26 ms·

Priced out of Paris

150 points by bergie 13y ago

narcissus 13y ago
While I'd love to be able to afford to live in Paris (that place is unbelievable), so long as this 'rush back to the city' is because the rich are sick of the beaches, I'll be just as happy!
kiba 13y ago
Why is Paris really expensive? Constricted supply and high demand. Why is the supply constricted? Because Paris refuse to build anything in the center. That's because the center is a historical preservation district writ large. If you build anything modern, it would "ruin" the image of Paris. So, Paris would need to change its policy and start demolishing old buildings, and build higher density buildings. Certainly, the rich will keep buying the most desirable parts of the cities, but the inability for the poor and the middle class to live in the center will be less acute.
- rdouble 13y ago
  Paris is already the densest city in Europe, with the densest suburbs.
- tribeofone 13y ago
  That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
- chrisvineup 13y ago
  Yeah start with that stupid Eiffel Tower its a bloody eyesore!
  - kiba 13y ago
    Unfortunately, the desire to keep historical buildings conflict with the need to add density. Clearly, people should make some tradeoff, but it should not be "never demolish any old buildings".
    - bane 13y ago
      Paris doesn't really need to add density, it's already one of the densest cities in Europe. Clearly some other phenomenon is at work here. Very tall residential buildings have surprisingly low densities for a wide variety of reasons: extra building infrastructure, high capital costs result in expensive apartments which price them out of most people's means so they end up being sold to the rich who can afford to pay twice as much anyways for more floor space, etc. Density: Paris: 21,000/km^2 Seoul: 17,000/km^2 Hong Kong: 6,480/km^2 Cairo: 18,071/km^2
    - goatforce5 13y ago
      If you propose a building in London that would obstruct the view of St Pauls Cathedral for someone many miles away, that can be grounds to have your application denied: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_view http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_view
- bru 13y ago
  According to Wikipedia[1], Paris is the 34th densest city in the world. 5 French cities are denser, and all of them are Paris' suburbs. Only 3 non-French European cities are denser than Paris. Your comment lacks foundations. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_population_density http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_popula...
  - kiba 13y ago
    According to Wikipedia[1], Paris is the 34th densest city in the world. 5 French cities are denser, and all of them are Paris' suburbs. Only 3 non-French European cities are denser than Paris. Then let make Paris even more dense than Paris' suburbs.
  - deleted 13y ago
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  - rayiner 13y ago
    Its relative. Paris would be even denser given the extreme demand in the city, and with modern technology could be say the 10th densest city and still very livable.
    - subsystem 13y ago
      I'm not sure what the point would be though. You could build all the residential skyscrapers you want in La Defense and still be within 15 minutes of most of Paris proper.
  - imgabe 13y ago
    This is a non-sequitor. How dense it is relative to other cities is irrelevant with regard to whether it's dense enough to meet the demand for housing in the city.
- ludoo 13y ago
  OMG a Le Corbusier nephew. Right, let's raze all historical cities, and build stell and glass cubes. And while we're at it, let's burn a few books and paintings too...
  - namdnay 13y ago
    Or a Modern Hausmanian :)
  - glenra 13y ago
    > Right, let's raze all historical cities, and build stell and glass cubes. If redevelopment were generally allowed in cities like Paris and New York some of ugliest, least unique buildings would tend to get replaced with something newer and possibly better. And fifty or a hundred years later some of those new buildings would themselves also be prized by preservationists. People HATED the Eiffel Tower when it was first proposed. Some even hated it after it was built. (de Maupassant: “this tall skinny pyramid of iron ladders, this giant and disgraceful skeleton.”) Don't be like those people. > And while we're at it, let's burn a few books and paintings too... The traditionalist position here makes us burn all the potential new books and paintings, because we already have enough copies of the old ones to fill the library. Better to keep a hundred copies of an old book than 99 copies of the old book and one copy of a new one, right?
    - yardie 13y ago
      The city planners did allow some unchecked redevelopment in the early 70s and 80s. Most of those buildings are still considered ugly and time hasn't made them any prettier, trust me. I wouldn't say it's the traditionalist but the the people have, collectively, have decided that they want a specific aesthetic and most of the buildings being proposed aren't it. The Forums Les Halles was erected in the 70s, the architects thought it was pretty, a majority of the population didn't like it. It was built and, 30 years later, demolished.
      - michaelochurch 13y ago
        Most of those buildings are still considered ugly and time hasn't made them any prettier, trust me. Aesthetics are for the comfortable. I don't think most New Yorkers know (or care) what the exteriors of their buildings look like. I'd rather have ugly buildings and lower rent so I can save. Yes, I'm a dick because I care about my future more than whether bored rich people like the looks of the city. I live here, I work here, I don't fucking "look at" it because I don't have time and I don't really care. For aesthetics, I go to Central Park. I'd be pissed if that went away. But I don't give the square root of a fuck if someone wants to build a hideous 100-story apartment building (bringing down rents, one hopes) in the Village, as long as they do it safely. If you want aesthetics, go out to the mountains. It's beautiful and no one is going to build a 100-story eyesore any time soon.
- othello 13y ago
  Actually two of the 20 districts of inner Paris (the "arrondissements"), which you describe as a "historical preservation district writ large", are more densely populated than any districts in any Western city - except for Manhattan Community Board 8 and 2 districts in Spain [1]. The 11th and the 20th arrondissement both house more than 40,000 people per km2 (104,000 per sq mile), which is denser than any district of Tokyo by the way. If that's not dense, I don't know what is. Incidentally, the 11th is not cheap in any way: buying a flat there will set you back 9000 to 9500€ per sqm ($1200 to $1270 per sqft) [2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_city_districts_by_population_density http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_city_districts_by_popul... [2] http://parispropertygroup.com/blog/2012/real-estate-prices-paris-france-overview-arrondissement/ http://parispropertygroup.com/blog/2012/real-estate-prices-p...
  - jasonkester 13y ago
    Indeed. I once dated a girl who lived in Montmartre. Were you to sit on the toilet in her apartment, you'd be able to shower, cook dinner, reach over to answer the door, or make the bed, all without having to stand up. That's actually plenty dense for me.
- simias 13y ago
  I live in Paris and I don't think that's the solution. All forms of transportation in Paris are saturated. Adding more housing capability would make moving inside (and around) Paris even more terrible than it is today. The boulevard périphérique circling the city is one of the busiest highways in Europe [1]. The RER A train line is also one of the busiest in the world[2]. Trust me, we don't want more people in Paris. What we need to do is decentralize, spread the population, services and work farther around the city. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulevard_P%C3%A9riph%C3%A9rique http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulevard_P%C3%A9riph%C3%A9riqu... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RER_A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RER_A
