14 ms·

Old Paris Is No More

167 points by collapse 7y ago

cm2187 7y ago
Contrary to what the article says, Haussmann isn’t really a controversial figure in France and much of what makes Paris one of the most beautiful and visited cities in the world is thanks to the architecture he imposed, something that few, if any, modern urbanist can claim.
- BenderV 7y ago
  Today (because we forgot the cost), but not back in the day.
  - masklinn 7y ago
    > Today (because we forgot the cost) Or because we think it was worth it, in the end.
    - thecleaner 7y ago
      > Or because we think it was worth it, in the end. This. I mean if the people put up with the problems caused by the new construction, I believe they deserve credit for being pro-civilization. Not the "oh no, look their old world is gone" nonsense. Surely nobody rebuilt the city for garnering sympathy.
      - masklinn 7y ago
        > I mean if the people put up with the problems caused by the new construction TBF the people who were affected by them were just shoved out of the city center.
      - phillc73 7y ago
        I understood a completely different point from the article. The old mediaeval city was destroyed to essentially disenfranchise the working poor. No longer would they have strong defensive positions in small winding streets during revolution, they were also displaced from the city centre to make space for the wealthy and elite. Money and power weren't working towards a pro-civilisation agenda. They were working in their own self interest against the struggling masses.
        shoo 7y ago
        This kind of thing is described in Scott's book "seeing like a state". The state takes steps to modify the environment and society to make it more legible to management by a central bureaucracy, to further the aims of the state. For example, the state knocks down existing dwellings to build more roads so it is easier for the army to rapidly mobilize and crush unrest. The state begins to require all subjects to have a last name, where the people themselves have no real need of one, in order to better identify individuals for more effective taxation. It's worth a read, both for the appreciation of how it plays out in the world, and also as a source of interesting analogies for how other regimes, such as large hierarchical organisations, will embark on grand projects to attempt to make the surrounding environment more legible and tractable to centralised control and governance.
        Nasrudith 7y ago
        To be frank those defensible streets themselves were an older agenda back when one of the functions of city was defensibility - in the service of the same elite. They were always for the purpose. While there are rightful aspects to complain about the displacement sanitation and boulevards were good things even if their motives were ulterior.
      - coldtea 7y ago
        >Not the "oh no, look their old world is gone" nonsense. Taking for granted that that is nonsense, is the same error, a blind belief that any novelty is better than what it replaces. There were political motivations behind the change (and impact on the population at the time) not just some noble march towards better. To give a simple example, bulldozing down Venice to build some Mall-ridden monstrosity that looks like 20000 other places in the world, would not be better in any way, and people would be right to lament about that "old world" being gone. (Of course many moderns, especially Americans having no history, live in a perpetual now, and can't put things into perspective. They judge all things like mobile phone models, the newer the better).
    - raverbashing 7y ago
      Pretty much. Every change comes with a lot of whining, even if they would be a massive improvement (example: replacing the imperial system)
- hrktb 7y ago
  Would it be self-fulfilling if we disagreed on him being controversial ? Perhaps an aspect of it Parisian's Paris and tourist's Paris is fundamentally different, and the current leadership is more or less trying to undo a lot of what Haussman stood for to make Paris friendlier to live for Parisians. Whole blocks are closed cars to bring back shops and 'village' like environment. Modern residential neighbourhoods are rebuilt with lacy paths, cul de sacs, pedestrian/car cohabitation, closer concentration of housing. A lot of what Haussmann did was beneficial from a health perspective, but we know we can solve these issues in other ways, an I don't think most planners would do it the way Haussmann did if they had the choice to go back in time.
  - harperlee 7y ago
    When thinking in historical times you should put yourself in that moment of time. Of course if someone travels back in time with current knowledge will do things in different ways than Haussmann - they know whats going to happen, they know about things Haussmann didn’t.
