I do think the space issue is a good distinction. And not ceding huge parts of the city to street parking is another one. But there are crowded 'us city sized'

I do think the space issue is a good distinction. And not ceding huge parts of the city to street parking is another one. But there are crowded 'us city sized' sidewalks in plenty of places in Paris where the space to walk between tables probably wouldn't make accessible code in the US; too narrow and uneven and busy. Here is a hip area comes to mind in paris [1]. it has those built out wooden platforms onto what used to be parking spaces like in the eater article. narrow sidewalks. Odd there are no people in the satellite I wonder if the most recent one was early pandemic. It was packed last I went. One big difference is car size & number of cars per person. It's a lot lower than most US cities save a couple. [2] They are decades ahead in trying to reclaim cities from cars & invest in alternative infrastructure. That area for example is now a 'pedestrian street' and they are doing great things taking back the seine. there were major differences & amazing improvements from when I went pre and during covid. In contrast my city Denver also closed a couple streets that ran through parks during coviv (shouldn't have been built in the first place). They added some roundabouts and other things to encourage a more bike/ped friendly space on just a couple roads. Only to take them right back out... So infuriating. Paris used COVID to speed up and we seem to be going backwards. [3] https://www.google.com/maps/dir//Maison+Sauvage+Saint-Germain-des-Pr%C3%A9s,+5+Rue+de+Buci,+75006+Paris,+France/@48.8538014,2.3379027,172a,35y,176.71h/data=!3m1!1e3!4m9!4m8!1m0!1m5!1m1!1s0x47e671d928ff58c9:0xd47677d0c6cc576c!2m2!1d2.3380628!2d48.8536424!3e0 https://www.google.com/maps/dir//Maison+Sauvage+Saint-Germai... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-19/how-paris-shifted-away-from-the-car https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-19/how-paris... https://slate.com/business/2021/09/paris-cars-bicycles-walking-david-belliard-anne-hidalgo.html https://slate.com/business/2021/09/paris-cars-bicycles-walki...