Several years ago, I moved to twin university towns, where I can walk everywhere including between towns.
Funny thing about distances in small towns. It doesn't take long to start perceiving a ten or fifteen minute drive as a "long" drive. But a two hour walk while I turn over a difficult design problem goes by in an instant.
The difference between time that saps or renews our energy.
I was more comfortable living in Paris than living in a Dutch city because I was able to live in a banlieue. Biking here is more developed, and that's a plus. But having my job, my living space, my friends and my favorite weekend activities spread across Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague does take a bit of a toll. I wish The Netherlands did have a much less restrictive housing policy.
Interesting ! My comparison was indeed limited, I only lived in center of Den Haag as a foreigner. Decentralization has its pros and cons, but Paris is way too centralized around Chatelet sometimes.
France as a whole is way too centralized on Paris and it's actually hurting the country. If you do read French, there is a very interesting book from 2024 (IIRC) about this. It's called "Quand le parisianisme écrase la France".
Before reading this book I always thought Germany (where I grew up) was the exception for being more decentralized. But it looks like actually France is way more centralized even compared to other pretty centralized countries.
> Before reading this book I always thought Germany (where I grew up) was the exception for being more decentralized. But it looks like actually France is way more centralized even compared to other pretty centralized countries.
This is closely related to the concept of primate cities (you can read its wikipedia page for more details if interested). Essentially, places like France, UK, Russia (countries with primate cities) have an unusually/disproportionately high concentration of population in the largest city. There are some pros but unsurprisingly cons as well.
How's your French? Sounds like a flippant question, but I hear Parisians are not that... tolerant of even bad French speakers, let alone non-speakers. That stereotype has kept me from visiting, let alone living there, despite it probably being my dream city in every other respect. I'm in my mid 40s, and learning a new (spoken) language has become extremely difficult. I spent 2 years trying to learn German a while back and it was a pretty big failure.
Maybe it's time to stop caring about these stereotypes over-amplified by social media? I'm from Asia and I speak English with a heavy accent, the only French I know is "merci beaucoup", "toilet?", and "au revoir". I've visited Paris twice (1 week each time) and language barrier or the so-called "Parisian elitism" had never prevented me to enjoy my stay there.
That being said, there is still a lot to hate about Paris: dirty and overcrowded subway, shady people everywhere, especially around tourists' places of interest, etc. Not that much different from big cities like NYC, SF, Seattle, etc.
That made me smile. I always felt people in Paris are so unfriendly while in New-York I felt almost aggressed by too much friendliness: Never had so many people asking how my day was going…
Did they really care about your day though? I feel that in France this type of conversation is rare but much more genuine and not a part of a “service”.
I've had a few experiences in France, as recently as a month ago. Not speaking French (I do not) is not generally a problem, no one seems to mind. What some parts of Europe do mind is being too... How do I put this politely... Obviously from certain places with very little sensitivity for where in the the world they happen to be at the time. Often loudly.
When I visited Paris a few years back I found the key was greeting people in French. Maybe spend a couple hours learning how to say hello, how to say "excuse me" and "thank you", how to ask where the nearest toilet is, how to ask for the cheque, etc.
If people see you making the effort, they'll switch to English, in my case, anyway. But you have to show some respect, first. You have to let people know you understand you're a guest in their country.
Of course, this was many years ago. Things may be different now. And of course, if you're going to live there you're going to have to learn the language as quickly as you can.
Prevented from visiting? Paris is one of the most visited cities in the world, and the Parisians are pragmatic people. If you're kind and respectful they'll give you that in return.
I can only say the most basic phrases in French and have experienced zero problems.
It’s probably more similar to Japan in terms of cultural tolerance. I heard the same story years ago and only recently visited (just after the Paris Olympics). I usually try to learn some of the basics of the language before visiting but was incredibly busy and didn’t this trip. I had no issues and I was all over Paris. People were very reasonable, and translation apps/services helped me plenty, but for the most part they spoke English or could understand some basic level of it. If you live there and try to assimilate but speak poorly or little, there may be less tolerance? As a tourist I had not a single incident.
I don’t like to be the ugly American who just assumes the world should speak my language, so I was ready for language barriers, but I had no real issues at all.
As a Frenchman living in Paris – we have such a huge expat community already (and many english-speakers, I worked with Brits, Aussies, Kiwis, Americans, Canadians) than one more or less will be a non-event.
