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Comment by veddox | Hacker News Reader

Never having been to Paris, I am surprised that it doesn't seem to have a car-free inner city anyway (correct me if I'm wrong). I find this one day already a great idea, but why not make it permanent? Almost ever city here in Germany has what we call the "Fußgängerzone" - pedestrians-only zone - in the town center. It makes for a very pleasant atmosphere when you don't have to watch out for cars all the time, and that part of town looks a lot more attractive for it. (Often you will find this area is located in the oldest part of town, so you get to admire all the old buildings even better.)

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Paris does have Fußgängerzonen as well (around Les Halles for example, in La Defance, Latin Quarter ...) but this is a huge city. Only Berlin comes close, and there are cars all around Potsdamer Platz, Brandenburger Tor, Ku'Damm ... But I agree, Paris would clearly benefit from a no car zone from Rivoli to maybe Luxemburg. The roads are too small for serious car traffic anyway.

Berlin is much much larger than Paris in terms of area. I'm obviously speaking of the inner Paris, not Paris + neighborhoods outside of the circular highway (périphérique).

"... Paris is a huge city. Only Berlin comes close, ..."

yeah, right

Paris: 2,241,346 (2014)

Berlin: 3,562,166 (2014)

Population by administrative area is irrelevant.

"Comparing urban areas in the European Union, Eurostat, the statistical agency of the EU, places Paris (6.5 million people) second behind London (8 million) and ahead of Berlin (3.5 million), based on the 2012 populations of what Eurostat calls "urban audit core cities"." — Wikipedia.

Exactly. The City of London is administratively a city and a county. Looking at these boundaries, it is the smallest English city [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London#Geography

That's somewhat different, though. The City of London is not London, the capital city of the UK. The latter is formally Greater London, consisting of 32 London Boroughs and the City of London. The two are different administrative entities entirely, with City of London e.g. having its own Lord Mayor separate from the Mayor of London, and with the ceremonial country of Greater London explicitly excluding City of London.

Nested administrative boundaries is a UK speciality (e.g. England, Wales and Scotland are countries within a country).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/42/British...

The 'City of London' is a quirk it is actually a very small borough within the city of Greater London, which has a population of something like 8 million and is very roughly up to zone 6 on a tube map. For the regional population I vaguely remember a statistic that there are 20 million people within 30 miles of trafalgar square, but I can't back this up right now.

That City (big C, the administrative area) is indeed tiny, population 8,000, and is distinct from the geographical city of London (small c) population 8,000,000.

And, notably, predates the English monarchy and technically exists somewhat separate from the UK...

You will notice that you have left Berlin by all the trees and fields around you. You will notice leaving Paris by the huge motorway you have to cross before you enter the surrounding urban districts.

And Boston has only 600k inhabitants, right?

(4M if we count the Metro area)

Most of Boston seems doable for car-free too, but I don't know if the public transportation can handle it. It's already taxed at rush hour and other peak times. I can't imagine everybody could get to work on time if everybody had to use it without major skewing of some schedules.

It seems like a strong telecommuting infrastructure and culture should be a part of this.

Public transit in Boston is already choked at rush hour, and badly in need of repairs (including complete fleet replacements for two subway lines, now scheduled to start in a couple of years) -- witness the total breakdowns last winter, which had some lines out of service for weeks.

And witness the repercussions. On the third day of the crisis, the Red and Orange lines were out, and a lot of people who normally came on them, drove instead. The result was that Cambridge was utterly crippled with traffic. On my way back from Kendall to Medford, I walked, and I got home earlier than anyone I know.

Right! And DC has only 658,893 inhabitants. Let's ignore its metro area of 4.5 million and CSA of 9 million.

There are some pedestrians-only areas in Paris : http://en.parisinfo.com/discovering-paris/themed-guides/pari...

I think this is much bigger than most pedestrian zones in German city centers (I live in Berlin and can't think off the top of my head of a large pedestrian zone, although I know Munich and Vienna have them).

Yeah, it's really strange. All other medium to large German cities have sizeable commercial pedestrian zones, but Berlin has very few. The only ones I know inside Berlin are the shopping street Wilmersdorferstraße in Charlottenburg and the area from Alexanderplatz to Rathausstraße. There's also the Alt Spandau pedestrian zone as well as parts of Alt Tegel, but I don't think those belong to Berlin proper.

I suppose it depends on your perspective. If you permit cars to drive on 1km of road, that's short, but if you prohibit cars from 1km, maybe that kilometer is long.

The biggest one in Munich is two intersecting streets, each almost 1km long if you measure generously, and some 50-200m stretches of neighbouring streets.

By property value the area is vast ;)

Ok, thanks for the corrections, everyone ;-)

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