  - deleted 13y ago
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- raverbashing 13y ago
  That's such an uninformed answer it's funny. Yes, let's rip all the center of Paris and build 100 floor buildings because there's something magical about that specific longitude-latitude. Paris is attractive because of several factors, one of them their architecture. If you're just there for a fancy apartment you can look elsewhere. You rarely need to be there. (but yes, swapping old buildings is something there may be a case for)
- victorNicollet 13y ago
  The preservation district does exist, but it's certainly not a major issue. There are plenty of places that are not subject to preservation, often within a five-minute walk of preserved ones. The real problem in Paris is the transport infrastructure. As it stands, the morning and evening commutes already saturate several subway and bus lines, non-taxi cars only have access to a subset of all available lanes (and most of the time these are one-way), and while the bicycle rental system works quite well, it does not alleviate peak usage in cold or rainy weather. So, while it's entirely feasible (both technologically and from a historical preservation aspect) to build a 1000-person housing unit with the same footprint as the old 100-person ones, it would only take a few of these to completely saturate the local subway station and nearby streets every morning and every evening.
  - davidf18 13y ago
    What you say is wrong because much of the traffic on the subway and busses are commuters who travel from the suburbs. In Manhattan where I live, commuters nearly double the daytime population from 1.6 million to 3.1 million. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/commuters-nearly-double-manhattans-daytime-population-census-says/ http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/commuters-nearl... increasing the building density would simply enable those people who are less fortunate than many of us on HN to also live in Paris. Moreover, I can't speak for Paris but for certain I know in NYC/Manhattan the subways are not running nearly at their capacity. IIRC, the capacity could double if they automated the systems (which they are taking a very long time to do). The same may be true of Paris.
stevoski 13y ago
The article talks a lot about cities now being the domain only of "one-percenters" and "global elite". This is demonstrably false. Consider the UK. UK's population: 62 million London population: 8 million 13% of the UK's population, therefore, resides in London. To say that only the "1%" can afford London is clearly not the case. In France's case, 15% of the population live in Paris. Perhaps we can't all live in London's Chelsea and whatever the most desirable part of Paris is. But both cities have excellent public transport...
- seren 13y ago
  The 15% you are quoting is for the 'Greater Paris', i.e. Paris and its suburbs, both rich and poor. The intramuros, i.e. inside the city limits, population of Paris as described in the article is about 2 millions people, about 3% of the population. We are closer to the 'few percenters'.
- SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
  > To say that only the "1%" can afford London is clearly not the case. ORLY. Consider the London borough of Camden. "40% of children are under the poverty line, but average house prices have just hit £1m." http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/21/mervyn-king-housing-warning-fannie-mae http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/21/mervyn-k... http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/05/hous-m24.html?view=print http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/05/hous-m24.html?view=p... In other words, you can afford to "live" in London so long as you pay your salary on rent for a small, shabby flat and give up hope of settling or owning in London. You'll be the underclass who can always be moved on or moved out next year if the owners decide. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/feb/13/london-council-relocation-benefits-cap http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/feb/13/london-council-relo...
  - sturadnidge 13y ago
    Not exactly, either the above or you can live in central London if you are on government benefits - the civic planning here is pretty messed up, I appreciate the idealism of forcibly mixing socio-economic classes by mandating council housing be placed amidst regular housing in every borough, but it seems insane that it's the workers who are getting pushed further and further out. Not suggesting the unemployed should.
datr 13y ago
I don't want to undermine this piece too much as I think it is an important issue and what I'm about to say doesn't address all of the details. But I also believe it's an issue that will be partially solved by automated cars. As soon as it becomes palatable to live further from the city and commute; and, to a lesser extent, free up space from car parks, this problem will be dramatically reduced.
- kiba 13y ago
  Regardless of autonomous cars, proximity and density will always be a decisive feature of cities, which is what allows humanity to thrive and innovate. The fact that only the rich people can afford to live in the center of the city is a problem, because it becomes harder to aggregate human ingenuity and innovation. In fact, I believe autonomous cars will increases a city's ability to network, because it increases people's ability to aggregate into a single place. It will also make the city an even more desirable place to live and work, because autonomous vehicles reduce the pain of moving around in the city.
  - 6d0debc071 13y ago
    > Regardless of autonomous cars, proximity and density will always be a decisive feature of cities, which is what allows humanity to thrive and innovate. Population density is correlated with increased rates of mental illness.
    - roel_v 13y ago
      You're suggesting that dense cities drive people crazy (sorry if you aren't), but it's not clear whether it's like that, or that crazy people tend to gravitate towards center with high population densities.
      - hilko 13y ago
        It's not, and that's a good point. But it sounds more logical to me. Could you give some reasons why people with 'mental illness' would gravitate towards centers? (mind, I'm asking this with the assumption that mental illness is much broader than just homeless schizophrenics, so to speak. I can definitely see why they might gravitate towards heavily populate areas. But they usually don't pay rent.)
contingencies 13y ago
So in short, this guy gets paid enough writing speculative narrative-fictions to live in Paris, but a family with decent incomes and kids can't? Maybe the kids are the difference, or their parents - unlike the writer - aren't nebulously attached to the great black fiscal hole of the financial services industry.
salmonellaeater 13y ago
The article implies that it's a big problem for commodities to go to the people willing to pay the most for them. Housing is just another commodity; is it surprising that the people who derive the most value from being in a city center (professionals in finance, law, business) end up paying the most for the privilege?
- icebraining 13y ago
  That it's not surprising doesn't mean it's not a problem. And while those classes may derive the most value from being in the city center, it doesn't necessarily mean that society as whole does. Or even those individuals themselves, in the longer term.
  - salmonellaeater 13y ago
    The questions of distorted incentives and short-term decision-making are much more interesting questions! As to whether it's a problem or not, how would you argue that it is? Is there cultural value to having bohemians or artists or people other than high-income professionals clustered in city centers, value which isn't represented in their incomes? If so, wouldn't it be more efficient to provide a subsidy for their cultural output and let them choose where to live?
    - icebraining 13y ago
      More efficient than what?
- twic 13y ago
