In March 1970, Paris announced an amateur photography competition C’était Paris en 1970 to create an archive of a city undergoing a proliferation of large-scale urban development projects. A grid system divided the city into 1,755 squares and a photographer was charged with documenting each square during May 1970. Some of the 91,655 photographs taken are on display at the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris until 7 October 2026