Here it looks like that this one wants to promote bicycling so will say anything to support that.
But it is like going back to the dark age. Do you remember when we couldn't go very far from home? Transport things?
He pretends that Paris was better and a paradise before the 'evil work' of Haussmann. It is so untrue!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...
<< In the middle of the nineteenth century, the center of Paris was viewed as overcrowded, dark, dangerous, and unhealthy. In 1845, the French social reformer Victor Considerant wrote: "Paris is an immense workshop of putrefaction, where misery, pestilence and sickness work in concert, where sunlight and air rarely penetrate. Paris is a terrible place where plants shrivel and perish, and where, of seven small infants, four die during the course of the year." >>
Also some interesting photo of that time:
https://www.messynessychic.com/2013/10/11/lost-paris-documen...