  Housing is simply not just another commodity. An utterly fundamental aspect of commodities is that their production is price-elastic, and governed by supply and demand: if demand increases, prices rise, so, supply increases, prices fall again, and the market remains efficient. The housing supply has very little price elasticity, at least in London. This is for the very simple reason that there is hardly any space to build new housing, and enormous barriers to demolishing existing housing to free up such space. So, when prices go up, as they do every year, supply does not expand accordingly. I'm sorry, but to brush the problem off with an assertion that houses are just another commodity is simply to advertise one's ignorance of economics.
kmfrk 13y ago
This reads like an impersonation of a David Brooks and Tom Friedman column. Can't wait for next week in which he dedicates an entire column to what his Parisian cab driver told him.
rms 13y ago
"Plutocratisation": Great neologism.
mrmagooey 13y ago
The story of "things used to be better" is one that apparently never gets old. PS. Anyone who bemoans the lack of "ribald proletariat banter" without a trace of irony is putting themselves squarely in the sights of the same banter ("wanker"), IMO.
- vixen99 13y ago
  Good graffiti style rhetoric but no argument or pertinent observation.
no_wave 13y ago
This is transparently false - the median household income in Manhattan is somewhere around 65k. This is high, but it is not remotely the reality presented. If people are being "priced out", it's by other peoples' willingness to pay more for rent. The masochism of people moving to New York City these days astounds me - they're willing to live in some really terrible conditions to live in New York. Similarly, when I lived in Paris I lived in a ludicrously small apartment with a bathroom in the public hallway. My willingness to pay even a small amount for even that crappy setup "priced out" the potential of combining the space with another apartment or something. What an asshole I am!
carlob 13y ago
An interesting phenomenon in Paris is the fact that there are still many housing projects inside Paris proper. Which means that effectively only the middle class is getting priced out. Only the really rich or really poor get to stay. In the meantime democratic representation is failing: Paris is a metropolis of 12 million inhabitants and only about 2.2 millions vote for the mayor. The government needs to expand the municipality like it did in 1795 and in 1860.
- epsylon 13y ago
  I live just nearby Paris (in Issy-les-moulineaux) and I do vote for a mayor, just not the mayor of Paris. I also vote for a few local representatives (département, canton and région). Representation isn't a problem, since many projects are handled by the départements or région. > An interesting phenomenon in Paris is the fact that there are still many housing projects inside Paris proper. Which means that effectively only the middle class is getting priced out. Only the really rich or really poor get to stay. Access to HLMs (housing projects) is very, very complicated, with waitlists of a few years and strict conditions. In practice there are way too few of them to even cover all the demand (even though construction of housing projects is required by the French law for every town of a minimum size), so the really poor will usually stay way outside in the suburbs.
  - carlob 13y ago
    > I live just nearby Paris (in Issy-les-moulineaux) and I do vote for a mayor, just not the mayor of Paris. I also vote for a few local representatives (département, canton and région). Representation isn't a problem, since many projects are handled by the départements or région. I lived in Montrouge and in Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, so I know what I'm talking about. Look at all the trouble they ran into when they tried to extend bike sharing outside the Paris municipality. If such an artificial barrier were eliminated and the first couple of rings of neighboring towns were to be absorbed in Paris proper such a thing would never had happened.
    - epsylon 13y ago
      I don't remember any specific issues about extending the Vélib outside Paris, but perhaps I didn't pay attention too much. Can you develop ? I don't thing centralizing things more than they are today would significantly improve the issues faced by the various neighbouring municipalities. Au contraire, I'm a proponent of decentralization.
JPKab 13y ago
My cousin is a .01%-er. My father's brother, due to a position of political power he held in the late 1970's, met and married a woman who is an heir to an American old-money family. (if i were to name them, you would know. If you listen to NPR for more than an hour, you will hear their name mentioned as a donor) The contrast is insane, since my entire family is Appalachian coal mining stock. She NEVER visits, so the only time I see her is by visiting her at one of the many properties she has in the various 'global elite' cities. She has an apartment which takes up 3 entire floors of a building which overlooks the East River in Manhattan (in the "50's" of the street numbers, but I won't name the street for anonymity purposes). She is almost never there, perhaps once a year. She has an equally large aparment in London. She has a mansion in Greenwich, Connetticutt. She rents out none of these properties. They are all left vacant for her to use at a whim. She isn't very educated (despite the efforts of her mother, her friends and her see little use in education. They have everything already.) and once had a major cocaine problem, along with half of her friends. I've met most of them, and attended parties at THEIR vacant-most-of-the-year apartments too. I love my cousin, but she and her friends are parasites, sucking off of economic rent, delegating the management of their huge hoards of capital to investment bankers in their social circles. They produce nothing, but buy huge amounts of property on a whim wherever is "hip" and then leave it artfully furnished, beautiful, and vacant 11.5 months out of the year.
- jjsz 13y ago
  The old-money lifestyle is _designed_ to sit back, enjoy, and let the investment bankers handle the rest- exactly what she's doing so they're not parasites, they're living an elite's way of life. If you would get closer to her she would produce a lot of good times and memories. Just because you will travel, stay in the house and read more doesn't mean someone is going to sit down and become an inventor / iterator like you. Her view is that the whole world is working for her, and drugs are her way of coping with what she's missing. What's wrong with that? A decent amount of the elites believe that, what are you going to do- sit there and be proud of your humble life- right? Chill. There's no point of being envious and no point for me being an apologist but if it bothers you so much become one of her investment bankers.
  - 13y ago
NatW 13y ago
I'm an American ruby/python developer living in Paris. The cost of living in Paris is comparable to living in New York City or San Francisco. In some ways it can be cheaper. You can find affordable places to live and work all over Paris, and you can find all kinds of ways to spend or save money in any city.
- pwperl 13y ago
  I am also an American living in Paris, and while I would agree with you that you can find affordable places, as well as different ways to save money here, the fact is that rents are going up significantly each year. An area like Père Lachaise that would have cost €750/month for 30m2 4 years ago, now costs about €1000/month for the same surface area. I wouldn't say this is due to the so-called 1% (after all, combining several tiny apartments to build one big one is quite rare). I chalk it up to the bobo-fication of areas in East Paris while the west gets gobbled up by the super rich. I ended up moving to Bagnolet, 500m from the périph (beltway). As soon as your area code changes from 75 to 93, prices often fall by half. Because of the '75 or bust' mindset here, lower earners like myself will be forced to seek a place outside of Paris. But that's not necessarily bad because in the Paris metro area, values are based more on the beginning of your postal code as much as they are on proximity. So while the 93 is associated with a ghetto communist suburb, it affords people like me the ability to take advantage of Parisian stereotypes and score a great deal.