    - hrktb 7y ago
      It's not just historic fantasy though, there was opposition to his way, but they didn't have the political clout nor could oppose centering the cities around cars. It's not just Haussmann either, most countries had that tension around letting cars dominate or not (there was an excellent 99pi episode about these tensions [0]), it just happened that one side massively won benefiting from economics, politics and power distribution. [0] https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-modern-moloch/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-modern...
      - irishsultan 7y ago
        I think you need better evidence for this tension than an episode that's talking about a different country half a century later (the time difference is especially important, because the changes to Paris took place at a time when cars were still being invented, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benz_Patent-Motorwagen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benz_Patent-Motorwagen "widely regarded as the world's first production automobile" was patented in 1885, 15 years after the initial development according to Haussmans plans stopped)
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Haussmann isn’t really a controversial figure in France Today, when the change has settled down, and nobody lives that remembers before him, no. At his time, and for a while, he was.
thecleaner 7y ago
I don't understand this romantic idea of Olden Times. I doubt any Parisian misses dying of simple dieases or just not having access to emergency care. I don't understand why people would ever romanticize with the old days. Sure, we ought to remember our history but we don't need to romanticize it. It was awful.
- keiferski 7y ago
  Progress is not all-encompassing; it is entirely possible to claim that 21st-century medicine is preferable to 19th-century medicine while simultaneously preferring 19th-century architecture, art, or other aspects of society. Paris today may be cleaner and safer than it's ever been, but it's also far less exciting or intellectually interesting than it was in its heyday. The prevalence of this view in the tech community is especially ironic considering that San Francisco was a far nicer city to live in 50-60 years ago (in general, of course - not for every segment of the population.)
  - AdrianB1 7y ago
    Knowing Paris as it is now and comparing to the photographs in the article I am happy that cleanup was performed. The old architecture was maybe interesting to some extent, but very close to a huge slum.
    - masklinn 7y ago
      Note that you can also clean things up without tearing it down entirely. Many cities have retained historical centers in that style without keeping the "slum" bits, and it does makes for more interesting walking around than huge boulevards and avenues. There's an architectural movement to come back to these more human-sized city designs too: smaller streets, more mixed use, less emphasis on large (and motorised) transportations, incorporation of structural shading and breeze-shaping, ...
      - ldng 7y ago
        See Strasbourg for an example of that. Center was left alone and 19th century building were built in a brand new neighboorhood.
gonmad 7y ago
The new sewerage system was a revolution, and Paris really needed a transformation up to digging the ground.
baud147258 7y ago
> suburbs, with the border between the two divided by a highway called “the periphery” (its construction completed in 1973), a ring road that encircles all of Paris proper A more exact translation would be "peripheral". And unlike what the author asserts, Haussmann’s transformation did not remove all popular lodging from Paris. And I'd say that removing the slums, adding proper sanitations, opening wide boulevards were a good thing.
acjohnson55 7y ago
I can't recommend highly enough the Revolutions Podcast, which has seasons devoted to the French Revolution, the 1848 Revolutions, and the Paris Commune. Paris was ground zero of the extremely tumultuous sociopolitical transition from feudalism to republican nation-state, which eventually became the norm for most of the globe.
zwaps 7y ago
One difference between Haussmann and others is that his buildings turned out to create one of the most beautiful cities in the world. In contrast, 20's century urbanism projects - even on a smaller scale - are almost always considered a failure ex post. In Paris itself, walk yourself through the Les Olympiades area, from Tolbiac down to Porte d'Italie, if you like an impressive testament to that fact. Some other favorites in Europe to google are "Berlin Marzahn" and "Hannover Ihme Zentrum". There are of course many more. I wonder if there are contemporary developments that will, some day, be considered truly beautiful.
