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> Would you feel "stacked on top of each other" in a Parisian townhouse with a magnificent shared courtyard, 12 foot ceilings, and everything you could possibly

> Would you feel "stacked on top of each other" in a Parisian townhouse with a magnificent shared courtyard, 12 foot ceilings, and everything you could possibly want a short walk or subway ride away? No, I wouldn't feel "stacked on top of each other" if I were a multi-millionaire in Paris. But, in the real world, your talking about putting families into 600sqft (at very best) boxes, with audible neighbors on every side of the unit, and no way to go anywhere (no parking, no meaningful transport, because 'everything we'd let you have is a short walk away') If you actually do what you've described, and give everyone their own townhouse, you've just reinvented the modern suburb. Because that's what modern suburbs look like, everyone in a townhouse, or a townhouse with some small strips of yard around it. > but there are many different ways to live in a dense city Sure, but only if you are fantastically wealthy.

ebg13 6y ago
> no way to go anywhere (no parking, no meaningful transport, because 'everything we'd let you have is a short walk away') It's news to me that the Paris Bus, Tram, Metro, RER, SNCF, Velib, and the venerable scooter have all suddenly vanished.
- maxsilver 6y ago
  Obviously they haven't, and they remain great options for people wealthy enough to afford Parisian Townhouses. But unless you somehow gift me one million dollars USD or more (and the same to every single person I know), none of us are going to be able to afford to live anywhere in Paris that actually has close access to all of those things you've described, with the living situation described above. If we're magically exceptionally lucky, at best we might get like one or two.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ebg13 6y ago
    I lived in the center of Paris for years on a few Altairian dollars per day, and you're being ridiculous. Rental prices in Paris proper, not even the banlieue, are about the same per foot as Cambridge/Somerville/Boston while being an overall nicer place to live.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Scooters, the RER, the SNCF, the bus, the Vélib and the metro, are very cheap and service even poor parts of Paris and the Banlieue pretty well.
    - wozniacki 6y ago
      There's also this assumption that people in relatively segregated rich areas want to be connected to poorer areas via public transit - the opposite is more often true. People who wish to live in neighborhoods with low crime often NIMBY off any attempts to add public transit options specifically to keep out the riffraff. Marin County is home to over 252,000 residents, yet it is without a BART station. If you search web content to find out why that is the case, you will not find a lot. There is minimal information explaining why the BART doesn't connect from Marin to San Francisco and even less explaining why it doesn't connect from the East Bay to Marin. Marin funded a large portion of the project when BART was being planned in the 1950s. But "concerns" over whether or not the Golden Gate Bridge could support BART suddenly arose. After San Mateo pulled out of the plan, Marin's participation fell through as well. It is not unfair to speculate that socio-economic discrepancies might have something to do with this lack of transit connection. After all, Marin is the county where wealthy residents stopped George Lucas from building affordable housing on his land. The median household income there is almost $84,000, more than $15,000 more than San Francisco and more than twice as much as Oakland. A similar situation in Dayton, Ohio arose where wealthy suburbanites tried to stop the local transit authority from building three new bus stops near major employment centers.[1] [1] https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/it-s-bay-area-rapid-transit-except-marin-they-re-exclusive/176216/ https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollecti...
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        Agreed, though I don't think we should, as a society, allow this kind of class-based segregation. It causes nothing but pain in the long term.
      - mmm_grayons 6y ago
        This is everywhere, though. In spite of the reverence for Parisian living in this thread, it limits how high buildings can go, resulting in pricier housing because "muh skyline".
  - pirocks 6y ago
    I don't know about Paris, but London public transport reaches almost every corner of the city. I'm making some assumptions here, but I assume you've only ever lived in an American city. You often see Americans thinking that the terrible public transit they see is what public transit is everywhere. This is very much not the case.
  - jeffasinger 6y ago
