Part of the reason Paris feels different is that they've mostly allowed the city to grow up, everywhere, instead of just a few places. The latter is more likely

Part of the reason Paris feels different is that they've mostly allowed the city to grow up, everywhere, instead of just a few places. The latter is more likely to lead to not very friendly feeling skyscrapers without a lot at the street, human level. And it also helps a lot that it was not mostly built for automobiles like so many Post-WWII cities in the US have been.