- tom_mellior 7y ago
  It's been a while since I've been there and I don't know what you're referring to, so could you expand on your criticism of Les Olympiades? Not everyone here can go out for that walk right now and notice all the things you in particular don't like.
  - zwaps 7y ago
    Ah sure. So it's basically one of these concepts of what a modern city should be. You have cars and traffic completely underground, on top a relative open area with shops on different levels and high rise buildings for living (as to have public space). It seems like a great idea conceptually, because it affords much space to pedestrians, green spots and still allows accessibility. But it failed to be attractive to the intended audience - well off young workers and families. It is not a slum and never was, but it did not turn out have the demand. If you look at it now, it seems downright ugly. There's space, yes, but it's so much concrete, so many bleak looking high rises. It certainly isn't "beautiful" in the sense of the rest of Paris (except if you appreciate that sort of architecture, which I actually do).
    - swebs 7y ago
      That sounds almost exactly like the Eastern Pasila neighborhood of Helsinki. I'll just quote Wikipedia: >In the ranking of the best places where to live in Helsinki ... Eastern Pasila is ranked 92nd, out of 94 different parts of Helsinki.
tom_mellior 7y ago
> There was no property-owning democracy. Everyone was dependent on the will of the landowners and the owners of the houses in Paris. In that particular context, he really took on the most powerful social group at that time, trying to offer a solution to urban problems As someone who has had to rent in the horrible Paris market, I don't see how everyone being "dependent on the will of the landowners and the owners of the houses in Paris" has changed.
- mijamo 7y ago
  Where else have you rented? Paris is a bit expensive but apart from that the rental market works fine. I wouldn't say the same of Stockholm, Dublin or San Francisco
  - tom_mellior 7y ago
    > Where else have you rented? I didn't come here for a who-is-more-cosmopolitan dick-waving contest. But if you did, do feel free to entertain us with your personal horror stories from Stockholm, Dublin, and San Francisco. > Paris is a bit expensive but apart from that the rental market works fine. Landlords require you to bring a CV and a work contract and proof of income, which must be 3x the rent, otherwise you must bring documentation from a guarantor who does have that much and who is resident in France. You must also bring receipts proving that you paid your rent on time the last three months. (Sure, this is not a big deal per se, except that other countries don't even have this kind of receipt, or you might be coming from some arrangement where you did not (officially) pay rent.) Don't you also have to bring a valid renter's insurance policy? There was almost certainly other stuff I forgot; I remember seeing people at viewings with bunches of paper centimeters thick. Some of this is difficult (read: impossible) for someone just moving to France. If you don't have these documents, they could be nice and welcoming and try to accommodate you. Or they could just pick one of the 20 people who showed up to the same viewing and who did bring 100 pages of crap. In my limited experience, they do the latter. Overall, "fine" isn't the word I'd choose to describe this. > I wouldn't say the same of Stockholm, Dublin or San Francisco "X isn't quite as shitty as San Francisco" is faint praise indeed.
Renaud 7y ago
Those interested in old photographs documenting Paris should have a look at the work of Eugène Atget. He basically documented the streets, shops, crafts, people of Paris at the end of the XIXth century, before most of the old and derelict housing were demolished and replaced with the "modern" ones we see today. https://www.moma.org/artists/229#works https://www.moma.org/artists/229#works
glup 7y ago
On a similar topic, I greatly enjoyed "The Other Paris" by Luc Sante, a sort of long-term social history of the city with focus on the marginalized.
rb808 7y ago
Its still amazing to me how bad modern construction is. Paris was build with no electricity, no cars/trucks, no computers, no massive cranes and they can build a city that is more beautiful than any modern city. Even in the US pre-war apartment buildings are more solid, higher ceilings and more ornate than anything built in the last 50 years.
- kmlx 7y ago
  “a city that is more beautiful than any modern city” to each his own. i would rather live in a modern flat in La Defanse than in the centre of Paris. i feel those long and wide boulevards are not really meant for humans, and those old buildings have horrible flats. give me some narrow and winding London roads any time of day. preferably full of modern skyscrapers.
