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Comment by kiba | Hacker News Reader

Why is Paris really expensive? Constricted supply and high demand. Why is the supply constricted? Because Paris refuse to build anything in the center. That's because the center is a historical preservation district writ large. If you build anything modern, it would "ruin" the image of Paris.

So, Paris would need to change its policy and start demolishing old buildings, and build higher density buildings. Certainly, the rich will keep buying the most desirable parts of the cities, but the inability for the poor and the middle class to live in the center will be less acute.

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Actually two of the 20 districts of inner Paris (the "arrondissements"), which you describe as a "historical preservation district writ large", are more densely populated than any districts in any Western city - except for Manhattan Community Board 8 and 2 districts in Spain [1].

The 11th and the 20th arrondissement both house more than 40,000 people per km2 (104,000 per sq mile), which is denser than any district of Tokyo by the way. If that's not dense, I don't know what is.

Incidentally, the 11th is not cheap in any way: buying a flat there will set you back 9000 to 9500€ per sqm ($1200 to $1270 per sqft) [2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_city_districts_by_popul...

[2] http://parispropertygroup.com/blog/2012/real-estate-prices-p...

Indeed. I once dated a girl who lived in Montmartre. Were you to sit on the toilet in her apartment, you'd be able to shower, cook dinner, reach over to answer the door, or make the bed, all without having to stand up.

That's actually plenty dense for me.

According to Wikipedia[1], Paris is the 34th densest city in the world. 5 French cities are denser, and all of them are Paris' suburbs. Only 3 non-French European cities are denser than Paris.

Your comment lacks foundations.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_popula...

According to Wikipedia[1], Paris is the 34th densest city in the world. 5 French cities are denser, and all of them are Paris' suburbs. Only 3 non-French European cities are denser than Paris.

Then let make Paris even more dense than Paris' suburbs.

Its relative. Paris would be even denser given the extreme demand in the city, and with modern technology could be say the 10th densest city and still very livable.

I'm not sure what the point would be though. You could build all the residential skyscrapers you want in La Defense and still be within 15 minutes of most of Paris proper.

This is a non-sequitor. How dense it is relative to other cities is irrelevant with regard to whether it's dense enough to meet the demand for housing in the city.

I live in Paris and I don't think that's the solution.

All forms of transportation in Paris are saturated. Adding more housing capability would make moving inside (and around) Paris even more terrible than it is today. The boulevard périphérique circling the city is one of the busiest highways in Europe [1]. The RER A train line is also one of the busiest in the world[2]. Trust me, we don't want more people in Paris.

What we need to do is decentralize, spread the population, services and work farther around the city.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulevard_P%C3%A9riph%C3%A9riqu...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RER_A

That's such an uninformed answer it's funny.

Yes, let's rip all the center of Paris and build 100 floor buildings because there's something magical about that specific longitude-latitude.

Paris is attractive because of several factors, one of them their architecture.

If you're just there for a fancy apartment you can look elsewhere. You rarely need to be there.

(but yes, swapping old buildings is something there may be a case for)

The preservation district does exist, but it's certainly not a major issue. There are plenty of places that are not subject to preservation, often within a five-minute walk of preserved ones.

The real problem in Paris is the transport infrastructure. As it stands, the morning and evening commutes already saturate several subway and bus lines, non-taxi cars only have access to a subset of all available lanes (and most of the time these are one-way), and while the bicycle rental system works quite well, it does not alleviate peak usage in cold or rainy weather.

So, while it's entirely feasible (both technologically and from a historical preservation aspect) to build a 1000-person housing unit with the same footprint as the old 100-person ones, it would only take a few of these to completely saturate the local subway station and nearby streets every morning and every evening.

What you say is wrong because much of the traffic on the subway and busses are commuters who travel from the suburbs.

In Manhattan where I live, commuters nearly double the daytime population from 1.6 million to 3.1 million.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/commuters-nearl...

increasing the building density would simply enable those people who are less fortunate than many of us on HN to also live in Paris.

Moreover, I can't speak for Paris but for certain I know in NYC/Manhattan the subways are not running nearly at their capacity. IIRC, the capacity could double if they automated the systems (which they are taking a very long time to do). The same may be true of Paris.

OMG a Le Corbusier nephew. Right, let's raze all historical cities, and build stell and glass cubes. And while we're at it, let's burn a few books and paintings too...

Or a Modern Hausmanian :)

> Right, let's raze all historical cities, and build stell and glass cubes.

If redevelopment were generally allowed in cities like Paris and New York some of ugliest, least unique buildings would tend to get replaced with something newer and possibly better. And fifty or a hundred years later some of those new buildings would themselves also be prized by preservationists.

People HATED the Eiffel Tower when it was first proposed. Some even hated it after it was built. (de Maupassant: “this tall skinny pyramid of iron ladders, this giant and disgraceful skeleton.”)

Don't be like those people.

> And while we're at it, let's burn a few books and paintings too...

The traditionalist position here makes us burn all the potential new books and paintings, because we already have enough copies of the old ones to fill the library. Better to keep a hundred copies of an old book than 99 copies of the old book and one copy of a new one, right?

The city planners did allow some unchecked redevelopment in the early 70s and 80s. Most of those buildings are still considered ugly and time hasn't made them any prettier, trust me.