    If the problem is that there aren't enough acceptable quality housing with good public transit access, it seems like building more transportation and housing would be a good solution rather than building similarly expensive suburban sprawl.
  - brmgb 6y ago
    > But unless you somehow gift me one million dollars USD or more (and the same to every single person I know), none of us are going to be able to afford to live anywhere in Paris that actually has close access to all of those things you've described, with the living situation described above. Have you ever set foot in a European city ? I currently live in Paris. Bus, metro and Vélib' are three minutes away and I am not a millionaire. It all costs me 38 euros a month for unlimited journeys. I could afford to start a family here. Two affluent people can rent 750 square feet in Paris. I could even probably buy if I accepted to be in debt for thirty years.
    - s1artibartfast 6y ago
      >I could afford to start a family here. Two affluent people can rent 750 square feet in Paris. I could even probably buy if I accepted to be in debt for thirty years. I think this is the exact tradeoff that is being discussed. Some people are OK with the 750 square ft flat. Others want a 3,000 sqft home on a quarter acre with room to park a boat or RV. You can get this within a 15 minute Drive of downtown Houston for $300k, but you wont be walking to the local grocery or civic building. As far as I can tell, 300k will buy you a 250 sqft apartment in Paris, but you will have access to walkable civic amenities.
    - amaccuish 6y ago
      > It all costs me 38 euros a month for unlimited journeys. Ouch. My VBB-Umweltkarte for similar costs 63 EUR a month.
      - brmgb 6y ago
        Well, the actual cost is 73 euros per month but in typical French fashion my employer has to pay for half of my metro pass (also I have the cheapest bike rental plan and trips are only free if they last less than 30 minutes).
abraxas 6y ago
Nonsense. There are very walkable and affordable cities with pleasant neighborhoods that don't break the bank in all parts of the world (sans North America). Off the top of my head and from first hand experience: - Warsaw - Glasgow - Porto - Lisbon - Athens (Greece) - Berlin - Budapest - Barcelona (OK, this one gets pricey but is superbly laid out)
- smerdyakov 6y ago
  To be fair at least some of these cities aren't described as affordable by locals. Berliners are constantly complaining about the rent prices.
  - abraxas 6y ago
    I also heard that lately. But up until the recent run up in prices it was quite the bargain for what you were getting.
  - siliconvalley1 6y ago
    Probably true of locals of every city in the world but Berlin in particular is still very cheap relative to many western EU cities. Numbeo cost of living index has it 153rd in the world including rent and it's well below places like Houston which is probably the cheapest large top tier city in the US.
- wozniacki 6y ago
  The cities you list are not exactly diverse economic powerhouses in the same way even Houston is. A comparison of the "GDPs" of those cities would show that much. Also no one wants to walk through blighted or a high crime neighborhood. American cities have a lot more diversity than any of the cities you mention with income disparities separating various races and stocks of people. Homogeneity of the populaces involved is a factor often totally and wholly ignored in these comparisons of "walkable and affordable" cities. Walking through even the ghetto-est part of Belfast may not be the same as walking through the same in Opa-locka, Miami-Dade County, Florida. There are no racial boundaries to overcome in Belfast or Budapest. Not even remotely close to the extent we encounter in America. Like I said this metric should be factored into these conversations.
desert_boi 6y ago
As an American having lived in a 380 sq ft. studio in Hamburg, I can say the build quality of concrete walls was lovely. It was the quietest place I've ever lived, 7 stories a block from two parks. I lived on a two lane street, and no one had air conditioners. You don't know how loud air conditioners and furnaces are until you live in a place without them. I walked to work, and lived within 1/2 mile of 8 grocery stores. When I went to German class Downtown, I walked 15 minutes to a train. I could get to the airport in 25 minutes via one bus and one S-Bahn leg. Here in the States, I also don't have a car, but I'm surrounded by highways separating me from a park, and my apartment is much much louder because Boise, the city, doesn't control the roads within it. The state does. Thoroughput is all that matters. I still live 0.5 mile from multiple grocery stores, but I don't have transit here. Getting to the airport from Downtown is a 40 minute bus ride (with a 15-20 minute schedule variance) for 2.5 miles. The state won't allow the city local taxing power to improve transit, and so the city limps along, unable to expand transit that matches the limited space to expand lanes.

