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Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotally, after having lived in Paris for ~6 months, one of the most noticeable aspects of the city is its relative uniformity. Unlike Berlin, London, or Prague, you can wander for awhile in Paris and essentially see the same style of architecture and urban landscape repeated. It has something of an “endless” effect on your time perception.

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Having lived there my whole life (26 years), have you walked ? Paris (stricto sensu) is small. You can walk the longest distance east-west in an afternoon, and buildings do change. Like comparing the 20th district with the 15th, have you not seen buildings change ? Montmartre and Montsouris ? There's not 2 hours of walking between these places.

For the best contrast start at Nation and taking either the subway line 2 (north) or 6 (south), get off every two stations. Between Monceau, La Chappelle and Nation if you don't see a difference...

Not sure why this is voted down as Paris intramuros is quite walkable as you said. With a velib (Paris municipal rental bike) you can probably go from South to North in 30-40 minutes.

As you say there is quite a lot of architectural diversity already (I e.g. loved strolling through the Quartier Latin and discovering small side streets and different architectural patterns in buildings and neighborhoods), they just had more consistent city planning as compared to other cities (IMHO) so the differences are not as stark as e.g. in most US cities.

There are many high rises outside of the boulevard peripherique (the ring motorway separating inner and outer Paris), it’s just that most tourists never go there.

Also, many people live in the suburbs that are served by the RER lines, and these have a large degree of variety in both density and style. I suggest visiting e.g. Antony or Gif Sur Yvette (and The Valley of Chevreuse in general) to get an entirely different feeling of the larger Paris area.

Personally I don’t know what the city planners could reasonably do to increase the density of the city without destroying its character, as Paris intra muros is really fully developed already without virtually any empty space whatsoever (contrary to e.g Berlin where even today there’s tons of empty space even in the very center).

I’m not sure if increasing the density is always a good idea as well, as it doesn’t suffice to add more housing but you will have to scale all other required services as well (schools, supermarkets etc.) so growing the city outwards might be better (as area grows quadratically with radius).

BTW the uniformity of the buildings in Paris also stems from a regulation that requires most buildings to have black metal window sills in front of every window.

Actually, the whole point of the new subway lines (especially line 15, which will go around the city through close suburbs) is densification. City planners want to avoid the city going further and further in the countryside and want to have denser hubs (around new stations) closer to the city.

I'm quite particular to the 19th district, with it's canal and the Parc de la Villette, which is certainly not drowned by tourists.

It's not a "nice" area in that sense, but it's rather enchanting to walk around, have a drink, or a bottle of wine on one of the bar boats and is growing in cultural experiences to be had.

Granted, I'd probably never have found it on my own if a virtually life long friend wouldn't be living in the area.

Coincidentally I'm off to Paris for the weekend come tomorrow evening and looking very much forward to it. :)

Yep. One day I walked several blocks in each arrondissement on foot in a single day. The route was a little over 30km, and it took only about 12 hours, with lots of stops whenever I saw something interesting. There are many similarities, but the area by Buttes-Chaumont in Belleville was the most different. Steep hills, taller buildings, very residential. Conversely, the Issy-les-Moulineaux area, while not technically in Paris, sure looked a lot like it!

That's because Paris is stuck in the 19th century with its Haussmannian style.

Usually a city lives and changes to adapt itself to its times, and Paris was no exception... Until the 19th century.

Now the local government wants to "preserve" it for the joy of tourists, to the detriments of locals. Housing is scarce causing high prices. Buildings are old and inconvenients.

Paris is a museum-city. Designed for tourists.

Yeah, I can’t agree, sorry. I’m not sure if you’ve lived in Paris or not, but these “it’s a tourist city” comments almost always come from people that haven’t lived there. There are dozens of incredible neighborhoods in Paris that have little-to-no tourist presence. It’s akin to saying NYC is a tourist city because Times Square is a mess.

Are you talking about Paris propre or "les banlieux"? I can agree if you extend Paris to the "banlieux" that there is definitively good voisinage but not for Paris propre. Unless you are willing to pay top dollars to stay in les Champs-Elysses. (which I don't find that good either).

Belville, Bastille, and most of the 13e are all within the périphérique and are all great places to live and have very little overt tourism.

