various ways in which the boulevard has been used to produce specific readings of Paris, in particular, and of cities, more generally. By discussing the alternative futures of the urban past as exemplified by the work of Fl. de Kérizouet, the chapter advocates an understanding of urban change as plural and polychronic, that is, involving the convergence of multiple temporalities.
