Experiencing Paris as a tourist and living in Paris are two very different experiences. You don’t really see the cramped apartments with awful isolation, the constant urban work improving nothing, the lack of vegetation, the never ending noise, how the public transports always have issues, how the city is constantly grubby as a tourist. Also despite the impression you get from the small buildings Paris is actually extremely dense. People just live in shoeboxes.
I really like the city but it wears you down sometimes.
That's fair, what you wrote actually echo what I thought as I was coming back: that I loved every second of it yet I'd trade the architecture, lively arrondissement and culture for my much larger apartment any day if I had to pick.
That being said, I've yet to see a city where people downtown don't live in small apartments so I suppose some people are just fine with it.
> I recently read that Marseilles is a prison of rival drug cartels.
You've read rubbish. Marseille has gang issues in some neighborhood but it's not a « prison ». It's certainly paying the price for poor urbanism in the 50s, though. But things are generally improving.
I really like the city but it wears you down sometimes.