7 ms·

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

by 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.
  - dmix 7y ago
    Toronto built a complex for urban workers which was designed to be highly walkable “Towers in a Park” approach meant for 1950s young “swinging single” workers, the quintessential urban planning done by cities of the era, but before long it turned into an urban ghetto where drug dealers and petty crime thrived because there was poor access for police vehicles and other types of law enforcement with the towering buildings and narrow walkways shielding any bad behaviour. Which is sad because it’s next to one of the nicest neighbourhoods in the city (Cabbagetown). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._James_Town?wprov=sfti1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._James_Town?wprov=sfti1
    - tom_mellior 7y ago
      > drug dealers and petty crime thrived because there was poor access for police vehicles and other types of law enforcement Interesting take, not supported by the Wikipedia article. Don't Canadian police have access to bikes, motorcycles, or (gasp) horses that might access areas where cars can't go? What the Wikipedia article does say is this: "The apartments lacked appeal though, poorly constructed, and with a lack of amenities to support the density spike; many prospective tenants instead moved to suburban houses in the developing areas of Scarborough, Etobicoke and North York. The area quickly became much poorer. Four buildings were later built by the province to provide public housing." Shoddy housing attracts those who can't afford better, and poverty breeds petty crime, that much is true. Blaming it on missing car access is original. Personally I would be more worried about access difficulties for firefighters.
      - dmix 7y ago
        I lived next to it for a number of years and often visited friends who lived there. I’m very familiar with it and the problems it has. The idea of these concrete enclosed blocks of land being havens for crime and gangs is hardly controversial. This isn’t the open walkable streets of some nice European city or even downtown Toronto. It’s isolated and poorly maintained. Basically what people have come to expect from city run and planned housing from the past generations.
        7y ago
idiocratic 7y ago
Tel Aviv has many examples of good 20th century urbanism. London Barbican is also a great example. I'm sure there are more but we'll see which ones will be true classics over time.
thomasfl 7y ago
Poundbury in Dorchester (UK) was nothing but plain grass in the 1990'ies. Now Poundbury is a city that has generated more new jobs than new homes. The price for real estate is 30% higher than neighbouring cities. And they have yet to experience a traffic accident. Beautiful walkable cities is good for business.
- masklinn 7y ago
  An other interesting new urbanism project — though I'd have a hard time calling it "beautiful" — is Louvain-La-Neuve in Belgium: a completely planned city resulting from the split of the "Catholic University of Leuven" into the flemish KU Leuven and the walloon UCL the city was set up such that the city center is entirely pedestrian, cars within the city center travel below the giant concrete slab which makes up the city's ground.
  - SiempreViernes 7y ago
    I would say it's main fault in the beauty department is that the centre is for students, and so there naturally wasn't much spent on its decoration. Certainly the heavy wear of being a student town in a country with easy access to alcohol does work to bring down the beauty too. But it manages to give a pretty cosy impression, and with a night life that punches much above the weight of its population otherwise would indicate. Also they gave some good crepes there.
  - jefftk 7y ago
    Satellite: https://goo.gl/maps/36F1xKcz8EPPBwwu9 https://goo.gl/maps/36F1xKcz8EPPBwwu9
- bb101 7y ago
  The last time we drove through Poundbury on a summer weekend, the town (it's not a city) was a ghost town. We tried to find somewhere pleasant to have lunch - i.e. open and not fast food - and utterly failed. It has a central town square with nothing going on. I'm sure the rest of Dorchester is interesting and full of life, but Poundbury wasn't.
- 7y ago
ticktacktock2 7y ago
This is unrelated to the topic, but your comment is a good occasion to learn more about what seems to me to be weird (grammatical) article usages by English speakers. Why did you call it _Les_ Olympiades, and not Olympiades (no article) or _the_ Olympiades (article in English), or _les_ Olympiades (no capitalization of the article) ? For Porte d'Italie, you did not add any article, i.e. Porte d'Italie and not _La_ Porte d'Italie. Why the difference?
- zwaps 7y ago
  Honestly? Because I am not French and I just wrote very thoughtlessly. Sorry, no further reasoning behind it.
  - ticktacktock2 7y ago
    I see. Still, this is quite common. For instance the English Wikipedia article [0] use the "random French capitalized article" ("Though the proportions are more modest, _Les_ Olympiades are designed similarly to the esplanade of _La_ Défense.", emphasis mine) but not the French Wikipedia 0article [1], which uses "normal" (to me) grammatical articles. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Olympiades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Olympiades [1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympiades_(quartier_parisien) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympiades_(quartier_parisien)
    - kristianc 7y ago
      The French article repeatedly refers to it as _Les_ Olympiades.
      - ticktacktock2 7y ago
        The article is capitalized only when it is the beginning of a sentence, or for the elementary school of the same name. The article behaves "normally" (eg switches to aux Olympiades when needed) while the English article stick to Les Olympiades with a capitalized "Les". Interestingly, both articles first words are "Les Olympiades", but: * "Les" is in bold in the English one, as if it was part of the name, while only "Olympiades" is in bold in French * The French article says "the Olympiades are" while the English one say "the Olympiades is".
MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
Here is a Twitter account to follow if you're interested in "good urbanism": https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon
deltron3030 7y ago
< I wonder if there are contemporary developments that will, some day, be considered truly beautiful. By whom? It's a matter of perspective. If you're into architecture and design you'll care more about the practicality and function of the building than it's exterior appearance. A sterile exterior then becomes an indicator that the budget went into what matters most. In my personal opinion, the exterior of buildings (excluding windows) should all be considered public space, they should be open for decoration, like street art, mural paintings etc., so this problem would be solved by the people who live there and take action.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >By whom? By those who live in them and by those that visit them. Those who design them and those who write design critiques don't matter at all, and should not even have a voice (at least not one anybody should care about). The best buildings, people take pride living in, and coming from abroad to admire, were built that people we don't even know their name, many even designed and built by craftsmen (as opposed to university-studied architects). >If you're into architecture and design you'll care more about the practicality and function of the building than it's exterior appearance The exterior appearance is part of the practicality and function of the building. A bleak appearance can crush the soul, destroy any community pride, and even make people physically ill. Humans are not cattle (though even cattle deserve better).
  - deltron3030 7y ago
    Is it because of the structural complexity of individual buildings (e.g. kitsch ornamentation) or could it be just the color and texture (e.g. people hating flat grey walls)? A painted and decorated facade could change the exterior impression completely. The problem is more the large scale uniformity and a lack of variance, like housing complexes that all look the same, not individual buildings. Here's an extreme kitsch example: https://www.dezeen.com/2019/01/18/drone-abandoned-turkish-chateau-burj-al-babas/ https://www.dezeen.com/2019/01/18/drone-abandoned-turkish-ch...
    - 7y ago
thatfrenchguy 7y ago
> I wonder if there are contemporary developments that will, some day, be considered truly beautiful. Do we still build buildings that will withstand the times to just get to our great-grandchildren though ? Or are we just biased because only the good ones remain from the 19 century ? (The neighborhood around Olympiades is from the 60s though).
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

