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Comment by DeathArrow | Hacker News Reader

Paris might still exist but the people who built it are no more.

For me it's weird to visit Paris. Maybe I've read to much French literature which set some expectations. Such as Paris being inhabited by mostly Parisians. People who lived there for generations.

Is Paris still Paris without its people? For me it isn't. It's mostly a collection of buildings, places, corners, parks, monuments, historical places, a large museum of what was once Paris.

It's the same way I feel about Venice. It's nice, but it's mostly a museum.

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Paris is mostly inhabited by parisians, born there, where do you think we all go once we come of age?

You might have came in Summer/August, where all the parisians disappear because there are too many tourists and it's too hot so if you can afford it you go to the south of France/abroad.

Also the experience you will have as a tourist is indeed of a museum, the experience you will have living here inside french circles is vastly different but, like in every city, it's not something that you can create in 1 week or 2. I would even say, if you're not french or parisian, you will have difficulties joining the right inner circles. It's not a good thing, it's not something to be proud of, but the parisian life is extremely lively. It's exactly the same than in New York, there are more to scratch than the surface but it's not something that you can "consume" easily just because you have a wallet.

> where do you think we all go once we come of age?

The suburbs and smaller towns (Nantes, Chartres, Bordeaux, Toulouse etc.)

I saw a ton of friends and family move out of Paris as they started building a family or wanted more than just the urban life.

It's actually still extremely easy to get to Paris from more than 20~30km away. Many keep commuting to Paris while taking a healthy distance.

1/3 of Parisians are born there, 1/3 are born in France, 1/3 outside of France: https://www.paris.fr/pages/seulement-30-des-parisiens-sont-n...

I'm surprised, and so my statement above is wrong as more people in Paris are born outside of it, I would have thought it was more than 50%

TIL

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the greater Paris (basically the extent of where the RER goes) had more natives moving in that sphere for most of their lives.

What I find more interesting is how it changed through time, managed to find some numbers for the old department of the Seine :

- 1861: 57% born outside of it, 1872: 64%, 1881: 62.9%, 1901: 57.4%.

So the fact that most Parisian has been born outside of it is not exactly new. What probably changed is the part coming from outside of France. But it's not exactly as if Paris was not described as Cosmopolitan since at least a century so not sure how that would be bad.

You see Paris as a museum because you visit it as a tourist. I see it as a business place that's cumbersome to reach and navigate because half of the clients I have to visit are there. I have visited Paris for tourism as well, but it's much more than that (for one thing, it's about a third of the GDP of France).

As for true Parisians, they have been a minority for ages, there are famously more Bretons in Paris than in Brittany and true Parisians will always tell you that they are actually from Paris. That's not one of the new changes of Paris.

I don't know about Paris, but I live in New York and I can see how it is both less and more than what tourists come there for. It is constantly changing including the people who live there. You can't really get a grip on it it is elusive. It is all around you but where? Tourists come there to find something which true New Yorkers themselves cannot find. But it makes me feel I'm not alone. I have the same destiny as everybody else. There's no us vs. them we're all in the same boat.

Feels true of every big city? Certainly of London and Bangkok in which I’ve spent many years

Kind of a strange take.

> Paris might still exist but the people who built it are no more.

If we are speaking of building then the most defining era for Paris date back to 1870 with the Haussman transformation so not exactly a surprise there.

> People who lived there for generations.

Not sure what this special breed bring to Paris versus those living there for mere decades ? Generations of nepotism ?

Migration are not exactly new, those from Aveyron started in mass from 1880.

> Maybe I've read to much French literature which set some expectations.

Humm maybe the Paris from your expectations never existed ?

Not sure which author you are speaking of but there is a high probability they were not born in Paris but probably lived there later on.

And lastly while it's certain that peoples are moving out from Paris especially when they start to want children I believe it's still far from the state Venise is in where half of the dwellings in the city center is for tourism.

Just a reminder of historical milestones for Paris:

- 1789 The revolution, which lasted a decade, Louis XVI being guillotined in 1793, and the entire 1800 being busy with Napoleon, Restauration of monarchy, then Napoleon III,

- 1880 Haussmann refurbishes Paris. Think of the writings of Zola and Victor Hugo. Every grandiose avenue, every beautiful building, every train station comes from that period. Gare d’Orsay (now a museum) with 15 tracks and its magnificent glass ceiling is built in just 2 years, along with a dozen kilometers of rails under the river’s level. Yeah imagine that today, they can’t even build a cycle lane in 2 years. Orsay was just built for Exposition Universelle then shut down like 10 years later.