Now it's true that Americans tend to love to frighten each other with firecamp stories about the Big Bad Frenchman, but IME it's mostly a mix of latent francophobia and a grapevine of bad experience between what is locally perceived as wholly uneducated Americans and local Frenchmen that the Americans tend to see as arrogant.
The latest if most often due to (i) tourists forgetting that what is a great week you spent years saving for is another Tuesday for the other guys in the street, (ii) many fundamental French etiquette rules (don't shout, say “hello” first when talking to someone, the absence of a hierarchical relationship between hospitality personnel and customers, distant behaviour is not arrogance but a mark of respect, etc.) are completely accessory in the US customs, leading to very strong misunderstandings.
So book a trip for a week and come say hello, we don't bite! (and avoid like the plague any café/restaurant in the touristy areas)
I went to Paris last year and it was not a big deal, as long as you know the basics like excuse me/please/thank you.
A few times someone would correct us (eg "after 6pm we say bonsoir instead of bonjour"), but it never felt like it was done in a dickish way and people were generally pretty accommodating. Perhaps it helps that I went to Paris with low expectations, not thinking it'd live up to the hype, but I had a great time. Definitely don't let the language thing keep you from going!
If you can you should go. Lived there for 12 years and my French was not amazing but no one gave me shit about it. English has been required in schools since 00s basically anyone under 40 should be able to communicate. But knowing some French goes a lot further.
As a Dutch person having spend many summers in France, I can say that the latest generations are much more tolerant and friendly. When I was young (90’s) I saw camping owners with war grudges screaming “Campsite Full!! (Complet!! In French)” To any German. I also had to walk out of a boulangerie without croissants because they couldn’t understand the way I pronounced croissant… but nowadays you can just speak English anywhere.
I'm french, but I have a dozen of friends here that don't speak English and have an active social circle. In some streets of Le Marais you can hear more English than french
What do you think about all those videos on how dangerous Paris is? Having made the move, would you say that those stem from real experiences and are organic or would you say that it was an organized campaign for some political reason? Or maybe something else?
Trump keeps saying that they want to prevent USA becoming a dangerous place like Europe, even said that recently and the Irish president disagreed with him. As an American, would you say that EU has fallen and it has become a shithole or maybe something in between? I'm just curious if its just about differences of expectations or something.
It keeps repeating how the cleaner air is so good for tourists.
But tourists visiting Paris for a week don’t get the majority of the benefit from cleaner air.
The Parisian residents living there throughout the year do.
Maybe because it’s CNN, an American outlet, they’re focused on the “tourist”, but these benefits have mostly accrued to Parisians.
Also, the 4% increase in traffic jams is minuscule when compared to other large cities across the world (outside of maybe NYC, since it implemented congestion pricing over that period). Paris has not escaped the wrath of the SUV, and a large part of the congestion cities across the world are seeing is solely down to cars becoming bigger.
I live in Paris and bike nearly every day, with my electric bike, or sometimes the city's velib rental bikes, sometimes private rental bikes (Uber, Dott, Voi). I love the drastic push to add more bike lanes, and reduce car lanes. I don't own a car in this city. Don't need one.
> “She is constantly criticized, but still reelected: I’ve never understood it,” says Lionel Pradal, a bistro owner on the bustling Rue des Martyrs. “Parisians never go out and vote, and then after they complain. This is the problem with French people, it’s always the same.”
This is somewhat of a public secret, but few people ever stay in Paris for longer than say 10 years and thus aren't that attached to the city. It's noticeable in how few people voted in Hidalgo's referendums.
The city has been losing citizens in favour of its suburbs for close to two decades now (if not much longer really) and this is a trend which shows no clear signs of reversing.
I live in Krakow and use car everyday*. There is virtually no possibility I will get my kids to school in the morning using public communication, mainly because the school is 4 kilometres away. City is so pro-clean-air and eliminate-parking-spaces and remove-cheap ekhm I mean polluting,-cars but meanwhile does nothing except for selling more and more ground for building flats. Not schools not hospitals not child daycare centres, but flats...
____
* Always going to work by bicycle if possible, but if I have violin lesson or doctor's appointment I am not able to because the distances would be too long
> Less successfully, the road redesign has also seen a reported increase in hospitalizations among cyclists and pedestrians.
well, with a lot more people walking and cycling this is to be expected. the article doesn't mention changes in accidents involving cars though.
