I live in Paris and whatever you think of the current mayor, this is pure marketing babble for the elections next month.
Paris has always had this very dense city core where 99% of daily life is 5-10’ away. It’s a great concept for dense metropoles, but it only works because the city is so small: 100 square kilometers in an ocean of much lesser density. 80% of “Greater Parisians” live outside Paris itself.
Unfortunately there is no actual representations for 80% of those “outside Parisians” since they are split between hundreds of small cities with individual political dynamics. Pure game theory as local governance.
What is considered to be Paris (100km2) is a lot smaller than what people consider to be London (1500km2) or NYC (800km2 of land).
Yes. If you’re rich enough and can afford to live in Paris everything is about 15mins away.
If you leave “outside” then be ready for commutes that get proportionally cheaper as travel distance increase. A commute time of one hour or less is considered good. It’s not rare for people to commute for 2 hours or more, for each trip.
The problem is that the mayor of Paris is elected to represent the wishes of the privileged few that live in the center and cares little about commuters.
The anti-car attitude of the current Mayor (Mrs Hidalgo) reflects this. And if you look carefully at the data it looks like air pollution has reduced in areas where cars were removed but has increased elsewhere. It’s hardly a win for air pollution, but if you live in Paris the river side is now for pedestrians and not cars. So yeah. Real nice, if you can afford to live there.
> And if you look carefully at the data it looks like air pollution has reduced in areas where cars were removed but has increased elsewhere.
Are you trying to imply some sort of causation here? Because I can't see how decreasing car use in the city centre would increase usage outside it.
> It’s hardly a win for air pollution
Decreasing the use of (internal combustion) cars in city centres is a huge win for air pollution as that is generally where traffic is most concentrated and thus air pollution levels are highest.
Car use in Paris has just shifted around. For it to disappear people would need credible alternatives. Remember most Parisians don’t have a cars and have fantastic public transport. It’s workers and commuters from far away that need vehicles.
Basically the river side used to be like a highway where you could travel from West to East and vice versa. This is essentially gone now. But all the traffic has moved more inland. So the pollution has reduced near the river, but increases on the East/West boulevards. It’s possible that traffic overall may have decreased, but the boulevards are full of intersection and traffic lights, whereas the river side highway was basically devoid of them. So overall for pollution, it’s really hard to see a win.
Paris' greatest asset is its river, the Seine. Devoting a section of one of its two banks to a car highway is simply insane. If the city wants good uninterrupted travel East-West to replace that riverside highway it should build a tunnel.
It's obviously great if you live in Paris, especially when the weather is good. I have hanged out there many times in the summer even though I don't live in Paris anymore.
But if you're one of these commuters who has to drive, and use that specific east/west route, then it's an every day annoyance. You're reminded at every traffic light that your commute has increased by X minutes.
I think the solution is obviously to improve the public transport situation especially for far-away suburbs. But it's hard. It costs a lot, there are political animosities at play, and fundamentally Paris citizens do not really suffer from car commute issues since they don't need cars.
> a lot smaller than what people consider to be London
Is somewhere like Westminster technically London? It's definitely what people consider to be London, and it's within Greater London, but as a political entity, it is its own city.
First the 15mins walk thing is probably already true in most district in Paris. But what you do not realize is that only a tiny minority of privileged people can actually afford to live in Paris. It's a bit like if the right of vote was restricted to people with high income.
Paris is TINY. Paris is SMALLER than the borough of Brooklyn in NYC.
Paris is 3x smaller than just the inner boroughs of London and 16x smaller than London.
The Paris business district (La Défense) is actually located OUTSIDE Paris. The business district spreads across 4 different municipalities!
Even if Paris fused with all the neighboring counties (92, 93 and 94) it would still be smaller than London.
Because of political concerns any project that would benefit commuters just takes forever.
> But what you do not realize is that only a tiny minority of privileged people can actually afford to live in Paris. It's a bit like if the right of vote was restricted to people with high income.
This not even a bit like that. The right to vote is restricted to the people who live there, whether they are rich or poor. Also, it’s far from a minority: with 2M+ inhabitants, that’s the largest city in France: 2x Marseille, 4x Lyon, it has the same population as the four next most populated cities (Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, and Nice) combined. If e.g. the 11th arrondissement would be a city it‘d be in the top 10 in France by population.
While there is nothing illogical about it there is more to a city than just the people who live in it. Millions of people live in a suburb and commute to work in a larger city. Their employer pays taxes in that city. The employees eat lunch in that city. The city may be a tourist destination (Paris certainly is)
Of course, and improving the lives of those people is important but should never be detrimental to the Parisians themselves. For example, tourism means lots of Airbnb’d flats that are thus taken away from the people who could live there, and higher rents for those who can.
Your comment seems highly tone-deaf. Look at some of the comments above about pollution and what it has done to areas immediately outside of the city core.
The air quality in Paris has significantly improved over the past few years, thanks to multiple initiatives to reduce the car traffic, both at the city and regional level [1].
Some of the places where it got worse are far away from Paris… so who cares about the poor people who live in a far-away suburb near the freeway. It's not like they vote for Paris' mayor.