pmontra 7y ago
The link gives me 403 Forbidden. Link to the Wayback Machine https://web.archive.org/web/20190808100014/https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/old-paris-no-more/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190808100014/https://www.lapha...
justinator 7y ago
If you liked this piece, a good read is, "Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris" by Graham Robb.
boyadjian 7y ago
Of course, old Paris is no more ! I live near Paris, and I go in this town only when I am forced to. Residential intensification, insecurity (pickpockets in the metro), migrants, Paris nowadays has nothing to do with the romantic vision of American people. Real Parisians now live in the suburb, there is some very nice towns in the suburbs. (Others not so nice, it depends where you go).
- simonsarris 7y ago
  Which suburbs are nice?
  - trucho 7y ago
    what, so you can migrate there?! non non non mon dieu!
  - boyadjian 7y ago
    The list is too long. But for example, Rueil-Malmaison is a good suburb.
  - ticktacktock2 7y ago
    16 out of the top 20 French communes by household incomes are in the Parisian suburbs [0]. Generally, the western suburbs are richer, as well as the ones directly next to Paris. [0] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenu_fiscal_par_m%C3%A9nage_en_France#Paris_et_la_r%C3%A9gion_parisienne https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenu_fiscal_par_m%C3%A9nage_...
- samclearman 7y ago
  The article is about the 18th and 19th centuries.
  - jhoechtl 7y ago
    So little has changed in the process then to now to be easily confused, or what is your point?
unreal37 7y ago
I was really hoping this article would have been about how Paris of 2019 has lost some of it's charm compared to Paris of 2008 and before. Need to find an article about that.
ojosilva 7y ago
I love Paris, but just like Barcelona, their wide boulevards can be off-putting sometimes and their more cozy, narrow-street, neighborhoods tend to be tourist traps. Montmartre and Borne come to mind, both gorgeous but crowded with visitors and defaced by postcard stands. Barcelona in particular went through its own Haussmann-style revamps throughout the years, in the XIX century but also for the 1992 Olympics, giving its current and impressive urban layout. [1] But the thing is I fell in love with Madrid. Its narrow streets downtown, some of them eerie mazes, make living here quite the authentic and unique urban experience. [1] https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/8/18266760/barcelona-spain-urban-planning-history https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/8/18266760...
hinkley 7y ago
When I visited Paris, I could see the Arc de Triomphe from the Louvre and thought I would just walk there. After all the walking I'd already done I gave up and took the Metro the last two stops. My sense of distance was thrown off by how monstrously huge the Arc is. I don't know where they take the pictures of it from, but standing across the street from it I had to just about stand on my head to get the whole thing into frame on my camera. And as big as the Arc is, the Napoleonic Louvre is bigger (And, I might add, covered with his initial, like a child marking his belongings). And they additions were made in such a way that from the outside it looks five times bigger than it is. There's a certain element of shock and awe going on here. The only thing I've seen on a similar scale is the Washington Monument, and you understand why all the pictures of the Lincoln statue make it look like it's immediately behind the pillars. It is not. It's on the far end of a large room, also too big to get into frame. It's just so big that it destroys perspective. To people confronted with this for the first time, I can see how they might wonder why they didn't stop at a smaller monument. In an era without high rises, there's a bit of grotesquery about the scale of these things. They were paid for on the backs of the lower class. I'm sure it was a very concrete image of the slide back into monarchy. The only thing I've seen on a similar scale in the US, aside from nature, is the Lincoln Memorial. Seeing the monument, you understand why all the pictures of the Lincoln statue make it look like it's immediately behind the pillars. It is not. It's on the far end of a large room, also too big to get into frame. It's just so big that it destroys perspective. Now, in an era of high rise apartments, the ridiculous proportions prevent these buildings from simply being swallowed in a sea of truly mundane buildings of comparable size. And that is probably why these places have such a tourist draw even today.
BiscoBro 7y ago
That feeling you get when you allow your country to be taken over by migrants.