- yardie 13y ago
  Another American in Paris here. I would say Paris is cheaper than NYC, SF, and London. Unfortunately my salary isn't appreciating nearly as fast as my rent. And when I say rent I really mean the copropriété charges.
- Kurtz79 13y ago
  "The cost of living in Paris is comparable to living in New York City or San Francisco." This means that Paris is a very expensive city, as the article was pointing out. How would compare the salary for that kind of position beetween Paris and SF or NYC, BTW ?
- hilko 13y ago
jusben1369 13y ago
What's obvious by this article is that large cities are in a constant state of flux. Picking a particular moment and bemoaning or applauding the current state is obviously a relatively futile exercise. Perhaps we should modify that famous weather statement "If you don't like the state of your major city just wait 10 years"
lr 13y ago
Perhaps it is time for people with incomes lower (and very low assets/net worth) to be able to deduct their rent from their income, the same way mortgage interest is...
- VLM 13y ago
  I don't see any point in this. By supply and demand it will just explode prices upward, probably by about the amount deducted. So the poor will have to do more paperwork to keep up yet are those least able to do so, and the rich will get richer because rents will go up. Doesn't seem to be the desired outcome. The same thing happens with social engineering of tuition costs or health care costs or day care costs or pretty much anything centrally controlled.
tomaac 13y ago
You should come to Oslo and you will have other meaning of word "expensive". For comparison: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Norway&city1=Oslo&country2=France&city2=Paris http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...
- epsylon 13y ago
  Salaries in Oslo are much higher than in Paris.
- Dewie 13y ago
  That isn't very informative as long as they don't also show the median wages for the two cities (preferably also for the two countries).
michaelochurch 13y ago
Someone needs to publish a list of all these 11.5-month-vacant apartments that rich people buy and that take up so much space, so that burglars can get in when they're not there. There should be an app for that. I'm sure there are home security measures up the wazoo, but those are technical problems. I could never hack the criminal lifestyle-- I have enough anxiety as it is-- but there are cases in which non-violent crime is a necessary social process. If the law won't provide the 6-month-and-1-day law that these cities desperately need, then let the burglars do it. When legal measures fail-- clearly the Powers That Be have not shown an interest in doing the right thing on the housing problems-- then resort to illegal ones.
- epsylon 13y ago
  There has been actually a few actions by some local associations to squat vacant buildings in Paris. One of the most famous of these squat was Rue de la Banque, nearby the prestigious Place de la Bourse, which owes its name to the Palais Brongniart, the old Paris Stock Exchange. The building had been bought by a bank and left vacant for years. By squatting it these three associations did a great thing and launched a national debate on housing conditions in Paris. The building was bought by the city of Paris a bit later (at a cheap price), and was converted into social housing that coincidentally opened just a few days back (on the 6th of june). [1] There was another famous squat, though much shorter-lived. An insurance had left a building vacated avenue Matignon (nearby the Palais de l'Élysée, where the French president resides) for 3 years. The association organized a squat, and they were expulsed 3 days later. I don't know what has become of this building as of today, though it seems there hasn't been any followup. [1] http://www.leparisien.fr/espace-premium/paris-75/rue-de-la-banque-le-squat-a-cede-la-place-a-des-logements-sociaux-22-05-2013-2822769.php http://www.leparisien.fr/espace-premium/paris-75/rue-de-la-b...
  - Jacqued 13y ago
    I am 100% in favor of these actions, not so much the squatting itself as the fact that the city ends up turning useless offices into homes - there is too much office space in paris, and an awful lot of them remain empty. Also, social housing tends to drive the middle class out of the market : since it takes up 15% of the housing space in Paris and houses people who could not be on the market otherwise, it actually contributes to forcing the middle class out of Paris. (Not saying social housing in itself is a bad thing) SO if you combine : - too much office space - 15% of housing taken up by social housing - limitations on construction because the city is a giant museum - no extention of the city since 1860 (prices go down 20-50% when you change the postal code from 75 to 93 - ecological regulations that make buildings more costly to building every other year You get why prices have more than doubled since 2000. Paris is going to be a city without a middle class, with only elites, upper-class and poor workers
julienmarie 13y ago
As a former Parisian, now expatriated to South East Asia, what is the most striking in Paris is the ratio between salaries and housing costs. Salaries in France are not high because of the heavy taxations, which has some good effects – free education, healthcare, etc... A 50 square meters in a really not nice area of Paris (XIXe arrondissement) would cost around 1400 / 1500 euros ( USD 1800 to 2000 ). As a rule, to be able to rent this, you need at least 3 or 4 times this amount as revenue, so between 4500 and 6000 euros a month. A little statistics I like : only 3% of the french household has a monthly revenue higher than 4000 EUR. Also the renting market is really not liquid in France, because it is really hard to make someone move out in case they do not pay ( it can take as long as 2 years ). So as a consequence, the selection to find a tenant is hard ( you need people to guarantee you, and more and more often, you need also people guaranteeing your guarantee... )... Crazy...
saosebastiao 13y ago
Development restrictions can and will do that. They have been doing it consistently for several decades.
ChuckMcM 13y ago
Does anyone know the property tax uplift? Basically if you're paying $1M for a property in New York City and stay their 2 weeks a year you get end up paying taxes for 52 weeks and consuming city services for 2, so that would be a ~25x the tax per service rendered. Is this noticeable to cities or in the noise?
kylebgorman 13y ago
This would be interesting if, instead of anecdotes, it had actual data.
davidf18 13y ago
I currently live in Manhattan and I've lived in London (Golders Green, Hampstead) and Paris (7th, 6th). The reason why costs are rising is because of land use restrictions through zoning and building codes that regulate housing and commercial real estate density. In other words, politically induced scarcity benefiting wealthy landowners at the cost to those people wishing to buy housing, to rent an apartment, or to run a business is the cause for rising housing prices. The answer is deregulating the politically induced scarcity of land use. The politically induced scarcity interferes with the market efficiency that would otherwise allow the housing to be more affordable. This is a basic principle of microeconomics and was initially explained by David Ricardo when he explained that the Corn Laws that restricted the import of corn into Britain benefited landowners because it artificially increased the cost of corn thus making the cost of land more scarce and expensive. David Ricardo felt so strongly about this that he joined Parliament to overturn the Corn Laws. Similarly the solution today is to deregulate the overly restrictive zoning and building code regulations that cause the scarcity. Economist (and FT columnist) Tim Harford explains this in more detail in his book, "The Undercover Economist."