I live in a high-tourism city that is not Paris and AirBNB severely reducing the amount of housing on the market is definitely a problem that high-tourism cities are having.
+1 The elections are coming soon and the current mayor is just doubling down on promesses (while Paris is great on paper the past couple of years did feel like chaos from my point of view)
I feel the last few years of chaos has less to do with the mayor and more to do with the national legislation. The mayor is not negotiating pensions and fuel taxes. Which is where most of these protests are about. It can both be true that Paris is a well run city with a president who invites protest every week.
A lot of things Paris is but a "well run city" may not be one of them, just like SF is many things but a well run city. SF gets its share of attention on HN. Time other cities do too. Even if you discount all of the following ( including from France's own national broadcaster - France 24 ) as biased news, we can agree on one thing - there's a lot of strife in the streets of Paris, hidden from plain view.
From 3 months ago:
Paris migrant camps cleared — again — in immigration crackdown
I agree with you and if there was a survey of problems (at the municipal level) the inhabitants think of as priority, the walkability of the city would probably not be their main priority (which, as noted, is good).
> I agree with you and if there was a survey of problems (at the municipal level) the inhabitants think of as priority, the walkability of the city would probably not be their main priority (which, as noted, is good).
There is a survey at the municipal level called the “Budget Participatif”, where inhabitants can suggest and vote for projects that’ll then be executed by the city. These projects represent 5% of the annual city budget. There have been so many projects about pedestrian areas in 2018 that they decided to remove the whole category in 2019 not to be overwhelm by the quantity of new projects and have time to do the previous ones. If that shows one thing, it’s that the walkability of the city is a main priority.
That's essentially the concept of many cities in Europe. I live in Berlin for example and I have almost everything I need within 10 minutes of walking or 5 minutes of cycling: Supermarkets, pharmacies, doctors, restaurants, electronics stores, schools, kindergardens, ... The downside is that you tend to become used to your small microcosm ("Kiez" we call it) and rarely leave it. I can't recall for example when I went to East Berlin the last time, as distances can still be large and it can take one hour in public transit to go from East to West, depending of course where you want to go.
I also lived in Paris for more than 3 years and it also has great walkability, more so than Berlin even because the city center is much more compact (you can cross it by bike from North to south in 30-40 minutes I'd say). The metro is also super efficient, you can get everywhere "intra muros" in 30-40 minutes.
If you live outside of the center of Paris (which I also did for a while) it's less ideal though, as the public transportation quickly becomes much more sparse and you will need a car to get around easily. As most people in the Paris region actually live in those areas I'd say there's still much work to be done there.
The metro is like elementary school. You’re a professional when you can hack the metro and buses and get anywhere in <30min. While m pretty god with the former my spouse, who prefers the buses, can get to any part of the city with the least amount of walking.
Looked at that with envy when i first saw that, being stuck with an only half ready rail transit system in my town since the 70ies. But hey, supposedly i'll get an extension about 2032 too! Juhuu!
I think most of the world lives pretty close except the US. But problem in rest of the world is not that you can't have schools, clinics, entertainment, shopping in a 15 minutes radius but the problem is finding the desired combination when you throw in you and your spouse workplace and the school to which you want to send to your children to.
> the school to which you want to send to your children to
That doesn't seem to be something that most people spend a lot of thought on. E.g. in Germany less than 10% of children attend a private school, and with public schools you basically have to send them to your closest one (which isn't a big problem, as the quality of schools inside a city generally doesn't vary too much).
In Canada, you send your kid to the closest public school. Done.
In the US, determining which school your kid goes to is a strategic decision that impacts where you live. This is even true if you live in an area with great schools - you need to find the best.
I thought he meant having them to drive there and back, where at least where i am in .de the kids just walk, or take the bus by themselves. Not even necessarily school buses, just public ones.
It's not just public/private school issue. For example here in Lithuania public schools may be specialised too. Science, arts, humanities... Quality does vary a bit too. Quality of classmates vary more than quality of education, but it's essentially part of the same package. E.g. some schools are notoriously bad for historical reasons. When gentrification just starts and better-off people move in, many of them try to send their kids to schools in other neighbourhoods.
> In Paris, this isn’t necessarily such a tall order. The mayor oversees only the 2.2 million residents of the city’s heavily populated historic core, which already enjoys some of the use-mixing that the 15-minute-city concept encourages, thanks to its pre-industrial roots.
This is the main problem of Paris and of Hidalgo. For most practical purposes Paris is a 10 million inhabitants city, yet only 2 get to vote for the 'real' mayor, those who live outside the historic center are fragmented into a bunch of smaller counties and are also generally poorer than 'real' Parisians.
When Hidalgo banned cars on the quays, Parisians were very happy, while commuters from other counties had to add some time to their commute and were furious.
Look at this [0] plot, see how the green line stopped tracking the blue one? That's your problem...
From the article : "In her re-election campaign, Mayor Anne Hidalgo says that every Paris resident should be able to meet their essential needs within a short walk or bike ride."
"Paris" is defined as Paris intra-muros + the Boulogne and Vincenne parks, which are limited in space and was saturated long time ago. You are a "Paris resident" if you live inside of the City of Paris (the green line of the plot).