167 points by collapse 7y ago

Contrary to what the article says, Haussmann isn’t really a controversial figure in France and much of what makes Paris one of the most beautiful and visited cities in the world is thanks to the architecture he imposed, something that few, if any, modern urbanist can claim.

BenderV 7y ago
Today (because we forgot the cost), but not back in the day.
- masklinn 7y ago
  > Today (because we forgot the cost) Or because we think it was worth it, in the end.
  - thecleaner 7y ago
    > Or because we think it was worth it, in the end. This. I mean if the people put up with the problems caused by the new construction, I believe they deserve credit for being pro-civilization. Not the "oh no, look their old world is gone" nonsense. Surely nobody rebuilt the city for garnering sympathy.
    - masklinn 7y ago
      > I mean if the people put up with the problems caused by the new construction TBF the people who were affected by them were just shoved out of the city center.
    - phillc73 7y ago
      I understood a completely different point from the article. The old mediaeval city was destroyed to essentially disenfranchise the working poor. No longer would they have strong defensive positions in small winding streets during revolution, they were also displaced from the city centre to make space for the wealthy and elite. Money and power weren't working towards a pro-civilisation agenda. They were working in their own self interest against the struggling masses.
      - shoo 7y ago
        This kind of thing is described in Scott's book "seeing like a state". The state takes steps to modify the environment and society to make it more legible to management by a central bureaucracy, to further the aims of the state. For example, the state knocks down existing dwellings to build more roads so it is easier for the army to rapidly mobilize and crush unrest. The state begins to require all subjects to have a last name, where the people themselves have no real need of one, in order to better identify individuals for more effective taxation. It's worth a read, both for the appreciation of how it plays out in the world, and also as a source of interesting analogies for how other regimes, such as large hierarchical organisations, will embark on grand projects to attempt to make the surrounding environment more legible and tractable to centralised control and governance.
      - Nasrudith 7y ago
        To be frank those defensible streets themselves were an older agenda back when one of the functions of city was defensibility - in the service of the same elite. They were always for the purpose. While there are rightful aspects to complain about the displacement sanitation and boulevards were good things even if their motives were ulterior.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      >Not the "oh no, look their old world is gone" nonsense. Taking for granted that that is nonsense, is the same error, a blind belief that any novelty is better than what it replaces. There were political motivations behind the change (and impact on the population at the time) not just some noble march towards better. To give a simple example, bulldozing down Venice to build some Mall-ridden monstrosity that looks like 20000 other places in the world, would not be better in any way, and people would be right to lament about that "old world" being gone. (Of course many moderns, especially Americans having no history, live in a perpetual now, and can't put things into perspective. They judge all things like mobile phone models, the newer the better).
  - raverbashing 7y ago
    Pretty much. Every change comes with a lot of whining, even if they would be a massive improvement (example: replacing the imperial system)
hrktb 7y ago
Would it be self-fulfilling if we disagreed on him being controversial ? Perhaps an aspect of it Parisian's Paris and tourist's Paris is fundamentally different, and the current leadership is more or less trying to undo a lot of what Haussman stood for to make Paris friendlier to live for Parisians. Whole blocks are closed cars to bring back shops and 'village' like environment. Modern residential neighbourhoods are rebuilt with lacy paths, cul de sacs, pedestrian/car cohabitation, closer concentration of housing. A lot of what Haussmann did was beneficial from a health perspective, but we know we can solve these issues in other ways, an I don't think most planners would do it the way Haussmann did if they had the choice to go back in time.
- harperlee 7y ago
  When thinking in historical times you should put yourself in that moment of time. Of course if someone travels back in time with current knowledge will do things in different ways than Haussmann - they know whats going to happen, they know about things Haussmann didn’t.
  - hrktb 7y ago
    It's not just historic fantasy though, there was opposition to his way, but they didn't have the political clout nor could oppose centering the cities around cars. It's not just Haussmann either, most countries had that tension around letting cars dominate or not (there was an excellent 99pi episode about these tensions [0]), it just happened that one side massively won benefiting from economics, politics and power distribution. [0] https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-modern-moloch/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-modern...
    - irishsultan 7y ago
      I think you need better evidence for this tension than an episode that's talking about a different country half a century later (the time difference is especially important, because the changes to Paris took place at a time when cars were still being invented, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benz_Patent-Motorwagen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benz_Patent-Motorwagen "widely regarded as the world's first production automobile" was patented in 1885, 15 years after the initial development according to Haussmans plans stopped)
coldtea 7y ago
>Haussmann isn’t really a controversial figure in France Today, when the change has settled down, and nobody lives that remembers before him, no. At his time, and for a while, he was.