ebg13 6y ago

> no way to go anywhere (no parking, no meaningful transport, because 'everything we'd let you have is a short walk away') It's news to me that the Paris Bus, Tram, Metro, RER, SNCF, Velib, and the venerable scooter have all suddenly vanished.

maxsilver 6y ago
Obviously they haven't, and they remain great options for people wealthy enough to afford Parisian Townhouses. But unless you somehow gift me one million dollars USD or more (and the same to every single person I know), none of us are going to be able to afford to live anywhere in Paris that actually has close access to all of those things you've described, with the living situation described above. If we're magically exceptionally lucky, at best we might get like one or two.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ebg13 6y ago
  I lived in the center of Paris for years on a few Altairian dollars per day, and you're being ridiculous. Rental prices in Paris proper, not even the banlieue, are about the same per foot as Cambridge/Somerville/Boston while being an overall nicer place to live.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Scooters, the RER, the SNCF, the bus, the Vélib and the metro, are very cheap and service even poor parts of Paris and the Banlieue pretty well.
  - wozniacki 6y ago
    There's also this assumption that people in relatively segregated rich areas want to be connected to poorer areas via public transit - the opposite is more often true. People who wish to live in neighborhoods with low crime often NIMBY off any attempts to add public transit options specifically to keep out the riffraff. Marin County is home to over 252,000 residents, yet it is without a BART station. If you search web content to find out why that is the case, you will not find a lot. There is minimal information explaining why the BART doesn't connect from Marin to San Francisco and even less explaining why it doesn't connect from the East Bay to Marin. Marin funded a large portion of the project when BART was being planned in the 1950s. But "concerns" over whether or not the Golden Gate Bridge could support BART suddenly arose. After San Mateo pulled out of the plan, Marin's participation fell through as well. It is not unfair to speculate that socio-economic discrepancies might have something to do with this lack of transit connection. After all, Marin is the county where wealthy residents stopped George Lucas from building affordable housing on his land. The median household income there is almost $84,000, more than $15,000 more than San Francisco and more than twice as much as Oakland. A similar situation in Dayton, Ohio arose where wealthy suburbanites tried to stop the local transit authority from building three new bus stops near major employment centers.[1] [1] https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/it-s-bay-area-rapid-transit-except-marin-they-re-exclusive/176216/ https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollecti...
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      Agreed, though I don't think we should, as a society, allow this kind of class-based segregation. It causes nothing but pain in the long term.
    - mmm_grayons 6y ago
      This is everywhere, though. In spite of the reverence for Parisian living in this thread, it limits how high buildings can go, resulting in pricier housing because "muh skyline".
- pirocks 6y ago
  I don't know about Paris, but London public transport reaches almost every corner of the city. I'm making some assumptions here, but I assume you've only ever lived in an American city. You often see Americans thinking that the terrible public transit they see is what public transit is everywhere. This is very much not the case.
- jeffasinger 6y ago
  If the problem is that there aren't enough acceptable quality housing with good public transit access, it seems like building more transportation and housing would be a good solution rather than building similarly expensive suburban sprawl.
- brmgb 6y ago
  > But unless you somehow gift me one million dollars USD or more (and the same to every single person I know), none of us are going to be able to afford to live anywhere in Paris that actually has close access to all of those things you've described, with the living situation described above. Have you ever set foot in a European city ? I currently live in Paris. Bus, metro and Vélib' are three minutes away and I am not a millionaire. It all costs me 38 euros a month for unlimited journeys. I could afford to start a family here. Two affluent people can rent 750 square feet in Paris. I could even probably buy if I accepted to be in debt for thirty years.
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    >I could afford to start a family here. Two affluent people can rent 750 square feet in Paris. I could even probably buy if I accepted to be in debt for thirty years. I think this is the exact tradeoff that is being discussed. Some people are OK with the 750 square ft flat. Others want a 3,000 sqft home on a quarter acre with room to park a boat or RV. You can get this within a 15 minute Drive of downtown Houston for $300k, but you wont be walking to the local grocery or civic building. As far as I can tell, 300k will buy you a 250 sqft apartment in Paris, but you will have access to walkable civic amenities.
  - amaccuish 6y ago
    > It all costs me 38 euros a month for unlimited journeys. Ouch. My VBB-Umweltkarte for similar costs 63 EUR a month.
    - brmgb 6y ago
      Well, the actual cost is 73 euros per month but in typical French fashion my employer has to pay for half of my metro pass (also I have the cheapest bike rental plan and trips are only free if they last less than 30 minutes).

abraxas 6y ago

Nonsense. There are very walkable and affordable cities with pleasant neighborhoods that don't break the bank in all parts of the world (sans North America). Off the top of my head and from first hand experience: - Warsaw - Glasgow - Porto - Lisbon - Athens (Greece) - Berlin - Budapest - Barcelona (OK, this one gets pricey but is superbly laid out)

smerdyakov 6y ago
To be fair at least some of these cities aren't described as affordable by locals. Berliners are constantly complaining about the rent prices.
- abraxas 6y ago
  I also heard that lately. But up until the recent run up in prices it was quite the bargain for what you were getting.
- siliconvalley1 6y ago
  Probably true of locals of every city in the world but Berlin in particular is still very cheap relative to many western EU cities. Numbeo cost of living index has it 153rd in the world including rent and it's well below places like Houston which is probably the cheapest large top tier city in the US.
wozniacki 6y ago
The cities you list are not exactly diverse economic powerhouses in the same way even Houston is. A comparison of the "GDPs" of those cities would show that much. Also no one wants to walk through blighted or a high crime neighborhood. American cities have a lot more diversity than any of the cities you mention with income disparities separating various races and stocks of people. Homogeneity of the populaces involved is a factor often totally and wholly ignored in these comparisons of "walkable and affordable" cities. Walking through even the ghetto-est part of Belfast may not be the same as walking through the same in Opa-locka, Miami-Dade County, Florida. There are no racial boundaries to overcome in Belfast or Budapest. Not even remotely close to the extent we encounter in America. Like I said this metric should be factored into these conversations.

desert_boi 6y ago

As an American having lived in a 380 sq ft. studio in Hamburg, I can say the build quality of concrete walls was lovely. It was the quietest place I've ever lived, 7 stories a block from two parks. I lived on a two lane street, and no one had air conditioners. You don't know how loud air conditioners and furnaces are until you live in a place without them. I walked to work, and lived within 1/2 mile of 8 grocery stores. When I went to German class Downtown, I walked 15 minutes to a train. I could get to the airport in 25 minutes via one bus and one S-Bahn leg. Here in the States, I also don't have a car, but I'm surrounded by highways separating me from a park, and my apartment is much much louder because Boise, the city, doesn't control the roads within it. The state does. Thoroughput is all that matters. I still live 0.5 mile from multiple grocery stores, but I don't have transit here. Getting to the airport from Downtown is a 40 minute bus ride (with a 15-20 minute schedule variance) for 2.5 miles. The state won't allow the city local taxing power to improve transit, and so the city limps along, unable to expand transit that matches the limited space to expand lanes.