- 1889 Exposition universelle where the Eiffel tower is built. Paris is truly the capital of the world, everyone comes to see it, Paris and France are able to execute grand plans in just a few years. The Russian cour of the tsar speaks French because it’s classy, President Poincare forms an alliance with Russia and visits Saint Pétersbourg in 1913.

- XXth century: Nothing really happened in Paris (with the exception of May 1968, the local version of the worldwide cultural changes about freedom of the youths of the 1970ies, feminism, anticonservatism, etc). The entire history of the world happened in Berlin, the gay bars in 1934, the Nazis, the Russian rapes after the occupation, the 40-year wall, the Weidervereinigung in 1989, the EU in the 2000s… Berlin truely was the capital of the world’s events for an entire century.

- 2024 The Olympic Games in Paris. Pay close attention to the events, it will tell you what Paris wants to be.

What would you say will be the capital of the world for the next 50 years? I’d say San Francisco, because so much of our world is dictated by our startups’ community policies. Or maybe Beijin?

Not sure about Berlin. As a European, I'd be pretty sure the capital if the world in 1980 was New York for instance.

This. The XX century belonged to the US, with New York and Los Angeles attracting people and dictating the cultural and economic agenda. (West) Berlin's cultural life was undoubtedly lively but hardly dominant, even just getting there was difficult. Even just in Europe, London, Paris, Roma, Milano, Amsterdam - they were all much more relevant than Berlin at any one time after WWII. A few gay bars and Bowie albums doth not a cultural hegemony make.

That’s ignoring an important period before WW1 and between both world wars, where Paris was a magnet for American artists and enjoyed a minor golden age.

OTOH Berlin never really had the cultural importance that Paris, London or New York had. The counter-culture was much broader than gay bars and both England and the UK were much more influent. I’m not denigrating Berlin because I love the city, but it just is not in the same league. And it certainly was not prominent for a century.

The generational link you mentioned has been broken in pretty much any city or town in the world, for decades at this point. Cheap planes and telecoms let people shuffle all over the planet, and the ones who will live and die in the same city or town where they were born will forever be fewer and fewer. Paris has its people - the people who choose to live there today. They might not look or talk like Napoleonic Parisians, but so what? Paris as a whole still feels very much alive and inhabited in pretty much every corner.

I think the problem is that you have an idea of Paris in your mind and refuse to accept that reality does not match it (and probably never did - literature is never a perfect mirror, since it will reflect an author's view rather than reality).

Venice has a different problem. The historic centre is literally dying out: nobody wants to put up with the annoying logistics anymore, and buildings are more profitable when used by tourists; so the "locals" (as in long-time residents; many of them were not born there) choose to live on land instead, in Mestre (which keeps growing). What is left is indeed largely a museum, an open-air tourist trap. This is well-understood and nominally opposed by local politicians, but it's unlikely that these macro-trends can be significantly reversed.

Reminds me of the movie Midnight in Paris, where a guy comes to Paris with romantic visions and is disappointed by the modern touristy reality. Whither the 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Dali, and Stein? And then he accidentally happens across a portal to that era, and falls in love with a girl… who is entirely disillusioned with the interwar Paris that doesn’t live up to her romantic associations with the Paris of Balzac and Toulouse-Latrec, the Moulin Rouge at its peak! So he shows her the portal which takes them back in time to the 1870s where they go to the Moulin Rouge and meet Toulouse-Latrec, who rues the loss of the Paris of the 1820s. What a glorious time period that was!

> People who lived there for generations.

Yes and no, Paris was an economic powerhouse even back then and attracted a lot of workers from the nearby regions,

There was a large influx of Italians at the end of the 19th century, and then Portuguese and Spanish early in the 20th. Some of their descendants are typical Parisians, and they have been for 2 or 3 generations. But it took some time for them to graduate from foreigners to archetypes.

Friendly reminder that "Paris syndrome" is a thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome

> Maybe I've read to much French literature which set some expectations.

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