But what are the prices for rent/purchase? I can see it has less metro stations but still well connected.

It’s Paris, so of course it’s not going to be cheap. IIRC in Belville my studio was about 1,000€ per month, which compared to virtually any western megacity (London, NYC, SF, etc.) is a great deal. Of course, the place was tiny, but that’s Paris in general.

Inner Paris is 20 "arrondissements". Tourists are far less visible as soon as you're going to outer arrondissements, I.e. 13th, 14th, 18th, 19th and 20th (except for Père Lachaise cemetery)

Keep in mind that Paris, without near suburbs ("proche banlieue") is only 105 km² and as written, has been mostly rebuild by Haussmann (following Napoleon III orders) in the late 18XX, when I.e. London is something like 1500 km² ... so comparison may be difficult

Unfortunately, the rules meant to preserve the Haussmanian parts beloved by tourists are applied uniformly throughout the city, even in those neighborhoods without tourists which you mention.

There were deviations from the rules throughout the ages, especially on the left bank with the newer, taller towers (Place d'Italie, Montparnasse, Berges de Seine). But these deviations were always one off, pushed through by an ambitious leader that burned off a lot of political capital.

To build taller buildings, you would need much wider streets than what you have now, unless you want half of the city to be in a permanent shadow. This would not solve the housing issue. The density of Paris is close to the maximum possible already.

What's the point of building taller if you just increase the street width so total livable area per ground area is the same? That's nonsensical. Of course people will have to live with shadow. It's the only way to increase density (unless you want people to live in basements).

I don't know if you have been to Paris but the streets are VERY small, if you would build skyscraper, it would not be livable at all. Additionally, you need extra land for the foundation of the skyscraper (very very difficult to get in a crowded city like Paris. The point of the skyscraper is that it's cheaper for the company building it, it only makes sense in that aspect.

Guess you haven't been to Hong Kong. The street there are very small and yet there are 30 story buildings all over

https://www.google.com/maps/@22.2816017,114.156159,3a,75y,31...

Eh, no. Skyscrapers are not cheap. The cheapest thing you can build is sprawling low-rise.

Some streets in Paris are narrow, others aren't. Streets with two-way road traffic are wide enough.

I don’t think any city does this. Humans need sunlight.

(OP is not talking about shadow on one side of the road. They mean perma shadow the whole day long.)

From what I remember, Rio de Janeiro has something similar to this. Huge buildings were built basically right up to the beach so you can be 1-2 blocks away from Copacabana and not really know

There is a lot of light in rio; I've been. They do have a city by the beach, but there is plenty of light in the city. (Shade too in a lot of areas, on one side of the street. Both light and shade are important)

> There is a lot of light in rio;

Rio de Janeiro is located at latitude 22.9 South while Paris is located at 48.8 North. The solar exposure of those cities throughout the year is very different.

I'm not sure you followed. I meant the light makes it to the street. It is not bloxked by tall buildings.

The original post was about making taller buildings in paris without wider streets. That would lead to permanent canyons.

What's interesting about your examples (Place d'Italie, Montparnasse, Berges de Seine) is that these neighborhoods are considered as the ugliest and seen as mistakes from the 1960/70s. They were part of projects to rebuild the whole city, along with highways that would cut through Paris. I'm pretty sure everybody today is happy those plans were cancelled.

It's no wonder we're kind of vaccinated against towers... I could add to the list: place des fêtes, Olympiades, les Orgues de Flandres...

One deviation that comes to mind and smack in the center of town would be Beaubourg (Centre Pompidou[1]), which is a very massive, very modernist building, surrounded by some of the oldest parts of the city.

The canopy at Les Halles also pretty much puts a stop to the rumour that new, massive constructions are not possible in Paris, let alone in the center of Paris.

Granted, context certainly matters and Beaubourg was, charitably put, rather controversial when it was under construction, but it's absolutely not a given that no renewal is possible.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_Georges_Pompidou [2] https://www.citylab.com/design/2015/05/paris-the-canopy-fix/...