The chart is showing "Aire urbaine" and "Unité urbaine" which are another way to draw geographical limits and are only used for statistical purposes, and they include the "Region of Paris", or "Ile de France". Obviously, the region is expanding like any other capital's region in the world, so that plot exactly shows nothing.
The sentence "For most practical purposes Paris is a 10 million inhabitants city" is fake news. People living inside of the City of Paris are asking to be able to use bikes or other transport means, but all the cars coming from outside of Paris everyday are making it difficult.
Stop confusing the Region of Paris and the City of Paris. People living inside the City of Paris (the Parisians) have right to elect a mayor who will defend them. If you live in one of the adjacent cities, go elect a mayor that will locally improve your quality of life, but (real) Parisians are sick of the traffic inside their city and no other city has right to decide for them.
The point of democracy and electing mayors is to empower people to change their destiny. The chart shows that there population of the larger Paris area is increasing, as you yourself confirm:
> the region is expanding like any other capital's region in the world
Why are new people coming there though? Are they coming to tie their lives to the City of Paris, but they must settle for the larger region because of the saturation? Or are they coming to join the Region of Paris because of its merits excluding the City?
If it's for the former, then they deserve some democratic influence on the place that brought them there, and the chart shows that the division into City of Paris and the rest denies the newcomers that influence.
It's only my own opinion, but I believe there is too much centralization of national, international and diplomatic institutions inside the City of Paris. I am _for_ more decentralization of businesses and powers across the Region of Paris and across other cities of France. House pricing clearly shows that the City of Paris is a gravity center in terms of everything, which leads to many of the current traffic and pollution issues imo. Maybe a decentralization of France's institutions, powers, businesses etc could help it?
Edit : Idea : at each new presidential term, move all institutions and the french "white house" to Lyon or Marseilles, second biggest city of France. At the next presidential term, move everything again to Paris.
Oh, come on, it's only about 10 years away [1].
Granted, it's been 10 years away for about a decade, now.
But that leaves the question of whether Toulouse will get a TGV before nuclear fusion is invented, Thomas Pesquet walks on Mars, or anyone actually start working on an Hyperloop instead of faking it [2].)
> Obviously, the region is expanding like any other capital's region in the world, so that plot exactly shows nothing.
Yet up until 1860 the growth was being tracked by an expanding political entity. Walk across the périphérique to Montrouge, to Vincennes and tell me whether you see a clear boundary. Go talk to someone who lives in Anthony and see how many have to commute to or through center to go to work. It's all a giant economical and social unit!
Remember when they tried to expand Vélib past the city boundaries: 2 years of delay, tribunals having to chime in...all that just because the official city boundaries don't match how people live.
There is also another big problem, also because of this a lot of people are just being priced out of Paris proper, there is a sharp decline in price (even in nice surrounding counties) as soon as you cross the city limits.
I'm all for reducing cars, but you can't possibly deny there is a ton of people who would just love to cycle or take the Métro to work, but can't afford to live in a place where that is a possibility, yet their job and most of their working hours are spent in a city where they can't elect the mayor!
I have no horse in this argument either way, but it's interesting how this train of thought regarding sovereignty of city vs county contrasts with the current debate between the voting politics of the direct city of San Francisco and it's greater metropolitan area, especially in regard to zoning policies.
Many, many, more people than the 2 million intra-muros residents spend their daily life in intra-muros, i bet you could double that number, for these people not to have a voice in how what is essentially their city center is governed is extremely undemocratic. "Real Parisian" is an insulting term to use.
> i bet you could double that number, for these people not to have a voice in how what is essentially their city center is governed is extremely undemocratic
That's nonsense though. You could argue that the influence of Parisian politics go way beyond the city and by your logic the whole of France should be voting for stuff that concerns Paris. That's just not how representation works.
No I lived in Rennes for a while I couldn’t give the slightest damn about Parisian politics.
I am saying that for many around Paris, Paris is like their very own city center, and they cannot move anywhere or do anything without going intra-muros, every single day. And essentially, out of two equally concerned people, the one who’s richest can afford intra-muros and is the only one who has a voice.
It's not obvious to me that only the people who can afford to live in a wealthy city centre should unilaterally make decisions affecting the greater group of people whose destinies are tied to that city. Saying "that's just how it works" is not really a justification.
Then by what logic do you justify that transient workers would have more power than the own residents of Paris about how the city should run? Because this is exactly what is suggested as more people live around Paris than inside.
- those who have no say but who don’t fill the conditions to have it
I am advocating for the second group
And it is not a spectrum, the third group’s condition is often orthogonal to the second group’s condition
Said an other way, "Paris" should be defined as a greater area, because the center has extreme day to day and structural influence over those, but there is a point where it stops being the case, of course there is a degree of ambiguity regarding where to stop, but it is definitive and unambiguous that the current state of affair is unfair
> commuters from other counties had to add some time to their commute and were furious.
This is an unfortunate over-generalization. As an inhabitant of the banlieue, I was very happy for this development, and I'm pushing for the mayor of my commune to ban cars as well. Hoping that the whole urban area is wholly served by public transportation and biking. I hate cars, noise and pollution!