I wouldn't say it's the traditionalist but the the people have, collectively, have decided that they want a specific aesthetic and most of the buildings being proposed aren't it. The Forums Les Halles was erected in the 70s, the architects thought it was pretty, a majority of the population didn't like it. It was built and, 30 years later, demolished.

Most of those buildings are still considered ugly and time hasn't made them any prettier, trust me.

Aesthetics are for the comfortable. I don't think most New Yorkers know (or care) what the exteriors of their buildings look like. I'd rather have ugly buildings and lower rent so I can save. Yes, I'm a dick because I care about my future more than whether bored rich people like the looks of the city. I live here, I work here, I don't fucking "look at" it because I don't have time and I don't really care. For aesthetics, I go to Central Park. I'd be pissed if that went away. But I don't give the square root of a fuck if someone wants to build a hideous 100-story apartment building (bringing down rents, one hopes) in the Village, as long as they do it safely.

If you want aesthetics, go out to the mountains. It's beautiful and no one is going to build a 100-story eyesore any time soon.

The thing is, new constructions tend to make rents higher, because they are usually of higher standards than what they replace. Typically, a newly build building will sell flats at 14k€/m² where as the surroundings sell for 10k, because it is newer, more comfortable and consumes less electricity for heating. And rents go up accordingly.

Also, I think most people do care what their place looks like ; it's a combination of factors, but prettier buildings always sell for more, and inhabitants of prettier buildings tend to take better care of them.

I wouldn't want to live in (or next to) one of the terrible 60-70s condos at the limits of paris, unless rent was _at least_ 30% lower than in a more proper place.

The painful truth about it is that we're both right.

Those luxury condos aren't built by landlords wanting to bring down the rent, obviously. They're built with full intention of taking advantage of clueless yuppie transplants who haven't a clue what things should actually cost, or whose monstrous senses of suburban entitlement leave them thinking they need a 2500 SF (232 m^2) space in the city. In the short term, they actually do drive up rents. The opportunities and bargains come out in the long term.

What then happens is that the developers overbuild, and a few years later a large quantity of housing stock comes on to the market, depressing price. Look at what has happened in Florida, Nevada, and even California. It can happen again, and it's ugly but still far better than the alternative (Manhattan rent levels).

Also, most "luxury" housing is not of a quality that real rich people would accept. "Luxury" means there's a small gym and a doorman, but the quality of this housing/renovation is usually low-- which is fine given that you're just using it as a crash-pad while you work a 60+ hour job that requires living close to work. (Rent if you can; don't buy.) "Luxury apartments" are for people making upper-middle incomes in their professional jobs who need college-like pampering because of their insane work schedules, rather than genuine rich.

That said, you have to be extremely careful in playing this sort of game. Manhattan "luxury condos" are selling at 40-50 times annual rent for a variety of reasons, so you'll actually lose a lot of money if you buy one and try to rent it out. Trying to time the crashes caused by overbuilding is not something most people can afford to do. However, it is abstractly and also obviously good for society when more housing is created.

New York does build hideous 75 story apartment buildings and they don't bring down the rent.

> If redevelopment were generally allowed in cities like Paris and New York some of ugliest, least unique buildings would tend to get replaced with something newer and possibly better. And fifty or a hundred years later some of those new buildings would themselves also be prized by preservationists.

This is completely unfounded. There is no guarantee that new construction would be more aesthetically pleasing and we've seen that new development has not brought down prices in New York City and that gentrification continues to get worse.

THere's no guarantee, no. But it's a pretty safe bet. Yes, buildings built in the 1880s have a certain style to them, but so do buildings built in the 1970s, 1990s, and today. By the end of the century people will undoubtedly have some nostalgia for the old-fashioned building style of 2013. Not all buildings built today will stand the test of time, but some will. More will if there are more to choose from.

Think about the original Twin Towers. By objective measure they were boring and hideous, but people liked them anyway - it grew on the populace. Like the Eiffel Tower did on Parisiens.

As for gentrification, the newest buildings will tend to have high prices, but if enough of them are allowed to come on the market eventually there will be a glut and prices will collapse. Maybe the price collapse will be more in the older buildings as upscale tenants move to the new ones.

(Getting rid of rent control would help a lot too, of course. Right now new buildings specialize in high-end in part because anyone who chose to specialize in low-end would quickly lose the flexibility to set their own rent and choose their own tenants.)

Paris is already the densest city in Europe, with the densest suburbs.

Yeah start with that stupid Eiffel Tower its a bloody eyesore!

Unfortunately, the desire to keep historical buildings conflict with the need to add density. Clearly, people should make some tradeoff, but it should not be "never demolish any old buildings".

Paris doesn't really need to add density, it's already one of the densest cities in Europe. Clearly some other phenomenon is at work here.

Very tall residential buildings have surprisingly low densities for a wide variety of reasons: extra building infrastructure, high capital costs result in expensive apartments which price them out of most people's means so they end up being sold to the rich who can afford to pay twice as much anyways for more floor space, etc.

Density:

Paris: 21,000/km^2

Seoul: 17,000/km^2

Hong Kong: 6,480/km^2

Cairo: 18,071/km^2

If you propose a building in London that would obstruct the view of St Pauls Cathedral for someone many miles away, that can be grounds to have your application denied:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_view

That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

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