thecleaner 7y ago

I don't understand this romantic idea of Olden Times. I doubt any Parisian misses dying of simple dieases or just not having access to emergency care. I don't understand why people would ever romanticize with the old days. Sure, we ought to remember our history but we don't need to romanticize it. It was awful.

keiferski 7y ago
Progress is not all-encompassing; it is entirely possible to claim that 21st-century medicine is preferable to 19th-century medicine while simultaneously preferring 19th-century architecture, art, or other aspects of society. Paris today may be cleaner and safer than it's ever been, but it's also far less exciting or intellectually interesting than it was in its heyday. The prevalence of this view in the tech community is especially ironic considering that San Francisco was a far nicer city to live in 50-60 years ago (in general, of course - not for every segment of the population.)
- AdrianB1 7y ago
  Knowing Paris as it is now and comparing to the photographs in the article I am happy that cleanup was performed. The old architecture was maybe interesting to some extent, but very close to a huge slum.
  - masklinn 7y ago
    Note that you can also clean things up without tearing it down entirely. Many cities have retained historical centers in that style without keeping the "slum" bits, and it does makes for more interesting walking around than huge boulevards and avenues. There's an architectural movement to come back to these more human-sized city designs too: smaller streets, more mixed use, less emphasis on large (and motorised) transportations, incorporation of structural shading and breeze-shaping, ...
    - ldng 7y ago
      See Strasbourg for an example of that. Center was left alone and 19th century building were built in a brand new neighboorhood.

gonmad 7y ago

The new sewerage system was a revolution, and Paris really needed a transformation up to digging the ground.

baud147258 7y ago

> suburbs, with the border between the two divided by a highway called “the periphery” (its construction completed in 1973), a ring road that encircles all of Paris proper A more exact translation would be "peripheral". And unlike what the author asserts, Haussmann’s transformation did not remove all popular lodging from Paris. And I'd say that removing the slums, adding proper sanitations, opening wide boulevards were a good thing.

acjohnson55 7y ago

I can't recommend highly enough the Revolutions Podcast, which has seasons devoted to the French Revolution, the 1848 Revolutions, and the Paris Commune. Paris was ground zero of the extremely tumultuous sociopolitical transition from feudalism to republican nation-state, which eventually became the norm for most of the globe.

zwaps 7y ago

One difference between Haussmann and others is that his buildings turned out to create one of the most beautiful cities in the world. In contrast, 20's century urbanism projects - even on a smaller scale - are almost always considered a failure ex post. In Paris itself, walk yourself through the Les Olympiades area, from Tolbiac down to Porte d'Italie, if you like an impressive testament to that fact. Some other favorites in Europe to google are "Berlin Marzahn" and "Hannover Ihme Zentrum". There are of course many more. I wonder if there are contemporary developments that will, some day, be considered truly beautiful.

