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Comment by pi-err | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

> It’s workers and commuters from far away that need vehicles.

They need vehicles to reach the public transports, not to move around in Paris.

Do you have a source?

https://www.airparif.asso.fr/actualite/detail/id/213

Car emissions are negligible compared to scooter emissions though

> 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.

The city mayor first cares about the people of that city; there’s nothing illogical here.

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].

[1]: https://www.la-croix.com/France/qualite-lair-sameliore-Paris...

Improved in places. Got worse in others. https://www.airparif.asso.fr/actualite/detail/id/213

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.

Of course, improving the lives of the poor is important but should never be detrimental to the rich themselves.

Why is this sentiment suddenly acceptable when it’s couched in terms of the real estate people can afford instead of their incomes directly?

This is fixable; some cities have effectively banned Airbnb. More should.

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.

+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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttf5j5SVrFs

Thousands of asylum seekers waiting in streets, makeshift camps around Paris

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2htRQwzI5jY

Paris authorities clear large migrant camps on edge of city

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5PegltCkmw

From an year ago:

Migrants moved to wealthy Paris neighbourhood, what do locals think?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59lEtxjFK5A

From nearly 4 years ago:

Mass Immigration Ruins The Streets Of France

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqopPs5Tp-I

edit:formatting

Am I reading Hacker news or Stormfront?

I agree with you, but don't know Paris well enough to know the exact details. How would you define the border of this "inner city" ?

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.

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