> while commuters from other counties had to add some time to their commute and were furious.
Commuting by car to Paris is mostly for near counties (with real estate prices not that far from Paris. Puteaux or Boulogne people are in average well set) or people living very far but are paid enough to spend an hour and half in their car.
The general population takes buses and trains to commute, as parking in Paris is also a PITA. I was mildly amused to hear that our company in the middle of Paris only provides underground parking places to high level managers, and I can’t imagine renting a parking place somewhere else is any cheap.
I think this is a problem with any disproportionately large city. But I’m not sure there’s a great solution, because the pseudo-Paris areas here presumably want their autonomy.
In Ireland, a country of under 5 million, all of the local authority decisions for the central bit of Dublin are made by Dublin City Council, which covers half a million people. But that’s largely an arbitrary distinction; the metropolitan area mostly covers three other local authorities and leaks into some others, and contains 1.5 million people. The only sign you have that you’ve wandered outside DCC in any direction is that the traffic lights are a bit different. And ‘greater Dublin’, which encompasses the adjacent local authorities, contains over 2 million. And that’s not the end of it; lots of people outside Greater Dublin commute in.
So, DCC makes decisions that impact at least 2 million people, but is elected by a population of 500k. I think there’s actually an argument for merging the four Dublin local authorities, but even that would be a political nightmare. Extending DCC to cover half the country is clearly not viable, and would not be accepted. But given that, it’s natural for DCC to care more about making the city work for people who live in its area and who vote for it than those commuting in from far away.
In contrast, I’ve always considered Los Angeles to be a “45 Minute City”, but by car. Everything you need is a 45 minute drive from wherever you are now.
The beach is 45 minutes away. It’s 45 minutes to work. Your friends are each about 45 minutes away, in different directions, and the downtown bar you meet at on Friday night is 45 minutes away. You can even get out into the mountains on angel crest highway in about 45 minutes.
But unless you want a CVS pharmacy or a Starbucks, nothing is close by. Ever.
When i lived there it was 20 minutes everywhere. Now between 3pm and 7pm it can easily be 2-3hrs. A few years ago visiting I made the mistake of trying to from Santa Monica at 4:30 pm to Alhambra. Took 3 hours. The ride back was 30 mins
My mom who still lives there said she was on the freeway for 5 hours (2in, 3out) from Temecula to Pasadena and back. With no traffic it would have been 1hr each way.
it feels like many places have a property like this. i think it must be some combination of the way things get built around roads + transit development, and induced demand.
Paris needs to go one step further and remodel itself so that residents can have all their needs met—be they for work, shopping, health, or culture—within 15 minutes of their own doorstep.
As someone that has spent a lot of time living in Paris, this is already pretty much true, at least within the Périphérique. The main issue in my experience is the lack of green space; there are surprisingly few parks in Paris.
Because Paris is really small and the large parks are just outside Paris : Bois de Vincennes & Bois de Boulogne are each at least twice the size of Central Park
I hope you didn't miss Parc de Buttes Chaumont, Parc Montsouris & my favourite : Cimetière du Père Lachaise (yes, a cemetery ... I recommend going at spring and enjoy how green it is)
Yes yes, I have been to all of those and lived right next to Buttes-Chaumont. But the city in general always felt like it lacked green space. Especially if you make a large circle around Opéra - for 2-3km you really don’t have anything that isn’t small or full of people.
That said - Buttes-Chaumont and Le Jardin du Palais Royale are some of my favorite urban parks in the world.
You're right, you'll have to take the metro to get to one. And with the increase of the price / square meter, I'm not sure we'll get larger green space in the future at least in Paris itself
I am curious if the pickpockets still run rampant all over the tourist areas and subway. Few years back in 3 days:
1. Dad ran into undercover cop who on subway who told him to watch his stuff better :o
2. Got his phone stolen next day on subway, I guess cop was right
3. I witnessed the typical distract, grab and run.. good thing someone threw trip and got the runner to drop his prize
4. Had to deal with 3-4 typical: “please sign this petition while my partner tries to come up from behind and snatch your crap thing”. The East European scowl and choice mat solved it
Yeah if you speak English with an American or Canadian accent you are a prime target for sure. The ppl giving fake surveys were picking us out from SO far away (I was purposely watching for it after our first trip there).
Put the valuable stuff into your trousers front pockets. I'm doing this for years, it works better than having anything in my back pockets. Though being 193cm tall might deter perps from trying something funny.
Perhaps insist on better law enforcement than blaming the victim. Pick-pocketing, by many accounts, is rampant in Paris and is just a sign of how lax policing is. Its not something to be even modestly indifferent about.
Yup, family member's passport was stolen last year. Every time I visit Paris some attempt of some kind occurs. Fake "survey", someone "bumps into me by accident" (nice try, scumbag), guy very avidly eyeing my wife's purse, etc. etc.. It's super frustrating.
Yes it's still rampant if you ever venture into one of the touristy areas or look a bit naive on the metro. I think it's one of the reasons Parisians are seen as rude, since I've lived here I now assume anyone approaching me in the street who I don't know is trying to scam me.