tom_mellior 7y ago
It's been a while since I've been there and I don't know what you're referring to, so could you expand on your criticism of Les Olympiades? Not everyone here can go out for that walk right now and notice all the things you in particular don't like.
- zwaps 7y ago
  Ah sure. So it's basically one of these concepts of what a modern city should be. You have cars and traffic completely underground, on top a relative open area with shops on different levels and high rise buildings for living (as to have public space). It seems like a great idea conceptually, because it affords much space to pedestrians, green spots and still allows accessibility. But it failed to be attractive to the intended audience - well off young workers and families. It is not a slum and never was, but it did not turn out have the demand. If you look at it now, it seems downright ugly. There's space, yes, but it's so much concrete, so many bleak looking high rises. It certainly isn't "beautiful" in the sense of the rest of Paris (except if you appreciate that sort of architecture, which I actually do).
  - swebs 7y ago
    That sounds almost exactly like the Eastern Pasila neighborhood of Helsinki. I'll just quote Wikipedia: >In the ranking of the best places where to live in Helsinki ... Eastern Pasila is ranked 92nd, out of 94 different parts of Helsinki.

tom_mellior 7y ago

> There was no property-owning democracy. Everyone was dependent on the will of the landowners and the owners of the houses in Paris. In that particular context, he really took on the most powerful social group at that time, trying to offer a solution to urban problems As someone who has had to rent in the horrible Paris market, I don't see how everyone being "dependent on the will of the landowners and the owners of the houses in Paris" has changed.

mijamo 7y ago
Where else have you rented? Paris is a bit expensive but apart from that the rental market works fine. I wouldn't say the same of Stockholm, Dublin or San Francisco
- tom_mellior 7y ago
  > Where else have you rented? I didn't come here for a who-is-more-cosmopolitan dick-waving contest. But if you did, do feel free to entertain us with your personal horror stories from Stockholm, Dublin, and San Francisco. > Paris is a bit expensive but apart from that the rental market works fine. Landlords require you to bring a CV and a work contract and proof of income, which must be 3x the rent, otherwise you must bring documentation from a guarantor who does have that much and who is resident in France. You must also bring receipts proving that you paid your rent on time the last three months. (Sure, this is not a big deal per se, except that other countries don't even have this kind of receipt, or you might be coming from some arrangement where you did not (officially) pay rent.) Don't you also have to bring a valid renter's insurance policy? There was almost certainly other stuff I forgot; I remember seeing people at viewings with bunches of paper centimeters thick. Some of this is difficult (read: impossible) for someone just moving to France. If you don't have these documents, they could be nice and welcoming and try to accommodate you. Or they could just pick one of the 20 people who showed up to the same viewing and who did bring 100 pages of crap. In my limited experience, they do the latter. Overall, "fine" isn't the word I'd choose to describe this. > I wouldn't say the same of Stockholm, Dublin or San Francisco "X isn't quite as shitty as San Francisco" is faint praise indeed.

Renaud 7y ago

Those interested in old photographs documenting Paris should have a look at the work of Eugène Atget. He basically documented the streets, shops, crafts, people of Paris at the end of the XIXth century, before most of the old and derelict housing were demolished and replaced with the "modern" ones we see today. https://www.moma.org/artists/229#works https://www.moma.org/artists/229#works

glup 7y ago

On a similar topic, I greatly enjoyed "The Other Paris" by Luc Sante, a sort of long-term social history of the city with focus on the marginalized.

rb808 7y ago

Its still amazing to me how bad modern construction is. Paris was build with no electricity, no cars/trucks, no computers, no massive cranes and they can build a city that is more beautiful than any modern city. Even in the US pre-war apartment buildings are more solid, higher ceilings and more ornate than anything built in the last 50 years.

kmlx 7y ago
“a city that is more beautiful than any modern city” to each his own. i would rather live in a modern flat in La Defanse than in the centre of Paris. i feel those long and wide boulevards are not really meant for humans, and those old buildings have horrible flats. give me some narrow and winding London roads any time of day. preferably full of modern skyscrapers.