by zwaps 7y ago

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.
- dmix 7y ago
  Toronto built a complex for urban workers which was designed to be highly walkable “Towers in a Park” approach meant for 1950s young “swinging single” workers, the quintessential urban planning done by cities of the era, but before long it turned into an urban ghetto where drug dealers and petty crime thrived because there was poor access for police vehicles and other types of law enforcement with the towering buildings and narrow walkways shielding any bad behaviour. Which is sad because it’s next to one of the nicest neighbourhoods in the city (Cabbagetown). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._James_Town?wprov=sfti1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._James_Town?wprov=sfti1
  - tom_mellior 7y ago
    > drug dealers and petty crime thrived because there was poor access for police vehicles and other types of law enforcement Interesting take, not supported by the Wikipedia article. Don't Canadian police have access to bikes, motorcycles, or (gasp) horses that might access areas where cars can't go? What the Wikipedia article does say is this: "The apartments lacked appeal though, poorly constructed, and with a lack of amenities to support the density spike; many prospective tenants instead moved to suburban houses in the developing areas of Scarborough, Etobicoke and North York. The area quickly became much poorer. Four buildings were later built by the province to provide public housing." Shoddy housing attracts those who can't afford better, and poverty breeds petty crime, that much is true. Blaming it on missing car access is original. Personally I would be more worried about access difficulties for firefighters.
    - dmix 7y ago
      I lived next to it for a number of years and often visited friends who lived there. I’m very familiar with it and the problems it has. The idea of these concrete enclosed blocks of land being havens for crime and gangs is hardly controversial. This isn’t the open walkable streets of some nice European city or even downtown Toronto. It’s isolated and poorly maintained. Basically what people have come to expect from city run and planned housing from the past generations.
      - 7y ago

idiocratic 7y ago

Tel Aviv has many examples of good 20th century urbanism. London Barbican is also a great example. I'm sure there are more but we'll see which ones will be true classics over time.

thomasfl 7y ago

Poundbury in Dorchester (UK) was nothing but plain grass in the 1990'ies. Now Poundbury is a city that has generated more new jobs than new homes. The price for real estate is 30% higher than neighbouring cities. And they have yet to experience a traffic accident. Beautiful walkable cities is good for business.