The Beaubourg is a museum though, which nowadays are allowed to look like a pretentious eyesores that clash with the surrounding landscape as some form of statement. A better comparision would be the construction of new property that is purely residential or commerical

I really regret Paris's urbanistic conservatism and lack of possibilities for experimentation. Some recently developed areas are promising. I really enjoy walking in the "ZAC Rive gauche", the neighborhood around the Bibliothèque de France which is still in the process of being built. Take a walk starting at the Gare d'Austerlitz and going eastward following the tracks, youl'll see an unusual face of modern Paris. Unlike e.g. Front de Seine in the 15th arrondissement, I have the feeling that this area may succeed and age well. (Incidentally, this is where that startup thingy, Station F, is located, and new streets are named after Alan Turing and Ada Lovelace!)

ZAC rive gauche, Batignolles, Chapelle International, Bercy-Charenton, Rosa Parks... That's quite a lot of room for experimentation and new neighborhoods.

Yes, I've lived in Paris for 3 years and it's the worst city I've ever lived in.

Hence why most people live in the surroundings, and there's also La Défense (area with most modern buildings)

But weren't some cities in SV not allowing new buildings to "preserve the character of the city" as well?

> Housing is scarce causing high prices. Buildings are old and inconvenients.

Paris is one of the most dense city in the world, there's nothing which can solve that.

It's not entirely true. If you walk the inner-city neighbourhoods, you will rarely encounter buildings with more than 10 stories [1].

Clearly there are options, which aren't on the table because of preservationism and zoning.

[1] https://www.google.de/maps/@48.8575448,2.2997841,3a,75y,329....

There just isn't that much undeveloped land in the inner cities, and no one wants to tear down a 100-year old 5-storey building to make room for a 10 or 20 or 50 storey building. If an empty construction spot is found for some reason, or the odd house is torn down, then I agree with planners: don't make 1 building in 100 tall. That's just an eyesore. Heterogeneous vs homogeneous I can agree is debatable, but almost-homogenenous with a single eyesore is the worse of both.

Also there are height limitation for buildings in Paris, which are in parts of Paris around 8-10 floors.

And yet most arrondissements have densities similar or greater than Manhattan (28k / km2): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrondissements_of_Paris#Arron...

Size of Paris: 104km^2 [1]

Size of Manhattan: 59km^2 [2]

Density Paris: 21,000/km^2 [1]

Density Manhattan: 28,154/km^2 [2]

Comparing arrondissements with a larger area like Manhattan is not good. If you compare Manhattan's wards with Paris's arrondissements you get a clearer picture:

11th arrondissement: 41.500/km^2 [3]

Upper Westsides 25th district: 92.400/km^2 [4]

Looks like the visual comparison of stories works out quite well with regards to density

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrondissements_of_Paris#Arron...

[4] https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1KH824f7Bya0UVv...

If you build taller buildings, you will need to have wider streets, thus resulting in the same density, it won't solve anything.

is it anecdotal or is it provable?

There are dozens of open wide Rues, Avenues and Boulevards in Paris that don't have any dense housing compared to Manhattan or Hong Kong etc.

Yeah you can maybe put only 5 or 10 more skyscrapers by destroying the biggest empty spaces (there's not that many of them), what would be the point of that? It's not a dozen of skyscrapers which will solve the housing crisis.

No you would scrap some buildings instead. But thats of course not doable because preservationism declares every of those 6-8 story buildings in Paris, that are of crumbling conditions a historical landmark if necessary.

Yeah but we tend to think that it's a pretty shitty idea to replace those nifty Carved stone buildings with cheap and shallow stained glass/concrete/steel ones.

What? I've never seen this in practice.

Hong Kong is incredibly dense and full of high rise buildings (Kowloon has 110,000 people/square mile) and streets aren't exactly wide. Seoul packs in 42,000 people per square mile without many significantly wide streets. Tokyo streets are often only suitable for one way traffic.

Paris is already more dense than Hong Kong and Tokyo

Paris is not remotely as dense as Tokyo or Hong Kong. Stats lie because there is some random defintion of density based on some arbitrary area / population where area = unused parts of the city. For example "Tokyo" has unpopulated mountains as part of it's very large "official" area. Same with HK. Choose the actually city parts and the actual "city" of Tokyo and HK and many X more dense than Paris. They are night and day different. Paris is quaint compared to Tokyo and HK.