pmontra 7y ago

The link gives me 403 Forbidden. Link to the Wayback Machine https://web.archive.org/web/20190808100014/https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/old-paris-no-more/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190808100014/https://www.lapha...

justinator 7y ago

If you liked this piece, a good read is, "Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris" by Graham Robb.

boyadjian 7y ago

Of course, old Paris is no more ! I live near Paris, and I go in this town only when I am forced to. Residential intensification, insecurity (pickpockets in the metro), migrants, Paris nowadays has nothing to do with the romantic vision of American people. Real Parisians now live in the suburb, there is some very nice towns in the suburbs. (Others not so nice, it depends where you go).

simonsarris 7y ago
Which suburbs are nice?
- trucho 7y ago
  what, so you can migrate there?! non non non mon dieu!
- boyadjian 7y ago
  The list is too long. But for example, Rueil-Malmaison is a good suburb.
- ticktacktock2 7y ago
  16 out of the top 20 French communes by household incomes are in the Parisian suburbs [0]. Generally, the western suburbs are richer, as well as the ones directly next to Paris. [0] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenu_fiscal_par_m%C3%A9nage_en_France#Paris_et_la_r%C3%A9gion_parisienne https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenu_fiscal_par_m%C3%A9nage_...
samclearman 7y ago
The article is about the 18th and 19th centuries.
- jhoechtl 7y ago
  So little has changed in the process then to now to be easily confused, or what is your point?

unreal37 7y ago

I was really hoping this article would have been about how Paris of 2019 has lost some of it's charm compared to Paris of 2008 and before. Need to find an article about that.

ojosilva 7y ago

I love Paris, but just like Barcelona, their wide boulevards can be off-putting sometimes and their more cozy, narrow-street, neighborhoods tend to be tourist traps. Montmartre and Borne come to mind, both gorgeous but crowded with visitors and defaced by postcard stands. Barcelona in particular went through its own Haussmann-style revamps throughout the years, in the XIX century but also for the 1992 Olympics, giving its current and impressive urban layout. [1] But the thing is I fell in love with Madrid. Its narrow streets downtown, some of them eerie mazes, make living here quite the authentic and unique urban experience. [1] https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/8/18266760/barcelona-spain-urban-planning-history https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/8/18266760...

hinkley 7y ago

When I visited Paris, I could see the Arc de Triomphe from the Louvre and thought I would just walk there. After all the walking I'd already done I gave up and took the Metro the last two stops. My sense of distance was thrown off by how monstrously huge the Arc is. I don't know where they take the pictures of it from, but standing across the street from it I had to just about stand on my head to get the whole thing into frame on my camera. And as big as the Arc is, the Napoleonic Louvre is bigger (And, I might add, covered with his initial, like a child marking his belongings). And they additions were made in such a way that from the outside it looks five times bigger than it is. There's a certain element of shock and awe going on here. The only thing I've seen on a similar scale is the Washington Monument, and you understand why all the pictures of the Lincoln statue make it look like it's immediately behind the pillars. It is not. It's on the far end of a large room, also too big to get into frame. It's just so big that it destroys perspective. To people confronted with this for the first time, I can see how they might wonder why they didn't stop at a smaller monument. In an era without high rises, there's a bit of grotesquery about the scale of these things. They were paid for on the backs of the lower class. I'm sure it was a very concrete image of the slide back into monarchy. The only thing I've seen on a similar scale in the US, aside from nature, is the Lincoln Memorial. Seeing the monument, you understand why all the pictures of the Lincoln statue make it look like it's immediately behind the pillars. It is not. It's on the far end of a large room, also too big to get into frame. It's just so big that it destroys perspective. Now, in an era of high rise apartments, the ridiculous proportions prevent these buildings from simply being swallowed in a sea of truly mundane buildings of comparable size. And that is probably why these places have such a tourist draw even today.

BiscoBro 7y ago

That feeling you get when you allow your country to be taken over by migrants.