150 points by bergie 13y ago

While I'd love to be able to afford to live in Paris (that place is unbelievable), so long as this 'rush back to the city' is because the rich are sick of the beaches, I'll be just as happy!

kiba 13y ago

Why is Paris really expensive? Constricted supply and high demand. Why is the supply constricted? Because Paris refuse to build anything in the center. That's because the center is a historical preservation district writ large. If you build anything modern, it would "ruin" the image of Paris. So, Paris would need to change its policy and start demolishing old buildings, and build higher density buildings. Certainly, the rich will keep buying the most desirable parts of the cities, but the inability for the poor and the middle class to live in the center will be less acute.

rdouble 13y ago
Paris is already the densest city in Europe, with the densest suburbs.
tribeofone 13y ago
That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
chrisvineup 13y ago
Yeah start with that stupid Eiffel Tower its a bloody eyesore!
- kiba 13y ago
  Unfortunately, the desire to keep historical buildings conflict with the need to add density. Clearly, people should make some tradeoff, but it should not be "never demolish any old buildings".
  - bane 13y ago
    Paris doesn't really need to add density, it's already one of the densest cities in Europe. Clearly some other phenomenon is at work here. Very tall residential buildings have surprisingly low densities for a wide variety of reasons: extra building infrastructure, high capital costs result in expensive apartments which price them out of most people's means so they end up being sold to the rich who can afford to pay twice as much anyways for more floor space, etc. Density: Paris: 21,000/km^2 Seoul: 17,000/km^2 Hong Kong: 6,480/km^2 Cairo: 18,071/km^2
  - goatforce5 13y ago
    If you propose a building in London that would obstruct the view of St Pauls Cathedral for someone many miles away, that can be grounds to have your application denied: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_view http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_view
bru 13y ago
According to Wikipedia[1], Paris is the 34th densest city in the world. 5 French cities are denser, and all of them are Paris' suburbs. Only 3 non-French European cities are denser than Paris. Your comment lacks foundations. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_population_density http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_popula...
- kiba 13y ago
  According to Wikipedia[1], Paris is the 34th densest city in the world. 5 French cities are denser, and all of them are Paris' suburbs. Only 3 non-French European cities are denser than Paris. Then let make Paris even more dense than Paris' suburbs.
- deleted 13y ago
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- rayiner 13y ago
  Its relative. Paris would be even denser given the extreme demand in the city, and with modern technology could be say the 10th densest city and still very livable.
  - subsystem 13y ago
    I'm not sure what the point would be though. You could build all the residential skyscrapers you want in La Defense and still be within 15 minutes of most of Paris proper.
- imgabe 13y ago
  This is a non-sequitor. How dense it is relative to other cities is irrelevant with regard to whether it's dense enough to meet the demand for housing in the city.
ludoo 13y ago
OMG a Le Corbusier nephew. Right, let's raze all historical cities, and build stell and glass cubes. And while we're at it, let's burn a few books and paintings too...
- namdnay 13y ago
  Or a Modern Hausmanian :)
- glenra 13y ago
  > Right, let's raze all historical cities, and build stell and glass cubes. If redevelopment were generally allowed in cities like Paris and New York some of ugliest, least unique buildings would tend to get replaced with something newer and possibly better. And fifty or a hundred years later some of those new buildings would themselves also be prized by preservationists. People HATED the Eiffel Tower when it was first proposed. Some even hated it after it was built. (de Maupassant: “this tall skinny pyramid of iron ladders, this giant and disgraceful skeleton.”) Don't be like those people. > And while we're at it, let's burn a few books and paintings too... The traditionalist position here makes us burn all the potential new books and paintings, because we already have enough copies of the old ones to fill the library. Better to keep a hundred copies of an old book than 99 copies of the old book and one copy of a new one, right?
  - yardie 13y ago
    The city planners did allow some unchecked redevelopment in the early 70s and 80s. Most of those buildings are still considered ugly and time hasn't made them any prettier, trust me. I wouldn't say it's the traditionalist but the the people have, collectively, have decided that they want a specific aesthetic and most of the buildings being proposed aren't it. The Forums Les Halles was erected in the 70s, the architects thought it was pretty, a majority of the population didn't like it. It was built and, 30 years later, demolished.
    - michaelochurch 13y ago
      Most of those buildings are still considered ugly and time hasn't made them any prettier, trust me. Aesthetics are for the comfortable. I don't think most New Yorkers know (or care) what the exteriors of their buildings look like. I'd rather have ugly buildings and lower rent so I can save. Yes, I'm a dick because I care about my future more than whether bored rich people like the looks of the city. I live here, I work here, I don't fucking "look at" it because I don't have time and I don't really care. For aesthetics, I go to Central Park. I'd be pissed if that went away. But I don't give the square root of a fuck if someone wants to build a hideous 100-story apartment building (bringing down rents, one hopes) in the Village, as long as they do it safely. If you want aesthetics, go out to the mountains. It's beautiful and no one is going to build a 100-story eyesore any time soon.
othello 13y ago
Actually two of the 20 districts of inner Paris (the "arrondissements"), which you describe as a "historical preservation district writ large", are more densely populated than any districts in any Western city - except for Manhattan Community Board 8 and 2 districts in Spain [1]. The 11th and the 20th arrondissement both house more than 40,000 people per km2 (104,000 per sq mile), which is denser than any district of Tokyo by the way. If that's not dense, I don't know what is. Incidentally, the 11th is not cheap in any way: buying a flat there will set you back 9000 to 9500€ per sqm ($1200 to $1270 per sqft) [2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_city_districts_by_population_density http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_city_districts_by_popul... [2] http://parispropertygroup.com/blog/2012/real-estate-prices-paris-france-overview-arrondissement/ http://parispropertygroup.com/blog/2012/real-estate-prices-p...
- jasonkester 13y ago
  Indeed. I once dated a girl who lived in Montmartre. Were you to sit on the toilet in her apartment, you'd be able to shower, cook dinner, reach over to answer the door, or make the bed, all without having to stand up. That's actually plenty dense for me.
simias 13y ago
I live in Paris and I don't think that's the solution. All forms of transportation in Paris are saturated. Adding more housing capability would make moving inside (and around) Paris even more terrible than it is today. The boulevard périphérique circling the city is one of the busiest highways in Europe [1]. The RER A train line is also one of the busiest in the world[2]. Trust me, we don't want more people in Paris. What we need to do is decentralize, spread the population, services and work farther around the city. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulevard_P%C3%A9riph%C3%A9rique http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulevard_P%C3%A9riph%C3%A9riqu... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RER_A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RER_A
- deleted 13y ago
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raverbashing 13y ago
That's such an uninformed answer it's funny. Yes, let's rip all the center of Paris and build 100 floor buildings because there's something magical about that specific longitude-latitude. Paris is attractive because of several factors, one of them their architecture. If you're just there for a fancy apartment you can look elsewhere. You rarely need to be there. (but yes, swapping old buildings is something there may be a case for)
victorNicollet 13y ago
The preservation district does exist, but it's certainly not a major issue. There are plenty of places that are not subject to preservation, often within a five-minute walk of preserved ones. The real problem in Paris is the transport infrastructure. As it stands, the morning and evening commutes already saturate several subway and bus lines, non-taxi cars only have access to a subset of all available lanes (and most of the time these are one-way), and while the bicycle rental system works quite well, it does not alleviate peak usage in cold or rainy weather. So, while it's entirely feasible (both technologically and from a historical preservation aspect) to build a 1000-person housing unit with the same footprint as the old 100-person ones, it would only take a few of these to completely saturate the local subway station and nearby streets every morning and every evening.
- davidf18 13y ago
  What you say is wrong because much of the traffic on the subway and busses are commuters who travel from the suburbs. In Manhattan where I live, commuters nearly double the daytime population from 1.6 million to 3.1 million. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/commuters-nearly-double-manhattans-daytime-population-census-says/ http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/commuters-nearl... increasing the building density would simply enable those people who are less fortunate than many of us on HN to also live in Paris. Moreover, I can't speak for Paris but for certain I know in NYC/Manhattan the subways are not running nearly at their capacity. IIRC, the capacity could double if they automated the systems (which they are taking a very long time to do). The same may be true of Paris.

