9 ms·
I love the initiative, of course. How could I not? The idea of folks casually taking a dip in this city is really nice. I spend a lot of time beside the Seine -
by zx2c4 3y ago
I love the initiative, of course. How could I not? The idea of folks casually taking a dip in this city is really nice. I spend a lot of time beside the Seine - writing code on my laptop, even! - and being able to dangle my legs in sounds nice.
But... No matter what they say about bacteria measurements and other high quality quantitative indicators, there will still be swimming bags of potato chips and cigarette cartons and beer cans and receipts, and all the other junk Parisians tend to toss in there, even the occasional Vélib' bicycle. The thought of going for a nice swim only to whack my foot on a rusted underwater bicycle gear and then leave the water with a sandwich wrapper clinging to my back isn't very appealing. So I wonder how this will be managed, and how separated the three proposed swimming spots will be.
With that said, I went swimming in the Ohio River as a child, and I guess I'm still alive, so ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯
- Galanwe 3y agoYou forgot dead animals and syringes
- jacquesm 3y agoAnd between 20 and 50 dead people every year.
- mablopoule 3y ago"It's like the ocean, but cleaner"
- jacquesm 3y agoI doubt that, actually.
- sneak 3y agoSeems that this could be addressed separately with better enforcement for littering/dumping? People there don't regularly assault people on the street, brandish firearms, or drive vehicles without number plates. There is a possibility for law enforcement to set social expectations around dumping such that people don't actually do it out of fear of serious legal consequences.
- citrin_ru 3y agoHow you imagine this? Police don't have free resources already and it is hard to catch a person throwing a bottle in a river in the moment. Video surveillance and face recognition may work but sounds dystopian. In my observation a mix of culture and working cleaning services is a better predictor of clean streets than fines. It matters a lot if people want to live in a clean environment or they don't care. I have an empathy gap here and it's hard to understand why but I see that some people either don't mind garbage lying around or too lazy to carry it to a place where it can be disposed (nearest litter bin if they exist in this area or home if not).
- scrollaway 3y ago> there will still be swimming bags of potato chips and cigarette cartons and beer cans and receipts, and all the other junk Parisians tend to toss in there Time to enforce littering fines. Seriously, as a French person living in Belgium, I am disgusted with how little of a shit people give about keeping their own city clean. If we start enforcing littering fines a bit more in western europe, this shit will stop within a couple of years. It's 100% cultural and this is something we absolutely have to change in our culture.
- cromka 3y agoAs much as I hate it, the real way to achieve the level of compliance you describe is through surveillance, akin to what China does or what Black Mirror depicts.
- snapcaster 3y agoIsn't this statement disproved by places like Japan or other cities where there isn't China-tier surveillance but also littering isn't really bad?
- lotsofpulp 3y agoNo, because people in different places behave differently, for whatever reason.
- RajT88 3y agoCulture is the reason. Japanese people have a more collectivist instead of individualist society, which promotes a shared sense of ownership in society. (At least, this is what they taught me in my Japanese courses in college) Changing culture is hard. But, some cultural shifts have been brought about by public awareness campaigns, protests, etc.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoYou are not going to bring about a Japanese or Scandinavian or whatever other “model” culture anywhere within a reasonable amount of time.
- insanitybit 3y agoHopefully this introduces pressure to actually get littering taken more seriously. If there are communities who want to swim, but feel uncomfortable about it, those communities can begin to pressure the government to deal with those problems. Given that the article mentions that there will be officially held races/ marathons, I suspect that there will be a lot of money being put into keeping the water clean and safe. It seems like the city has been very invested in improving the water quality of the Seine and I expect that to continue with the additional pressure of human swimmers.
- _8j50 3y agoSize is the only difference to swimming in the ocean or a lake, unlike lakes though, rivers flow and move the trash away