There’s an app for that: finding a sunny cafe in Paris, the city of light | Technology

IIn August, Paris was unusually calm while hordes of residents disperse on the beaches and coasts of the country for an annual month of vacation. The companies close and the city ends almost. Among those who stay, there is an eternal and typically Parisian quest: chasing a sweet terrace Bathed in sunshine for an aperitif evening.

Finding the perfect seat on the sidewalk outside a coffee can be a question of promenade by chance or a opportune text of a friend. This summer, however, a digital solution gained popularity in an extremely French body of the old Apple slogan “There is an application for that”: gamesdusoleil, an application that follows the movement of the sun through the mail of the city buildings to determine exactly where you can claim a sunny place on a terrace for your coffee. He arrives at a precarious moment for this particularly Parisian pursuit.

Jean-Charles Levenne created Jveuxdusoleil (“I Want Sun”) in 2020 as a parallel project in order to teach the development of applications and solve a personal problem: find shadow during the hot days as well as sunny places for the Parisian ritual of post-work drinks.

Using sun positioning algorithms and construction height of the Open-Source OpenStreetMap Open Source card platform, the Levenne application displays sunny terraces, while dark people disappear. Users can also request new spots via the application or note when it is not precise (a tree throwing a shadow previously not counted, for example), which makes it a constantly evolving tool and focused on the community. While technology works in other cities, most of the application terraces are located in Paris, where Levenne says that it is particularly useful.

“This application works all over the world, but it was originally focused on Paris because there is more need than in other French cities,” he said. “With narrow streets and high buildings, it is not always easy to find a sunny place.”

The terraces work as observation posts from which see Paris – the chairs are often positioned on each side of the small bistro tables, facing the street rather than one in the other and allowing guests to observe the world pass. With the lack of culture of France, there is less pressure to quickly return the tables to make more profit. We could order a single cup of espresso for less than € 2 and stay for hours – which makes the terrace a second fair for Parisians.

Pierrick Bourgault, photographer and journalist who wrote about 20 books and published a documentary on the culture of bistro in France, said that Terrass in Paris offered one of the most authentic windows in the city.

“The terrace is emblematic of a certain Art of living [art of living]As we say in France – a place where all kinds of people meet, “said Bourgault.” You are not alone in a closed space. It’s a bit like [being in] The street, with one foot inside and a foot outside. You are immersed in the city and the spectacle of life. »»

In search of the sun after the darkest winter for decades

The user base of Jveuxdusoleil has climbed regularly over the years that followed its launch – with more than 1,300 active users in the week preceding my interview with Levenne, which has left the world of technology and called me from a yacht, he is now captain in the Balearic Islands off the coast of Spain. The peaks of use of applications in the spring, when Parisians are desperate from sunlight after the month of winter notoriously bleak.

This year, Jveuxdusoleil experienced a summit of almost 20,000 visitors in just a week in early March after France had the darkest year in 30 years in 2024. Paris in particular endured several sections almost a week both without a single ray of sunshine during the winter months. Jveuxdusoleil is entirely a passionate project, and Levenne does not take advantage of it. “In fact, it costs me money to host the servers,” he said.

A photographer based in Paris with whom I spoke, who uses the application both to find sunny streets for filming and terraces to enjoy drinks with friends, said that the simple nature of Jveuxdusoleil is part of his call. Its characteristics are minimal: with a single cursor that determines time and sunlight, it is positioned as a kind of anti-all application.

Can an application relaunch the decline terrace culture?

Although the user of Jveuxdusoleil is not necessarily widespread – many young French people with whom I spoke on the terraces of Paris had never heard of the application – his existence indicates a technological adoption of the culture of the bistro in France at a crucial time.

The number of bistros in France has increased from 500,000 in 1900 to less than 40,000 today, according to an official document in the inventory of French heritage submitted in May 2024. The document also declared that in Paris, the number of bistros increased from 5,000 to 6,000 in the 1970s to 80 to just over 1,000 today. A coalition of French bistro owners managed to obtain national recognition in September 2024. They also campaigned since 2018 for the UNESCO World Heritage Statute for their establishments.

Bourgault attributes this “massacre”, which reduced the density of bistros in France during the last century, from a coffee per 100 inhabitants to one for 2,000, to a dam of continuous threats. The rise of cars and highways has diverted the traffic from these establishments across the country, while television, smartphones and digital communications have replaced the need to meet friends on the local terrace. The bistro owners’ report also cites globalization and the evolution of consumer preferences as well as risks for cultivating the bistro.

A 1941 law prohibits the new creation of CAFE and only enables the control of existing licenses, keeping the number of relatively stagnant bistros while putting pressure on real estate prices, in particular in Paris, have both made the management and condescension of these less viable establishments financially. French commentators have long deplored “the Americanization of Paris”, some noting that, as the more traditional bistros ferment, McDonald’s spreads quickly through France and becomes a de facto meeting place for many young people.

Bourgault said that the rise in technology had contributed to the decline in bistros; People can order delivery on their phones, and when they go out, they often stay on their devices instead of chatting with foreigners counter. It is ironic then, he noted, that an application could in fact strengthen the culture of the Bistrot de Paris.

“With its geographic visualization, the application situates you in the world of concrete-it reminds us that we are on earth, it reminds us that there is a moving sun, the earth that turns,” he said.

“When we meet friends in a bistro to have a drink, we do not meet in the cloud-we meet in a cafe with a separate personality, characters and decor,” he added. “We know that we are not two artificial intelligences [in the process] to exchange digital protocols. We are talking about, and without the shadow of a doubt, we know that it is real. »»