masklinn 7y ago
An other interesting new urbanism project — though I'd have a hard time calling it "beautiful" — is Louvain-La-Neuve in Belgium: a completely planned city resulting from the split of the "Catholic University of Leuven" into the flemish KU Leuven and the walloon UCL the city was set up such that the city center is entirely pedestrian, cars within the city center travel below the giant concrete slab which makes up the city's ground.
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  I would say it's main fault in the beauty department is that the centre is for students, and so there naturally wasn't much spent on its decoration. Certainly the heavy wear of being a student town in a country with easy access to alcohol does work to bring down the beauty too. But it manages to give a pretty cosy impression, and with a night life that punches much above the weight of its population otherwise would indicate. Also they gave some good crepes there.
- jefftk 7y ago
  Satellite: https://goo.gl/maps/36F1xKcz8EPPBwwu9 https://goo.gl/maps/36F1xKcz8EPPBwwu9
bb101 7y ago
The last time we drove through Poundbury on a summer weekend, the town (it's not a city) was a ghost town. We tried to find somewhere pleasant to have lunch - i.e. open and not fast food - and utterly failed. It has a central town square with nothing going on. I'm sure the rest of Dorchester is interesting and full of life, but Poundbury wasn't.
7y ago

ticktacktock2 7y ago

This is unrelated to the topic, but your comment is a good occasion to learn more about what seems to me to be weird (grammatical) article usages by English speakers. Why did you call it _Les_ Olympiades, and not Olympiades (no article) or _the_ Olympiades (article in English), or _les_ Olympiades (no capitalization of the article) ? For Porte d'Italie, you did not add any article, i.e. Porte d'Italie and not _La_ Porte d'Italie. Why the difference?

zwaps 7y ago
Honestly? Because I am not French and I just wrote very thoughtlessly. Sorry, no further reasoning behind it.
- ticktacktock2 7y ago
  I see. Still, this is quite common. For instance the English Wikipedia article [0] use the "random French capitalized article" ("Though the proportions are more modest, _Les_ Olympiades are designed similarly to the esplanade of _La_ Défense.", emphasis mine) but not the French Wikipedia 0article [1], which uses "normal" (to me) grammatical articles. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Olympiades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Olympiades [1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympiades_(quartier_parisien) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympiades_(quartier_parisien)
  - kristianc 7y ago
    The French article repeatedly refers to it as _Les_ Olympiades.
    - ticktacktock2 7y ago
      The article is capitalized only when it is the beginning of a sentence, or for the elementary school of the same name. The article behaves "normally" (eg switches to aux Olympiades when needed) while the English article stick to Les Olympiades with a capitalized "Les". Interestingly, both articles first words are "Les Olympiades", but: * "Les" is in bold in the English one, as if it was part of the name, while only "Olympiades" is in bold in French * The French article says "the Olympiades are" while the English one say "the Olympiades is".

MrBuddyCasino 7y ago

Here is a Twitter account to follow if you're interested in "good urbanism": https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon

deltron3030 7y ago

< I wonder if there are contemporary developments that will, some day, be considered truly beautiful. By whom? It's a matter of perspective. If you're into architecture and design you'll care more about the practicality and function of the building than it's exterior appearance. A sterile exterior then becomes an indicator that the budget went into what matters most. In my personal opinion, the exterior of buildings (excluding windows) should all be considered public space, they should be open for decoration, like street art, mural paintings etc., so this problem would be solved by the people who live there and take action.

coldtea 7y ago
>By whom? By those who live in them and by those that visit them. Those who design them and those who write design critiques don't matter at all, and should not even have a voice (at least not one anybody should care about). The best buildings, people take pride living in, and coming from abroad to admire, were built that people we don't even know their name, many even designed and built by craftsmen (as opposed to university-studied architects). >If you're into architecture and design you'll care more about the practicality and function of the building than it's exterior appearance The exterior appearance is part of the practicality and function of the building. A bleak appearance can crush the soul, destroy any community pride, and even make people physically ill. Humans are not cattle (though even cattle deserve better).
- deltron3030 7y ago
  Is it because of the structural complexity of individual buildings (e.g. kitsch ornamentation) or could it be just the color and texture (e.g. people hating flat grey walls)? A painted and decorated facade could change the exterior impression completely. The problem is more the large scale uniformity and a lack of variance, like housing complexes that all look the same, not individual buildings. Here's an extreme kitsch example: https://www.dezeen.com/2019/01/18/drone-abandoned-turkish-chateau-burj-al-babas/ https://www.dezeen.com/2019/01/18/drone-abandoned-turkish-ch...
  - 7y ago

thatfrenchguy 7y ago

> I wonder if there are contemporary developments that will, some day, be considered truly beautiful. Do we still build buildings that will withstand the times to just get to our great-grandchildren though ? Or are we just biased because only the good ones remain from the 19 century ? (The neighborhood around Olympiades is from the 60s though).

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]