I’ve been to Paris a lot and wear my wallet in my back pocket and have been fine. Just need to be aware when going through crowded areas. They know how to pick off the naive ones who aren’t used to real cities.
I lived in Japan for a few years and I felt like they’ve nailed this concept.
Everyone I knew across different parts of Tokyo lived within a 10 min walk of a supermarket, school, nursery, doctor, train station etc. It worked really well.
10 minute walk away from a supermarket only gets you so far when you spend an hour in one direction commuting since you probably go to work more often than you go grocery shopping.
I spent 3 hours grocery shopping today. I spend 3 hours total commuting to work every weekday.
I'd still be ecstatic if I can get food within a 30 minute walk. I went so far as to try to run a startup around this. It's possibly why there's so many food delivery startups; this is a big hit to quality of life.
It’s all an election stunt to try and justify that her war on cars won’t affect Parisians. Ie. If you have everything you need in a 15min walk, you shouldn’t suffer that the traffic is reduced.
But the things you occasionally need are getting harder to get. Plumbers, electricians don’t want to come to the city anymore. They will facture in the awful traffic and the fines they get for the lack of parking space. Basically no one will come to your apartment for less than 500€. There potentially are business opportunities there.
Does Paris not issue parking permits to craftsmen? German cities offer special parking permits to businesses that need to have unwieldy or heavy gear with them at their customer's place. The yearly fee is in the low hundreds (maybe 250€ even in the larger cities) and usually includes free parking and that even in places where most people normally would not be allowed to park at all, e.g. on Anwohnerparkplätzen (residential parking spaces where one would normally need a permit only available to people living in that street). It might even allow to enter pedestrian areas in some cities.
But the issue is not that but lack of parking space. A permit only allows them to park in actual parking spaces. Most of the time there aren't any available...
> It’s all an election stunt to try and justify that her war on cars won’t affect Parisians. Ie. If you have everything you need in a 15min walk, you shouldn’t suffer that the traffic is reduced.
That’s quite the opposite. Car traffic generates pollution and takes unnecessary space on the street: some sidewalks are so narrow you can’t have two people walking next to each other. Reduced traffic is a benefit, not something the large majority of Parisians will suffer of.
> Plumbers, electricians don’t want to come to the city anymore.
A plumber or an electrician doesn’t necessarily need a car to move their stuff. There are already a bunch of cargo-bike plumbers in Paris.
I'm not in Europe, but when a plumber comes to visit me, they usually have a truck with essentially a small plumbing supply in the back. If whatever I'm having trouble with isn't salvagable, they can usually install one from the truck on the same visit. I don't imagine a cargo bike plumber is hauling around water heaters or toliets just in case.
No. Because of the vast majority of people who work in Paris can’t afford to live there. And if you live in an area with terrible public transport (not uncommon far from the inner city and the first ring of surrounding suburbs) then you basically have no choice. It’s either you spend 3+hrs in public transport or 1.5hours in a car. Guess what people do....
This seems possible in many major metropolitan areas, with the significant caveat that in order to live it most would need their wealth to be unlinked from their earned income.
Zone 1 and most parts of Zone 2 London close to stations are like this.
I've just looked it up out of interest and it makes me feel fairly privileged!
My flat has supermarkets, restaurants, a pharmacy, a bookshop, banks, a library, museums, one of the biggest parks in London, a hospital, schools, multiple tube stations, a GP, a dentist, etc etc within 15 minutes walk (actually I think 10 minutes).
But not everyone (in fact, barely anyone) can afford to live in those areas. Even if they could afford it in the sense of having the income to spend a ton of people choose to live further out and have such things as freehold homes, gardens, etc.
Yeah I think you nailed it with the idea of people wanting to live further out to get more space.
Dense urban living is fun when you are energetic (and probably young and probably single and probably with lots of like-minded friends) and you spend 95% of your time working and socializing, and you basically just use your home as somewhere to sleep and get washed in between the office and the bars/restaurants/gyms/etc
However, this is not the same for everyone. I dream of the day when I can live in a house with its own garden and where I am not physically sharing walls with other people's homes. At least in London you won't get that anywhere near your work unless you are absurdly wealthy.
I live in Milan, 3/4 distance from the very center, and it's basically like that. I've got 4 supermarkets in 10 minutes walking range, metro station at 3 minutes, some healthcare within 5 minutes (but no ER), countless shops. Cinema and theaters at 30 minutes by metro. I'm self employed and working mostly from home so it's a very good experience.
I didn't enjoy it as much when I wasn't self employed. I've been working on the other side of the city for many years, about 1 hour either by car or by public transport. Where one works makes all the difference but (this is a tangent) also how one works. I've been working at 10 minutes from my home for a couple of years and it didn't feel much different. I was confined in my office all the day long. It's the normal experience for most of us but it would feel like living in a prison now.
It's quite refreshing to ensure that there's a push for this for the most part on HN, which is a rather affluent community. I'm not sure about the state of housing here too, but I am willing to wager that we live, for the most part, in a high density area.