> For young, trendy and able-bodied Parisians ...
i live next to a bike path. the elderly make up a a significant amount of the cyclists, probably because they don't trust themselves to drive a car anymore.
This article omits so many negatives from the "cyclist's paradise" vision of Hidalgo's 2 terms that I don't know where to start. Families are the first casualties: the Paris metro is nowhere near accessible to strollers except if you are willing to go to the chiropractor after each week end, and using your car - hell, even parking your family car - is a no go as soon as there is some kind of hipster sports event or just as soon as you are after 10am on week end mornings. Local parks and generally streets are so dirty that you have to wash your children from head to toe as soon as they have set foot outside. And I'm not even talking about used seringes and broken glass in certain parts of the city. I'm actually so ashamed of my city at this point.
People keep saying Hidalgo's policies made people angry, but then voter turnout when she actually asks for confirmation of her policies is low. For example, 2024's vote on whether to triple the parking fees for big SUVs. [1]
Turnout was tiny, but the measure passed.
Well what does that mean? It certainly doesn't mean that there is a huge wave of enthusiasm for the measure.
But conversely it also means there's not a huge wave of anger about it. It's not like the automotive lobby didn't try hard to create one; the media coverage was actually kind of crazy at the time. And with the low turnout, even a small mobilization would have been sufficient to reject this measure. But it didn't materialise. So when I read articles like this one from CNN, I just have to ask myself what the agenda is behind jazzing this up as much.
Slightly off-topic but NYC went through a similar process when congestion pricing met legal battle after legal battle. Long to short, there was a calculated effort to make midtown less and less vehicle-friendly. The "hack" was to take streets / aves and repurpose those for pedestrians. Special walking lanes, more "park cafes", bike lanes, etc. None were stated as being anti-vehicle - as that would open up legal challenges - but that was obviously the intention.
Yes, she's the poster-child for gentrification, that's why France is about to have a far-right government in the near term. But I guess she has made some Parisian bobos really happy, good for her.
Complete tangent, but I met my equally nerdy brother in Paris last month.
It was my first time, and his fourth. We stayed South of the Republique metro station.
After the literal 30th indie Manga [0] shop that we walked by, I asked him: "how are all these shops financially viable?" He said: "look inside."
Holy crap, they all had customers inside! I had no idea that Japanese culture has such a strong presence in the heart of Paris, in the middle of Europe.
[0] I should be clear, this was not just Manga. There were so many cool indie retro video game shops that it blew my little mind. I should probably get out of my Silesian village more often.
Vancouver did the same thing. Now remaining parking is just filled with luxury vehicles with MSRPs that indicate you could charge $100 an hour and they wouldn’t care.
Nice of the wealthy politicians to get the riffraff off the road so the guy driving a Brabus G-Wagon, Rolls, or 911 Turbo can commute and park in peace. The poors can sit on packed busses with methheads.
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I don't even take the subway, walking and biking are enough where I live. Hopefully we can reach the comfort of dutch cities within a decade.
Funny thing about distances in small towns. It doesn't take long to start perceiving a ten or fifteen minute drive as a "long" drive. But a two hour walk while I turn over a difficult design problem goes by in an instant.
The difference between time that saps or renews our energy.
And I am off for a walk...
Before reading this book I always thought Germany (where I grew up) was the exception for being more decentralized. But it looks like actually France is way more centralized even compared to other pretty centralized countries.
> Before reading this book I always thought Germany (where I grew up) was the exception for being more decentralized. But it looks like actually France is way more centralized even compared to other pretty centralized countries.
This is closely related to the concept of primate cities (you can read its wikipedia page for more details if interested). Essentially, places like France, UK, Russia (countries with primate cities) have an unusually/disproportionately high concentration of population in the largest city. There are some pros but unsurprisingly cons as well.
Or maybe it’s a scapegoat?
That being said, there is still a lot to hate about Paris: dirty and overcrowded subway, shady people everywhere, especially around tourists' places of interest, etc. Not that much different from big cities like NYC, SF, Seattle, etc.
I felt safer in Paris, LA, and Seattle than I ever was in NYC.
If people see you making the effort, they'll switch to English, in my case, anyway. But you have to show some respect, first. You have to let people know you understand you're a guest in their country.
Of course, this was many years ago. Things may be different now. And of course, if you're going to live there you're going to have to learn the language as quickly as you can.
I can only say the most basic phrases in French and have experienced zero problems.
