<P> Haussmann's renovation of Paris was a vast public works program commissioned by Emperor Napoléon III and directed by his prefect of the Seine, Georges - Eugène Haussmann, between 1853 and 1870 . It included the demolition of medieval neighborhoods that were deemed overcrowded and unhealthy by officials at the time; the building of wide avenues; new parks and squares; the annexation of the suburbs surrounding Paris; and the construction of new sewers, fountains and aqueducts . Haussmann's work was met with fierce opposition, and he was finally dismissed by Napoleon III in 1870; but work on his projects continued until 1927 . The street plan and distinctive appearance of the center of Paris today is largely the result of Haussmann's renovation . </P> <P> In the middle of the nineteenth century, the center of Paris was overcrowded, dark, dangerous, and unhealthy . In 1845, the French social reformer Victor Considerant wrote: "Paris is an immense workshop of putrefaction, where misery, pestilence and sickness work in concert, where sunlight and air rarely penetrate . Paris is a terrible place where plants shrivel and perish, and where, of seven small infants, four die during the course of the year ." The street plan on the Île de la Cité and in the neighborhood called the "quartier des Arcis", between the Louvre and the "Hôtel de Ville" (City Hall), had changed little since the Middle Ages . The population density in these neighborhoods was extremely high, compared with the rest of Paris; in the neighborhood of the Champs - Élysées, population density was estimated at 7009538000000000000 ♠ 5380 km; in the neighborhoods of Arcis and Saint - Avoye, in the present Third Arrondissement, there was one inhabitant for every three square meters . In 1840, a doctor described one building in the Île de la Cité where a single room five meters square on the fourth floor was occupied by twenty - three people, both adults and children . In these conditions, disease spread very quickly . Cholera epidemics ravaged the city in 1832 and 1848 . In the epidemic of 1848, five percent of the inhabitants of these two neighborhoods died . </P>

Who redesigned the city of paris in the mid 19th-century