stevoski 13y ago

The article talks a lot about cities now being the domain only of "one-percenters" and "global elite". This is demonstrably false. Consider the UK. UK's population: 62 million London population: 8 million 13% of the UK's population, therefore, resides in London. To say that only the "1%" can afford London is clearly not the case. In France's case, 15% of the population live in Paris. Perhaps we can't all live in London's Chelsea and whatever the most desirable part of Paris is. But both cities have excellent public transport...

seren 13y ago
The 15% you are quoting is for the 'Greater Paris', i.e. Paris and its suburbs, both rich and poor. The intramuros, i.e. inside the city limits, population of Paris as described in the article is about 2 millions people, about 3% of the population. We are closer to the 'few percenters'.
SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
> To say that only the "1%" can afford London is clearly not the case. ORLY. Consider the London borough of Camden. "40% of children are under the poverty line, but average house prices have just hit £1m." http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/21/mervyn-king-housing-warning-fannie-mae http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/21/mervyn-k... http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/05/hous-m24.html?view=print http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/05/hous-m24.html?view=p... In other words, you can afford to "live" in London so long as you pay your salary on rent for a small, shabby flat and give up hope of settling or owning in London. You'll be the underclass who can always be moved on or moved out next year if the owners decide. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/feb/13/london-council-relocation-benefits-cap http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/feb/13/london-council-relo...
- sturadnidge 13y ago
  Not exactly, either the above or you can live in central London if you are on government benefits - the civic planning here is pretty messed up, I appreciate the idealism of forcibly mixing socio-economic classes by mandating council housing be placed amidst regular housing in every borough, but it seems insane that it's the workers who are getting pushed further and further out. Not suggesting the unemployed should.

datr 13y ago

I don't want to undermine this piece too much as I think it is an important issue and what I'm about to say doesn't address all of the details. But I also believe it's an issue that will be partially solved by automated cars. As soon as it becomes palatable to live further from the city and commute; and, to a lesser extent, free up space from car parks, this problem will be dramatically reduced.

kiba 13y ago
Regardless of autonomous cars, proximity and density will always be a decisive feature of cities, which is what allows humanity to thrive and innovate. The fact that only the rich people can afford to live in the center of the city is a problem, because it becomes harder to aggregate human ingenuity and innovation. In fact, I believe autonomous cars will increases a city's ability to network, because it increases people's ability to aggregate into a single place. It will also make the city an even more desirable place to live and work, because autonomous vehicles reduce the pain of moving around in the city.
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  > Regardless of autonomous cars, proximity and density will always be a decisive feature of cities, which is what allows humanity to thrive and innovate. Population density is correlated with increased rates of mental illness.
  - roel_v 13y ago
    You're suggesting that dense cities drive people crazy (sorry if you aren't), but it's not clear whether it's like that, or that crazy people tend to gravitate towards center with high population densities.
    - hilko 13y ago
      It's not, and that's a good point. But it sounds more logical to me. Could you give some reasons why people with 'mental illness' would gravitate towards centers? (mind, I'm asking this with the assumption that mental illness is much broader than just homeless schizophrenics, so to speak. I can definitely see why they might gravitate towards heavily populate areas. But they usually don't pay rent.)

contingencies 13y ago

So in short, this guy gets paid enough writing speculative narrative-fictions to live in Paris, but a family with decent incomes and kids can't? Maybe the kids are the difference, or their parents - unlike the writer - aren't nebulously attached to the great black fiscal hole of the financial services industry.

salmonellaeater 13y ago

The article implies that it's a big problem for commodities to go to the people willing to pay the most for them. Housing is just another commodity; is it surprising that the people who derive the most value from being in a city center (professionals in finance, law, business) end up paying the most for the privilege?

icebraining 13y ago
That it's not surprising doesn't mean it's not a problem. And while those classes may derive the most value from being in the city center, it doesn't necessarily mean that society as whole does. Or even those individuals themselves, in the longer term.
- salmonellaeater 13y ago
  The questions of distorted incentives and short-term decision-making are much more interesting questions! As to whether it's a problem or not, how would you argue that it is? Is there cultural value to having bohemians or artists or people other than high-income professionals clustered in city centers, value which isn't represented in their incomes? If so, wouldn't it be more efficient to provide a subsidy for their cultural output and let them choose where to live?
  - icebraining 13y ago
    More efficient than what?
twic 13y ago
Housing is simply not just another commodity. An utterly fundamental aspect of commodities is that their production is price-elastic, and governed by supply and demand: if demand increases, prices rise, so, supply increases, prices fall again, and the market remains efficient. The housing supply has very little price elasticity, at least in London. This is for the very simple reason that there is hardly any space to build new housing, and enormous barriers to demolishing existing housing to free up such space. So, when prices go up, as they do every year, supply does not expand accordingly. I'm sorry, but to brush the problem off with an assertion that houses are just another commodity is simply to advertise one's ignorance of economics.