I don’t like to be the ugly American who just assumes the world should speak my language, so I was ready for language barriers, but I had no real issues at all.
Now it's true that Americans tend to love to frighten each other with firecamp stories about the Big Bad Frenchman, but IME it's mostly a mix of latent francophobia and a grapevine of bad experience between what is locally perceived as wholly uneducated Americans and local Frenchmen that the Americans tend to see as arrogant.
The latest if most often due to (i) tourists forgetting that what is a great week you spent years saving for is another Tuesday for the other guys in the street, (ii) many fundamental French etiquette rules (don't shout, say “hello” first when talking to someone, the absence of a hierarchical relationship between hospitality personnel and customers, distant behaviour is not arrogance but a mark of respect, etc.) are completely accessory in the US customs, leading to very strong misunderstandings.
So book a trip for a week and come say hello, we don't bite! (and avoid like the plague any café/restaurant in the touristy areas)
A few times someone would correct us (eg "after 6pm we say bonsoir instead of bonjour"), but it never felt like it was done in a dickish way and people were generally pretty accommodating. Perhaps it helps that I went to Paris with low expectations, not thinking it'd live up to the hype, but I had a great time. Definitely don't let the language thing keep you from going!
It's safe to assume you'll encounter a very wide variety of people speaking many different languages.
Trump keeps saying that they want to prevent USA becoming a dangerous place like Europe, even said that recently and the Irish president disagreed with him. As an American, would you say that EU has fallen and it has become a shithole or maybe something in between? I'm just curious if its just about differences of expectations or something.
It keeps repeating how the cleaner air is so good for tourists.
But tourists visiting Paris for a week don’t get the majority of the benefit from cleaner air.
The Parisian residents living there throughout the year do.
Maybe because it’s CNN, an American outlet, they’re focused on the “tourist”, but these benefits have mostly accrued to Parisians.
Also, the 4% increase in traffic jams is minuscule when compared to other large cities across the world (outside of maybe NYC, since it implemented congestion pricing over that period). Paris has not escaped the wrath of the SUV, and a large part of the congestion cities across the world are seeing is solely down to cars becoming bigger.
> “She is constantly criticized, but still reelected: I’ve never understood it,” says Lionel Pradal, a bistro owner on the bustling Rue des Martyrs. “Parisians never go out and vote, and then after they complain. This is the problem with French people, it’s always the same.”
This is somewhat of a public secret, but few people ever stay in Paris for longer than say 10 years and thus aren't that attached to the city. It's noticeable in how few people voted in Hidalgo's referendums.
The city has been losing citizens in favour of its suburbs for close to two decades now (if not much longer really) and this is a trend which shows no clear signs of reversing.
____
* Always going to work by bicycle if possible, but if I have violin lesson or doctor's appointment I am not able to because the distances would be too long
> Less successfully, the road redesign has also seen a reported increase in hospitalizations among cyclists and pedestrians. well, with a lot more people walking and cycling this is to be expected. the article doesn't mention changes in accidents involving cars though.
> For young, trendy and able-bodied Parisians ... i live next to a bike path. the elderly make up a a significant amount of the cyclists, probably because they don't trust themselves to drive a car anymore.
Well what does that mean? It certainly doesn't mean that there is a huge wave of enthusiasm for the measure.
But conversely it also means there's not a huge wave of anger about it. It's not like the automotive lobby didn't try hard to create one; the media coverage was actually kind of crazy at the time. And with the low turnout, even a small mobilization would have been sufficient to reject this measure. But it didn't materialise. So when I read articles like this one from CNN, I just have to ask myself what the agenda is behind jazzing this up as much.
[1]: https://www.lerevenu.com/reduire-impots/conseils-impots/pari...
looks at the reason
CARS.
It was my first time, and his fourth. We stayed South of the Republique metro station.
After the literal 30th indie Manga [0] shop that we walked by, I asked him: "how are all these shops financially viable?" He said: "look inside."
Holy crap, they all had customers inside! I had no idea that Japanese culture has such a strong presence in the heart of Paris, in the middle of Europe.
[0] I should be clear, this was not just Manga. There were so many cool indie retro video game shops that it blew my little mind. I should probably get out of my Silesian village more often.
Nice of the wealthy politicians to get the riffraff off the road so the guy driving a Brabus G-Wagon, Rolls, or 911 Turbo can commute and park in peace. The poors can sit on packed busses with methheads.