So the Olympics are going to be in London and not Paris this year but if you ask me, more fool them. While prices are skyrocketing and the crowds are scrumming in London, Paris will be quieter and cheaper with a hell of a lot more legroom.

At the start of the year Place de la Republique will be renovated with adjustments to traffic and a few little tweaks to make it more pedestrian friendly and all-round prettier and more pleasant. The complete overhaul of our beloved old Les Halles is still underway and isn’t expected to be completely finished until 2015 when it will have an underground shopping centre, an eco-building with a grass roof, a woodland border and new playgrounds – we can hardly wait! Until then though, we have time to reflect with the new exhibition in l’Hôtel de Ville which shows 140 photographs of the area taken by Robert Doisneau between 1933 and the 1960s. The exhibition opens on February 8 and closes on April 28.

It looks like 2012 is going to be a great year for nostalgics and art-lovers. For those who enjoy the retrospective at l’Hôtel de Ville, be sure to catch the Musée Carnavalet exhibition that bookends it. From April 18 to July 29, the museum near Place de Vosages will feature 230 photos taken in Paris between 1898 and 1924. The spread will show a wonderful black and white version of a city that’s a lot less polished than the one Woody Allen projected onto our screens in Midnight in Paris, and a lot more interesting too.

One of 800 US films set in Paris

And speaking of films, l’Hôtel de Ville is having another great event that shouldn’t be missed by nostalgics. The American film industry has based no less than 800 films in Paris, from Last Tango in Paris back in 1972, to Amelie in 2001 and, the film the world is talking about, Midnight in Paris in 2011. From May 16 to August 25, l’Hôtel de Ville will have an exhibition of these films with movie clips and all sorts in homage to the great city of love. I'm looking forward to finding some long-forgotten gems in the mix.

From an art perspective the year kicks off with an exhibition of Indian artist Rabindranath Tagore’s work. A whopping 85 of his paintings and on-paper works will be showing in the Petit Palais between January 27 and March 11. Also at the Petit Palais at a similar time is a wildly different exhibition from an Indonesian talent. Artist Eko Nugroho Témoin creates cartoonish works in all kinds of forms, shapes and sizes, many of which will be on show in Paris from January 13 to March 13. Think of it as two for the price of one! It’s a great time to visit the Petit Palais.

Edgar Degas is coming to Paris

Another gem you may not have expected to find in Paris will be at the Pinacothèque de Paris from January 26 to June 10. It comes in the form of pre-Columbian jade masks, wonderfully colourful and exciting relics from the past. The exhibition I’m most looking forward to in 2012 though is the Edgar Degas collection that will be shown in the Musée D’Orsay from March 13 to July 1 - the first time a collection of this size by this painter has been shown in decades. Did I mention that the exhibition will focus on his nude works?

Perhaps the thing that will most impact your visit to Paris in 2012 is the city’s newest form of transport. The buzz in Paris is all about Autolib’ these days – have you used it? Was it good? Is it practical or expensive? A grown-up version of the Velib’ scheme which allows Parisians and visitors to take bicycles from any terminal and return them to any other for just a small fee, the Autolib’ does much the same but with electric cars instead of bikes and a heftier pricetag. You need a credit card to sign up to the scheme and you have to pay a subscription too - €10 for 24 hours or €15 for a full week. After that your rental is charged on a half-hourly basis. The first half hour costs €7, the next €5 and then every half hour after that costs €8. Charges are totted up on a minute by minute basis though, rounding up to the next minute so if you use it for 31 minutes you won’t be charged for an hour.

Autolib' - great for families

Still it seems like a bit of a pricey affair - €38 to rent a car for two hours? If you’re only going to use it once for a few hours, you may well be better off to get a taxi and on a day-by-day basis you could probably find a car cheaper from a rental company. But taxis can be extortionately expensive in Paris and rental companies won’t be in the middle of the city and their cars won’t be electric and therefore free to run. Where I can see this being particularly useful is for families that want to maybe see a few sights in different parts of town without having to tackle the metro system. Because the cars are so small they’re easy to park and with 508 stations in the city (a map of which you can get on the mobile app here), chances are you can just drop it back to the station to recharge, tag off and then come back and get it after. Me? I’ll be sticking to my bike.