kmfrk 13y ago

This reads like an impersonation of a David Brooks and Tom Friedman column. Can't wait for next week in which he dedicates an entire column to what his Parisian cab driver told him.

rms 13y ago

"Plutocratisation": Great neologism.

mrmagooey 13y ago

The story of "things used to be better" is one that apparently never gets old. PS. Anyone who bemoans the lack of "ribald proletariat banter" without a trace of irony is putting themselves squarely in the sights of the same banter ("wanker"), IMO.

vixen99 13y ago
Good graffiti style rhetoric but no argument or pertinent observation.

no_wave 13y ago

This is transparently false - the median household income in Manhattan is somewhere around 65k. This is high, but it is not remotely the reality presented. If people are being "priced out", it's by other peoples' willingness to pay more for rent. The masochism of people moving to New York City these days astounds me - they're willing to live in some really terrible conditions to live in New York. Similarly, when I lived in Paris I lived in a ludicrously small apartment with a bathroom in the public hallway. My willingness to pay even a small amount for even that crappy setup "priced out" the potential of combining the space with another apartment or something. What an asshole I am!

carlob 13y ago

An interesting phenomenon in Paris is the fact that there are still many housing projects inside Paris proper. Which means that effectively only the middle class is getting priced out. Only the really rich or really poor get to stay. In the meantime democratic representation is failing: Paris is a metropolis of 12 million inhabitants and only about 2.2 millions vote for the mayor. The government needs to expand the municipality like it did in 1795 and in 1860.

epsylon 13y ago
I live just nearby Paris (in Issy-les-moulineaux) and I do vote for a mayor, just not the mayor of Paris. I also vote for a few local representatives (département, canton and région). Representation isn't a problem, since many projects are handled by the départements or région. > An interesting phenomenon in Paris is the fact that there are still many housing projects inside Paris proper. Which means that effectively only the middle class is getting priced out. Only the really rich or really poor get to stay. Access to HLMs (housing projects) is very, very complicated, with waitlists of a few years and strict conditions. In practice there are way too few of them to even cover all the demand (even though construction of housing projects is required by the French law for every town of a minimum size), so the really poor will usually stay way outside in the suburbs.
- carlob 13y ago
  > I live just nearby Paris (in Issy-les-moulineaux) and I do vote for a mayor, just not the mayor of Paris. I also vote for a few local representatives (département, canton and région). Representation isn't a problem, since many projects are handled by the départements or région. I lived in Montrouge and in Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, so I know what I'm talking about. Look at all the trouble they ran into when they tried to extend bike sharing outside the Paris municipality. If such an artificial barrier were eliminated and the first couple of rings of neighboring towns were to be absorbed in Paris proper such a thing would never had happened.
  - epsylon 13y ago
    I don't remember any specific issues about extending the Vélib outside Paris, but perhaps I didn't pay attention too much. Can you develop ? I don't thing centralizing things more than they are today would significantly improve the issues faced by the various neighbouring municipalities. Au contraire, I'm a proponent of decentralization.

JPKab 13y ago

My cousin is a .01%-er. My father's brother, due to a position of political power he held in the late 1970's, met and married a woman who is an heir to an American old-money family. (if i were to name them, you would know. If you listen to NPR for more than an hour, you will hear their name mentioned as a donor) The contrast is insane, since my entire family is Appalachian coal mining stock. She NEVER visits, so the only time I see her is by visiting her at one of the many properties she has in the various 'global elite' cities. She has an apartment which takes up 3 entire floors of a building which overlooks the East River in Manhattan (in the "50's" of the street numbers, but I won't name the street for anonymity purposes). She is almost never there, perhaps once a year. She has an equally large aparment in London. She has a mansion in Greenwich, Connetticutt. She rents out none of these properties. They are all left vacant for her to use at a whim. She isn't very educated (despite the efforts of her mother, her friends and her see little use in education. They have everything already.) and once had a major cocaine problem, along with half of her friends. I've met most of them, and attended parties at THEIR vacant-most-of-the-year apartments too. I love my cousin, but she and her friends are parasites, sucking off of economic rent, delegating the management of their huge hoards of capital to investment bankers in their social circles. They produce nothing, but buy huge amounts of property on a whim wherever is "hip" and then leave it artfully furnished, beautiful, and vacant 11.5 months out of the year.

jjsz 13y ago
The old-money lifestyle is _designed_ to sit back, enjoy, and let the investment bankers handle the rest- exactly what she's doing so they're not parasites, they're living an elite's way of life. If you would get closer to her she would produce a lot of good times and memories. Just because you will travel, stay in the house and read more doesn't mean someone is going to sit down and become an inventor / iterator like you. Her view is that the whole world is working for her, and drugs are her way of coping with what she's missing. What's wrong with that? A decent amount of the elites believe that, what are you going to do- sit there and be proud of your humble life- right? Chill. There's no point of being envious and no point for me being an apologist but if it bothers you so much become one of her investment bankers.
- 13y ago

NatW 13y ago

I'm an American ruby/python developer living in Paris. The cost of living in Paris is comparable to living in New York City or San Francisco. In some ways it can be cheaper. You can find affordable places to live and work all over Paris, and you can find all kinds of ways to spend or save money in any city.

pwperl 13y ago
I am also an American living in Paris, and while I would agree with you that you can find affordable places, as well as different ways to save money here, the fact is that rents are going up significantly each year. An area like Père Lachaise that would have cost €750/month for 30m2 4 years ago, now costs about €1000/month for the same surface area. I wouldn't say this is due to the so-called 1% (after all, combining several tiny apartments to build one big one is quite rare). I chalk it up to the bobo-fication of areas in East Paris while the west gets gobbled up by the super rich. I ended up moving to Bagnolet, 500m from the périph (beltway). As soon as your area code changes from 75 to 93, prices often fall by half. Because of the '75 or bust' mindset here, lower earners like myself will be forced to seek a place outside of Paris. But that's not necessarily bad because in the Paris metro area, values are based more on the beginning of your postal code as much as they are on proximity. So while the 93 is associated with a ghetto communist suburb, it affords people like me the ability to take advantage of Parisian stereotypes and score a great deal.
yardie 13y ago
Another American in Paris here. I would say Paris is cheaper than NYC, SF, and London. Unfortunately my salary isn't appreciating nearly as fast as my rent. And when I say rent I really mean the copropriété charges.
Kurtz79 13y ago
"The cost of living in Paris is comparable to living in New York City or San Francisco." This means that Paris is a very expensive city, as the article was pointing out. How would compare the salary for that kind of position beetween Paris and SF or NYC, BTW ?
hilko 13y ago

jusben1369 13y ago

What's obvious by this article is that large cities are in a constant state of flux. Picking a particular moment and bemoaning or applauding the current state is obviously a relatively futile exercise. Perhaps we should modify that famous weather statement "If you don't like the state of your major city just wait 10 years"

lr 13y ago

Perhaps it is time for people with incomes lower (and very low assets/net worth) to be able to deduct their rent from their income, the same way mortgage interest is...