Working to have all of our expectations for a good life walkable, scootable, or bikeable is the way we should be designing our cities.
I am interested in what the tipping point of density is - it is something I think Strong Towns idea has right but there are several factors (actual physical density of homes is key, but planning laws / zones matters, as does disposable income and actual physical built stock).
I would also ask if new cities (China, India) what their planning / zoning priorities are?
I had traveled to Paris a number of times and decided to take a drive across parts of France. Armed with a classic Michelin guide book, I rented a car at one of the train stations in central Paris. My plan was to simply drive and stop every evening around 5:30pm using the guide book to find a place to stay.
I was quite surprised that I ended up still in greater Paris on the first evening. Between stopping to eat, taking photos, and navigating (pre-GPS), I was still in Paris the first night. Paris is a huge, and lovely, city.
As an aside, it was a great trip. I simply drove south for around 8 days and picked a different route to drive north back to Paris to fly home. I stumbled across so many interesting places, the prehistoric caves of the Dordogne, the dramatic village of Rocamadour located on a cliff, and many other memorable places.
The center of Paris is something like 13-14k€/square meter... The truth is Parisians with average revenues (for Parisians, not for French people) more and more live close to the suburbs (13th, 15th, 18th, 19th, 20th districts) around Paris and the center is full of company's head office, shops and restaurants. So the picture displayed in the article should figure inhabitations on the outside skirts and accommodations in the center.
At the national level, Parisians are an average really rich population and living inside Paris will continue to grow more and more difficult because living in Paris is nowadays a luxury. And nothing will change this situation in a close future.
Now find a way for people to actually afford living in Paris, so they can reach things within 15 minutes, a lot of people live outside Paris and work inside Paris, resulting commute times of 2 to 4 hours a day.
I wonder how many more jobs are needed to make this possible. You'd need more of everything, plus longer/staggered open hours (who decides what hours make the most sense, for which districts?).
On the plus side, you'd have more convenience and less need for vehicle transit. On the potentially negative side, how many of these jobs would realistically pay a living wage?
Most of Paris is basically like that already, and was before she was even mayor. Promising to the happy few who can live in Paris at 15mins while commuters from outside need >= 1hr. Turns out commuters don’t vote.
The city / region has been working on that by decentralizing major government and business institutions. By pushing them out of the core in to neighboring suburbs it allows those employees a real chance at living near work in more than 15m2.
At the end of the day the only real solution to commutes / crowding is going to be spreading the load out on more communes and cities.
I'm not sure why you are downvoted. House pricing clearly shows that the City of Paris is a gravity center, which leads to many of the current traffic and pollution problems. Maybe a decentralization of France's institutions, powers, businesses etc could help it?
25 year repayment mortgage on €1m loan will cost about €4.3k per month. Based on actual lending rate of c. 2.3%.
Interest only loan will have lower monthly payments, but you will need to make an additional monthly contribution to an investment product, such as an endowment policy, in the hope that the investment product will be worth at least the outstanding capital at loan maturity.
Yes, in Germany for example. Some cities are experiencing drastically rising housing costs as a result. There was a bank in Denmark (not in the Eurozone) offering negative rate mortgages. In reality the bank tacked on fees so they weren’t paying people to take out a mortgage!
Except here in Ireland, unfortunately; absolute lowest mortgage available is 2.3%.
Repossession is especially difficult here, which raises the risk for the lender, and the banks unwisely gave out ECB trackers (as opposed to the EURIBOR trackers more common elsewhere) back in the day; some of these can be as low as 0.5%, so everyone else has to pay for that legacy.
After 25 years, the apartment is not worth nothing. People who ignore the bubble expect to sell the apartment after 25 years for the same price, or refinance with another mortgage. With some luck, the apartment is even worth more.
I did. Could you explain where I am wrong? The apartment is that expensive because people can finance it. It's stupid, because an apartment is not magically worth more because people can finance more. Unfortunately that doesn't matter to people who need a place to live.
It's 3.86k if you want to own the property after 30 years. You don't have to. You might as well sell the house for 1.2mm after 30 years and just pay 12m per year on interests for 30 years.
When I grew up, many years ago, in the East Village in NYC, you had specialty stores. Bread shop, milk and butter and eggs shop, butcher shop, fish shop, fruit and vegetable stand, pharmacy. All separate establishments.
Unfortunately that concept has gone by the wayside. But there was so much more variety than found in modern convenience stores. This was a lower-middle-class neighborhood, nothing fancy. And forget 20 minutes, everything was a less than 10 minute walk.
Now I live in suburbia and the closest stores are about 2 miles away. So of course everybody drives.
Not sure I want to trade availability of good butchers, bakers, etc. for more convenience stores. For toilet paper and toothpaste, I can manage with one convenience store being open from 9AM to 9PM ...
Btw,there are experiments with larger open hours thanks to cashless automatic machines (you scan & pay by yourself, only 1 security guy is present)
Do Parisian convenience stores close at night? Chinese urban convenience stores don't; even here in the American suburbs CVS is open 24 hours, and so is Safeway.
I think you’re getting some resistance below because the answer to your first question is Yes.
Not just “Yes, they close at night”, even.
