Air pollution is closely tied to the way cities move. Road traffic is a major source of urban air pollution, but exposure isn't distributed evenly: people living, working or going to school near busy roads breathe higher concentrations of pollutants, often with no visible sign the air is unsafe. In France, Respire has spent years working at that intersection — combining research and data with citizen mobilisation, political advocacy and legal action to connect scientific evidence with everyday life.

“We are doing as much citizen mobilisation on the ground as work with scientists, and sometimes work that's less visible, like political lobbying to the government or the City of Paris,” says campaigner Axel Genoud-Prachex. “It's a mix of all these methods.” Director Tony Renucci sees that range — working with researchers and experts, but also directly with people affected by pollution and with decision-makers — as central to what makes Respire distinctive.

MAKING POLLUTION VISIBLE

That combination first proved itself in 2019, when Respire mapped air pollution around every school and childcare facility in Île-de-France. Using more than 100 million Airparif data points, the analysis found 682 of 12,520 establishments exposed to NO₂ levels above legal limits — deliberately focusing on children, given their greater vulnerability to pollution, and on schools as a point where evidence could connect directly to families' daily lives.

“If we could make this pollution visible and get the general population on board,” Axel Genoud-Prachex says, “we would have more strength, being many people, not just one organisation.” Parents who found their school on the map began reaching out with questions, and Respire turned that response into a campaign: training sessions and “mobilisation events” that temporarily closed streets outside schools so children could play where cars usually drove, while parents saw what a calmer street might feel like. Throughout the term, Respire followed the progress of the initiative, exchanged ideas with the City of Paris and borough councillors, but also with the parents of students.

FROM CAMPAIGN DEMAND TO POLITICAL COMMITMENT

That pressure fed into a coalition pushing for “school streets” during Paris's 2020 municipal campaign. The winning team committed to traffic-calming measures around 300 schools, with 100 to be fully closed and redeveloped by 2026. Respire didn't treat the win as a finish line: the coalition built an observatory to track delivery street by street, gathering parents' feedback and reporting it back to the City — “a kind of co-construction of this strategy,” as Axel Genoud-Prachex describes it — and using its own maps and the press to push officials when progress stalled.

The final observatory report, published in June 2026, counted 279 school streets in Paris: 174 closed to traffic and 105 operating under traffic-calming measures. That fell short of the 300 target, while 96 of the 100 streets intended to be fully closed and redeveloped had reached that stage. A further 78 closed streets still require physical improvements. The gap that remains is one of priority: only 56 of the 300 most-polluted schools (18%) currently have a school street, which Respire has flagged as the focus for its next phase. The model predates the Paris programme and has since spread: Respire has extended its mapping to the Lyon and Marseille regions, while other French cities now look to Paris as a reference point.

TAKING THE CAMPAIGN NATIONWIDE

Ahead of France's 2026 municipal elections, Respire scaled the same method nationally: a map using data from roughly 300 monitoring stations, benchmarking France's 50 largest metropolitan areas against WHO guidelines, current EU limits, and the tighter standards due under the EU's revised Air Quality Directive by 2030. Only two of those areas — Greater Paris and Montpellier — currently exceed the applicable European limits, while three in four exceed at least one of the tighter 2030 thresholds. “Air quality is not optional, it's a responsibility,” said Respire president Karima Delli in the organisation's February 2026 launch statement. “The solutions exist; it's time for commitments to become concrete action.”

The map anchored a 21-measure manifesto sent to candidate lists in those 50 areas. According to Respire, 52 lists signed it; 12 signatory lists came out on top in their municipalities, and candidates from signatory lists were elected as councillors in 25 more municipalities. Respire is now approaching municipalities with a proposed resolution to raise awareness of the revised Air Quality Directive, encourage local authorities to prepare for the 2030 standards, and ask the State to involve them in the local roadmaps required under Article 19 of the directive.

WHEN ADVOCACY MOVES INTO THE COURTS

In January 2026, Respire filed a group action against the State over air quality in Île-de-France, using a procedure introduced by France's 2025 reform of group actions. “It's more a timing opportunity,” Tony Renucci says. “If it was two years ago, we couldn't have done it. Litigation is one of the tools we have if we want to be more vocal, more powerful, to get results.” Axel Genoud-Prachex expects the case to take at least two years. Respire is seeking an order requiring the State to take measures to bring air quality into compliance.

Respire has used litigation before. In June 2023, a Paris court ordered the State, for the first time, to compensate two families whose children — who had lived 500 and 700 metres respectively from the Paris ring road — suffered repeated bronchiolitis and ear infections before their families moved away on medical advice. “It's the first time in France, and probably in Europe, that the courts have recognised harm linked to the State's failure to guarantee clean air,” the families' lawyers said at the time, calling it a ruling that could open the door for other affected families. The case came against the backdrop of repeated enforcement action by France's Conseil d'État, which in 2022 ordered the State to pay €20 million in penalty payments over continued failures to bring air pollution below legal limits.

PUTTING PEOPLE BEHIND THE DATA

Some of Respire's most powerful moments have come from individual stories rather than statistics. When Respire released research on air-quality trends across major French cities, a newspaper wanted a human face for the coverage. One mother, ill herself with a sick child, initially declined, then called back: “I'm tired of being sick, and I want to do this for my child too.” She agreed to speak, and, as Tony Renucci puts it, became “part of the fight” rather than simply a case study, thinking not just of her own child, but of others facing the same exposure.

WHAT COMES NEXT

Asked what success looks like from here, Renucci starts with accountability for major industrial polluters: “If we can get the big polluters to be more accountable about their activities and the impact on the population, that would be a victory.” Respire is also working on zero-emission logistics initiatives in Paris and Marseille, and sees France's 2027 presidential election as a chance to put air pollution back on the national agenda, alongside a growing focus on its link to the climate crisis, including the relationship between hotter summers and ozone pollution.

The throughline from the 2019 school map to today is less a single campaign than a way of working: using evidence to make pollution visible, turning that evidence into mobilisation, tracking what happens after political commitments are made, and using litigation when other avenues fail to deliver. The map was never the end point; it became a way to keep the issue visible, turning data into pressure, and pressure into action.