VLM 13y ago
I don't see any point in this. By supply and demand it will just explode prices upward, probably by about the amount deducted. So the poor will have to do more paperwork to keep up yet are those least able to do so, and the rich will get richer because rents will go up. Doesn't seem to be the desired outcome. The same thing happens with social engineering of tuition costs or health care costs or day care costs or pretty much anything centrally controlled.

tomaac 13y ago

You should come to Oslo and you will have other meaning of word "expensive". For comparison: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Norway&city1=Oslo&country2=France&city2=Paris http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...

epsylon 13y ago
Salaries in Oslo are much higher than in Paris.
Dewie 13y ago
That isn't very informative as long as they don't also show the median wages for the two cities (preferably also for the two countries).

michaelochurch 13y ago

Someone needs to publish a list of all these 11.5-month-vacant apartments that rich people buy and that take up so much space, so that burglars can get in when they're not there. There should be an app for that. I'm sure there are home security measures up the wazoo, but those are technical problems. I could never hack the criminal lifestyle-- I have enough anxiety as it is-- but there are cases in which non-violent crime is a necessary social process. If the law won't provide the 6-month-and-1-day law that these cities desperately need, then let the burglars do it. When legal measures fail-- clearly the Powers That Be have not shown an interest in doing the right thing on the housing problems-- then resort to illegal ones.

epsylon 13y ago
There has been actually a few actions by some local associations to squat vacant buildings in Paris. One of the most famous of these squat was Rue de la Banque, nearby the prestigious Place de la Bourse, which owes its name to the Palais Brongniart, the old Paris Stock Exchange. The building had been bought by a bank and left vacant for years. By squatting it these three associations did a great thing and launched a national debate on housing conditions in Paris. The building was bought by the city of Paris a bit later (at a cheap price), and was converted into social housing that coincidentally opened just a few days back (on the 6th of june). [1] There was another famous squat, though much shorter-lived. An insurance had left a building vacated avenue Matignon (nearby the Palais de l'Élysée, where the French president resides) for 3 years. The association organized a squat, and they were expulsed 3 days later. I don't know what has become of this building as of today, though it seems there hasn't been any followup. [1] http://www.leparisien.fr/espace-premium/paris-75/rue-de-la-banque-le-squat-a-cede-la-place-a-des-logements-sociaux-22-05-2013-2822769.php http://www.leparisien.fr/espace-premium/paris-75/rue-de-la-b...
- Jacqued 13y ago
  I am 100% in favor of these actions, not so much the squatting itself as the fact that the city ends up turning useless offices into homes - there is too much office space in paris, and an awful lot of them remain empty. Also, social housing tends to drive the middle class out of the market : since it takes up 15% of the housing space in Paris and houses people who could not be on the market otherwise, it actually contributes to forcing the middle class out of Paris. (Not saying social housing in itself is a bad thing) SO if you combine : - too much office space - 15% of housing taken up by social housing - limitations on construction because the city is a giant museum - no extention of the city since 1860 (prices go down 20-50% when you change the postal code from 75 to 93 - ecological regulations that make buildings more costly to building every other year You get why prices have more than doubled since 2000. Paris is going to be a city without a middle class, with only elites, upper-class and poor workers

julienmarie 13y ago

As a former Parisian, now expatriated to South East Asia, what is the most striking in Paris is the ratio between salaries and housing costs. Salaries in France are not high because of the heavy taxations, which has some good effects – free education, healthcare, etc... A 50 square meters in a really not nice area of Paris (XIXe arrondissement) would cost around 1400 / 1500 euros ( USD 1800 to 2000 ). As a rule, to be able to rent this, you need at least 3 or 4 times this amount as revenue, so between 4500 and 6000 euros a month. A little statistics I like : only 3% of the french household has a monthly revenue higher than 4000 EUR. Also the renting market is really not liquid in France, because it is really hard to make someone move out in case they do not pay ( it can take as long as 2 years ). So as a consequence, the selection to find a tenant is hard ( you need people to guarantee you, and more and more often, you need also people guaranteeing your guarantee... )... Crazy...

saosebastiao 13y ago

Development restrictions can and will do that. They have been doing it consistently for several decades.

ChuckMcM 13y ago

Does anyone know the property tax uplift? Basically if you're paying $1M for a property in New York City and stay their 2 weeks a year you get end up paying taxes for 52 weeks and consuming city services for 2, so that would be a ~25x the tax per service rendered. Is this noticeable to cities or in the noise?

kylebgorman 13y ago

This would be interesting if, instead of anecdotes, it had actual data.

davidf18 13y ago

I currently live in Manhattan and I've lived in London (Golders Green, Hampstead) and Paris (7th, 6th). The reason why costs are rising is because of land use restrictions through zoning and building codes that regulate housing and commercial real estate density. In other words, politically induced scarcity benefiting wealthy landowners at the cost to those people wishing to buy housing, to rent an apartment, or to run a business is the cause for rising housing prices. The answer is deregulating the politically induced scarcity of land use. The politically induced scarcity interferes with the market efficiency that would otherwise allow the housing to be more affordable. This is a basic principle of microeconomics and was initially explained by David Ricardo when he explained that the Corn Laws that restricted the import of corn into Britain benefited landowners because it artificially increased the cost of corn thus making the cost of land more scarce and expensive. David Ricardo felt so strongly about this that he joined Parliament to overturn the Corn Laws. Similarly the solution today is to deregulate the overly restrictive zoning and building code regulations that cause the scarcity. Economist (and FT columnist) Tim Harford explains this in more detail in his book, "The Undercover Economist."