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Comment by spaniard89277 | Hacker News Reader

Paris needs a new center. Like many other cities, build more places where people want to flock so you get pressure off the center.

Most new developments are in dead areas because nobody wants to spend time surrounded by ugly, bland and functional architecture.

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The problem is, when you are competing with the center of Paris, it is pretty hard to build a compelling alternative. Say what you will about the streets being loud, chaotic and dirty, the area between the II, III, V and VI arrondissements (Latin quarter, Pantheon, Beaubourg, Jardin du Luxembourg, Tuilleries, Notre Dame, Place des Vosges) is still just swell.

Yeah, and also you have the problem of job location. The regional government says they want to make the Paris area more "polycentric", but there’s a limit to that if jobs are heavily concentrated in one area. We are racing to open more subway lines, and that will surely help, but at some point, raw distance will remain a bottleneck.

This reminds of the project that aimed at creating a new business/commercial complex south-east of Paris in Noisy-Le-Grand. A real estate promoter had a big project, and a metro line was designed, then built, but the real estate project went into bankruptcy and never got out of the ground.[0]

The metro line was completed, inaugurated, but never opened to the public, and eventually mothballed. For quite a while, it was rumored that they operated trains once a month to keep the system working and maintained, not sure up until when.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noisy-le-Grand_Metro

The Tim Traveller channel on YouTube did a couple videos about this [1] and [2]. The station was open for a brief time for some public tours before being redeveloped. He also links to some archival footage from 1997 showing it in motion [3].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWxESIzJhCU [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGIz_zwoALU [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMHW9cEAO78

It's not a problem in the sense that nowadays we know how to make it. It's a question of money and political build. More housing, more offices, make it pleasent, connect it, etc.

Seems like governments could lead the charge by building new government facilities in an alternate location, which is created with a solid plan for incorporating public transport, housing, event spaces, and retail.

Its entirely possible to build a new city from the ground up. And starting with a clean slate allows planners to design with the next 10,20,30,50 years of growth in mind. It's very difficult to scale a city effectively without a long-term city plan.

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