Tokyo proper (23 wards) is much less dense than Paris, not more. The densest wards are around 20k / km2, while the least dense "arrondissement" in Paris is 17k / km2, with most of them quite above 50k / km2 and more.

A big factor in that is that a huge amount of Tokyo is purely towering office space. People commute in from up to and over 100km away since their transportation fees are covered and high speed trains are a feasible way to travel.

But taller buildings equals wider streets to such a degree that the density you win by building high mostly gets eaten up by the lost real estate used for wider streets.

Why do you need wider streets? Moving people is what the metro is for.

Except if you plan to build an underground city, people still have to walk from/to the metro station to/from wherever they live or work. And people also still strangely favor having a bit of sunlight.

As a French living now in Canada, Paris streets are narrow in general, and especially the sidewalks are ridiculous, most of the space is for cars. One of the first thing to do would be to reclaim that street space for pedestrians and cyclists, which is an ongoing, slow and painful battle.

Sunlight. People go crazy if they live in darkness everyday. I'm pretty sure this was discovered & studied in the history of American east coast cities.

Then why not raze Paris' buildings down to one story?

(The difference in sunlight exposure for pedestrians between an 8-story building and a 16-story building is not remotely as large than between an 8- and a 2-story building)

Because sunlight non-exposure is one of the pinnacles of unfounded, futile arguments against density.

> Why do you need wider streets?

For public health reasons, enable emergency and disaster response, contain potential propagation of collapses, enable large volumes of people to evacuate in a timely manner, etc.

Europe has lived with narrow streets for some centuries and learned to avoid that mistake. It's a shame that somr people have forgot or never learned those lessons.

The narrow streets were never the problem. Sanitation was.

Actually at this time, when Haussmann started its transformation of Paris, people though that the circulation of air was very important for health, and that was one of the reasons of widening the streets and limiting the height of buildings, but the main reason was for allowing traffic of goods and people, and to improve security and control of the population (revolts in Paris had made 3 different political regimes collapse in less than 70 years before that).

Today people still value seeing the sky and freedom of movement. I have not been everywhere in North America but usually I saw that big buildings mean wide streets around them.

> Why do you need wider streets?

Moving goods.

> Moving people is what the metro is for.

People aren't the only thing that needs moved to support a city.

It's not true at all. The central arrondissements are (for some part) well preserved, but once you go a little further you'll see that most buildings have been destroyed and replaced since the 50s. There are few highrise, but Paris is already very dense and it wouldn't really be able to support these buildings.

Since a few years there's a construction boom in and around the city. With the new subway lines to come (greater Paris), new neighborhoods are built everywhere.

Your vision of Paris is at least 50 years old...

I find modern minimalist architecture depressing; the ceilings are low, tables made of glass, everything tends to be white (made worse by modern LED lights), there are no decorative features. Big modern cities are designed to trick people into paying more money for a lower quality of life.

I live there. Its cohesive architecture makes its beauty. We parisians certainly don't want to make the city as ugly as London or Berlin. Some of us can enjoy art.

It is something very common in France. Most city enforce strict rules when it comes to their "historical" city center to preserve the look. Even changing windows has to be approved by the town hall to preserve the look of the buildings. Where I live, I am not even allowed to hang something on my balcony.

It make the city center usually very uniform and, arguably, beautiful, but it can be annoying to live in.

> It makes the city center usually very uniform and, arguably, beautiful, but it can be annoying to live in.

I know what you're talking, and I know its a common design-pattern amongst architects and urban developers, but I think while uniformity can be beautiful, it certaintly isn't always. And more importantly: heterogenity can be beautiful as well.

It is the latter sentence that is somewhat avoided in many countries/cities zoning codes and is IMO just wrong. Compare the skylines of Manhattan/HongKong with the ones of Kowloon's monotone apartment building skylines in the outskirts. Or the picturesque Italian towns.

I could go on for lengths about it but there is an acknowledged dissent amongst planners to accept the fact, that in contrast to the "Paris-Way" the "London-Way" does also work. Interestingly, that often aligns amongst political views as well (Statism vs. Laissez-faire)

> one of the most noticeable aspects of the city is its relative uniformity

In case anyone is unaware, that is intentional. Look up Haussmann.

That's because Paris surrendered and didn't get bombed during WW2.

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