The entire American mentality revolves around everything being available all the time, so it’s really jarring to come over here and see the equivalent of a 7-Eleven closing for two hours at lunchtime, half of Saturday and all of Sunday and Monday, and calling it a night at 7 on other days. And the local versions of Ralph’s, CVS, and Walmart doing the same.
So no, essentially nothing is open at night here. And it has been this way for forever, so it’s built into the culture at the DNA level. You would never consider going grocery shopping at 9pm. One should do such things at the appropriate time.
> And it has been this way for forever, so it’s built into the culture at the DNA level.
It used to be that shops closed for lunch. Some still do and then complain that customers shop in shopping centres.
People want what is convenient. Evenings and weekends are convenient because people are busy during weekdays and stay-at-home wives is no longer a thing in many cases.
It's like McDonald's. The 'correct' thing to do is to complain about them and to look down on them, but McDonald's is actually very, very successful in France...
In France it's illegal for stores to have employees work at night and on Sunday afternoon.
They are starting to go around this restriction by switching to self-checkout during those periods because, despite what other commenters have said, people do want longer opening hours.
> despite what other commenters have said, people do want longer opening hours.
No, not really.
According to [0], 61% of Frenchpeople consider this a step backward for workers, while 31% think it is necessary. Though the article implies the latter might be much higher in Paris.
What is so wrong with freedom? Why can’t workers decide if they want to work certain hours? Why is the choice made for them by government? You know what is also bad for workers? Unemployment, and in France it’s chronically high because of so much worrying about the “workers.”
Shops and stores want to open because they know they have customers. Obviously night-time hours are more in demand in cities. That's all there is to it. People like to say something but do something else...
If 23%+ of people end up shopping during those time periods (since 77% say they don't outside Paris) then that's more than enough do say that people want longer opening hours.
Personally I think that shops open 7 days a week is very useful.
Let the market decides. The legal restrictions are paternalistic.
Not to derail the conversation, byt why the 'even'? 24h-stores seem like an inherently american concept to me (I'm german, so France is right around the corner)
> Not to derail the conversation, byt why the 'even'?
Well, you might notice that even though you put two different sets of quotation marks on it, the text you're attributing to me isn't what I wrote. It's "even" because I'm contrasting an urban environment, where 24-hour stores are a baseline expectation, with a suburban environment, where they aren't but we have them anyway.
My bad, that was inappropriate. That being said: I wouldn't call them a baseline expectation in urban environments. I live in a city of 250k people, and I don't think we have a 24h-store here.
I generally agree with you, but it's utterly ridiculous that supermarkets etc. close at 8 already in some states (e.g. Bavaria). It would make more sense to keep themmopen until at least 9 or 10.
If the owner of a store wants to open it for 24 hours and he or employees are willing to work, how is that bad for workers rights? What’s bad for workers rights are people that would like the freedom to work a late shift or early shift but can’t because some do-gooder is trying to “protect” grown adults from making their own decisions.
> If the owner of a store wants to open it for 24 hours and he or employees are willing to work, how is that bad for workers rights?
That would be fine, but what is going to happen is that many workers will have to work night shifts unwillingly. It's bad for their physical and mental health.
Suppose you have a town with two stores. First store is willing to open 24 hours. Second store may have to do the same to compensate the loss of customers, and the workers there may have to work night shift even if they don't want to (I actually witnessed it first hand in my neighbourhood).
This is called a negative externality, and it is a well-known defect of free market. Even though you would think that opening a store 24h only impacts you and your customers, it negatively impacts other people.
This is a subjective opinion, but I would argue that the convenience of having 24h stores isn't worth the cost for the workers. Unfortunately, I think that I'm in the minority and that eventually we'll cross that line in Europe too, and it'll be hard to go back.
Need to make sure that restocking is done during the day or the customers won't notice that you have to move large containers through the store!
I understand that most stores would see little traffic at night, but on the other hand they'd also not need full staff, and they absolutely could do all the maintenance work at night. It annoys me similarly as "everybody must have the same two days off". So inefficient.
Having the same days off for most people makes for a more cohesive society where people have more time to interact with each other. Or at least, that's the idea.
Knowing families where people have different working hours or working days, it really takes a toll on interpersonal relations.
I get that argument, but I do believe that it applies more so to a past idea of society where everybody is close to average, i.e. mostly families with children. It makes sense to time days off for adults with those of children. The same goes for school holidays being timed with harvest season because plenty of children had to help on the family farm etc.
That's not our current reality, the percentage of singles and childless couples is growing and they don't need to be timed with school hours.
Adding flexibility would make everything run more smoothly. Right now we're having all the commercial traffic on 5/7 days and all the leisure time traffic on 2/7 days. Offices are empty 2/7 days.
Distributing that more evenly would benefit everyone. Less traffic during rush hour, less overrun parks on your day off, less crowded super markets and packages wouldn't need to be considered lost if they're diverted to the local branch where queues are usually longer than those in front of apple stores when new iphones get released.
My local (small, urban) supermarket isn’t even 24 hours (7am to 11pm, I think) and is constantly restocking throughout the day anyway. If sales volume is high enough, that’s presumably necessary.
I named them because they're open 24 hours and they seem like the closest fit to a convenience store. CVS is a "drug store", selling products in three basic categories: (1) grooming supplies (hairbrushes / fingernail clippers / makeup... this kind of thing); (2) a very stripped-down grocery inventory, including only prepackaged food (cereal / milk / poptarts / cookies / candy, but no fruit or meat); (3) health products ("nutritional supplements" / vitamins / aspirin / tums / cough drops / etc.).
A Family Mart in Shanghai is much smaller and offers different staples: food (including fruit, but largely prepackaged stuff), electronics cables, the machine that lets you pay your mobile phone bill (it's possible I'm out of date here). It's mostly food. Very much unlike CVS, they also offer a space in the store where you can sit and eat what you just bought, and if you bought instant noodles they'll give you boiling water for them.
There are American stores closer to that model, like 7-11, but I don't know that they stay open 24 hours. 7-11 is historically named after its operating hours. But I don't really see why that's important; if the mostly-prepackaged-food store is closed, but the prepackaged-food-and-also-cosmetics-and-pills store is open, you can meet your prepackaged food needs there.
I think CVS-style shops are a uniquely American thing, no? I was pretty confused by them on first visiting San Francisco (why is this a combination of products that makes sense? Is the candy aisle right beside where you buy statins some sort of elaborate joke?)
I assume they sell candy for the same reason art supply stores sell candy -- it's easy to sell, because people like it.
The combination of products is basically "everything you might find at a 'supermarket' in another country, except for the food", and I assume it's that way because grocery stores are primarily dedicated to food. If you took the food out of a Carrefour, what would it be selling?
(We also have stores on the "full supermarket" model, Walmart and Target.)
San Francisco is a very strange case because effectively the entire population commutes from far away. Things aren't just not open 24 hours, they're also not open on the weekend.
With Hidalgo, Paris is becoming more and more an "Elysium" movie city-model: only a few decide Parisian of what will piss off everybody else. Remember the end of the movie ? ;-)
Btw... Elysium and Elysée - the Palace of the French President... in Paris - have the same root. If it can help to understand...
I would be happy to know why some people downvoted my comment, just to understand.
I live 100m from Paris, in the suburb, so I'm a bit concerned (and knowledgable) about this subject. And the current - and maybe next - Paris mayor is only working for her own electorate (logical).
Problem is: Paris is a central city/region. You can't just "live around it". So basically when Hidalgo close the "quais de seine", it's fine for people living in Paris or tourists but it's a PITA for people from one suburb to the other one. When Hidalgo wants to shutdown the "periphique", it won't matter to parisians and tourists in Paris, but will make a really big difference for people working and living outside Paris for whom crossing Paris is the shortest way.
BTW, 90min from work to home is not really unusual in Paris suburb, and I would be the happiest man on earth if I could had just 30 min between work and home.
Moreover, Paris is becoming more and more a car-adverse city (nowhere to park, except for a lot of money) but public transportation are far from compensating this (for example: still no public transportation all night long... except one saturday night every month on a few lines... as an experiment).
So: no cars, not enough public transportations, and a central town (by design and history).
Cities are terrible places to live. To prove my point, can you walk to a natural area (beach, forest, mountain, etc) within 15 minutes? Of course not, other than maybe a tiny manicured park full of people. That "green area" pictured in the diagram will be the only green area, it will be a flat park of some sort, and it will be your only choice of place to visit. It will be more like a museum for trees than any kind of natural habitat.
That doesn't meet anybodies "needs". This is all just dressing up ways to reduce the costs of humans. Governments are just a collection of large companies (their controllers), who run the world the same as if it is a business. The citizens of the city are a cost, and these are marketing campaigns to get them to accept cost reduction measures.
Also, as I am getting downvoted, I may as well point out that Paris itself is an especially terrible place to live. In fact, I don't know many parisians that live there, and I have never met anybody that likes it. HN obsession with density and walking is hilarious.
I mean, it’s all down to personal preference, really. I’d hate to live somewhere where I couldn’t walk or get around by rapid public transport. Car oriented suburbs (or, worse, rural areas) are my idea of hell. And if I want to go to a mountain or a beach (which is something I want to do way less than, say, going to work or the supermarket or going for a drink with friends, all of which are walking distance) I can get on a train.
Mind you, this is a city of 1.5 million people; mega cities like Paris have their own challenges.
> To prove my point, can you walk to a natural area (beach, forest, mountain, etc) within 15 minutes?
Edinburgh has, less than a mile from its centre, Holyrood Park [0], 650 acres of wild highland landscape, including gorse, glens, ridges, hills, cliffs, two natural springs, three lochs, and an 800-foot high extinct volcano.
Paris has always had this very dense city core where 99% of daily life is 5-10’ away. It’s a great concept for dense metropoles, but it only works because the city is so small: 100 square kilometers in an ocean of much lesser density. 80% of “Greater Parisians” live outside Paris itself.
Unfortunately there is no actual representations for 80% of those “outside Parisians” since they are split between hundreds of small cities with individual political dynamics. Pure game theory as local governance.