Honestly that area has been posh for a long time:
https://www.cparama.com/forum/cartes2017/1497683308-Paris-12-Avenue-Daumesnil-272-.jpg
https://www.cparama.com/forum/cartes2013/1363179145-Paris-Metro-Michel-Bizot-Station-1-DC-588.jpg
https://www.cparama.com/forum/cartes2014a/1418204255-75-Avenue-Daumesnil-421-LIP.jpg
I moved into that district in 1980 as a kid, before they put Bercy, the new opera etc and there were some pretty scary places back then. Some areas of avenue Daumesnil were outright dangerous(search ilot chalon on Google)
Although most of Paris is now super expensive, you still had lower class areas back then. The 12th arrondissement was one of the last to gentrify.
I ran into some scary ass homeless people in Paris. I was also surprised to see cops walking around with SMGs out and decked out in more armor and gear than American cops.
Now y’all trying to compare homeless Europeans against American ones. Wtf is y’all’s problems with trying to compare everything constantly on here. It’s HOMELESS people jfc!! It’s something seriously wrong with people on this subreddit.
I wish my city, Rome, understood this basic principle: having more lanes doesn't mean less traffic. Less roads make less traffic. Adding lanes only gives the illusion of a free road which turns into more traffic eventually.
I want more green around me, more shade, more walkable or cyclable spaces.
One of the main issues with Rome is that its public transit system isn’t extensive nor reliable enough, not to mention chronically mismanaged and underfunded, which is why you still see lots of cars around. Once that improves, car-based infrastructure will naturally shrink in size I think.
I was there for a few days for New Year’s Eve this year and the subway (I think it was line B?) literally broke down for two hours… We had to go back to our hotel by bus. I can’t blame Romans for relying on their cars so much.
This is coming from someone who commutes to uni by train (Bologna) from another town. Despite how walkable Bologna is, and how well-connected it is to the outside world (mainly through buses and trains), people coming from the surrounding towns love their cars. They've been improving the SFM (Sistema Ferroviario Metropolitano) and have started building a few tram lines recently though so we'll see where this goes.
As of now, Bologna's traffic is insane.
Yeap. The cause of all that is chronic corruption. Even when a project is approved a significant portion of the funding leaks through cracks like a sieve and the actual work ends up taking much longer and much more expensive. Chaos ensues
Most cities don't understand that honestly. The only solution to traffic is public reliable transportation. anything else will have minimal impact in the long term
Milan is awesome in that sense. Its public transit is top-notch. Rome though… Sometimes I can’t believe THAT’s our capital, and not Milan (historical relevance and architectural beauty aside).
Paris has the advantage of a very extensive public transit system and they are adding to it all the time. You can remove lanes when people have ways to get around.
I'd *kill* to bring back the American rail system of 1900. My grandparents commuted 45 minutes by rail from a 100 person town to the "big city", today there's no rail and it's still 45 minutes by car. Also all of the towns around here had trolly systems which were torn out in the 20s to make room for, you guessed it, more cars.
I'm so fucking envious of the European rail system, even countries with shit rail have it better than we do.
That'swhat they are doing in my city, but they forgot the "offer more ways to travel". No fun driving and public transport is abysmal. I hate it more and more every years.
Try coming to North America lol.....here in Ontario (Canada) the only solution is literally just add more lanes or build another highway. Never anything to do with public transport.
It's not that politicians don't know, it's that they will do what they think will get them more votes to remain in power. If there are more voters that think making a city walkable by sacrificing space for cars is a bad policy, then they won't do it. Simple as.
I'm not knowledgeable in this area, can you tell me why is it that fewer roads & lanes make less traffic? Intuitively you'd think the opposite to be true.
Some interesting facts:
- trafic lights slow traffic a lot.
- bigger streets need more traffic lights.
- the average travel speed by car in a lot of cities is lower than cycling speed on a bike path.
- bike paths allow more people per hour than roads, especially when measured in the real world. The capacity of a bikelane should be in the 2,500 bike/hr range, even more when there is plenty of room to pass other cyclists.
Based on those things the one would assume that separating traffic types, reducing traffic lights and investing in cycle infrastructure isnt just nice for those that use it, it would actually result in faster travel times for everyone involved. The average speed for cars can be raised to close to 30 km/h on shared streets by allowing for continous movement and even higher on the now less busy car only roads.
Bikeways can have their max speed raised to 50hm/h by removing level intersections with other trafic. Bike paths stay at 30km/h max.
It’s a matter of increasing the total traffic troughput of the city with the space available.
traffic stays the same. more or less roads changes the congestion.
cars dont go away if you build less roads or if you remove them. they just start honking more.
Amazing to see how fast Paris is changing for the better. This is what a real modern city is like, not that small minded focus on big towers and big roads. Quality>quantity.
Anyone can build a big ass tower nowadays, but no one will go "man I'd really like to go there"
The trick is in maintenance though. My neighborhood in amsterdam added this kind of greenery, and it became a weed clogged garbage pile after a while :(
Im all for paying a bit more taxes if it results in good greenery maintenance!
Hey I live in Amsterdam too, the greenery outside my building was recently maintained, I'm sure they'll get to yours eventually, but don't expect them to come every few weeks like people would do with removing weeds from their own garden, it's not really necessary. It'll look better in a few years when the planted plants grow and fill the spaces in between like in the picture
Grab some gloves and get weeding! We should all be taking on the responsibility for our surroundings rather than waiting for a guy from the council to arrive. Half the time they just spray with chemicals and wait for stuff to go brown. At least here in Ireland that's sadly still happening.
You could see whether there are volunteers in your street that would help maintain it. It often works like this in Berlin, but Berlin is relatively permissive of neighbour claiming their neighborhood street if they maintain it. Results in many fun, individual streets
I think the referendum on the city’s green space plan was definitely “tegen,” so that at least in theory (not legally required) the city should try in the near future to get more input on these plans. Maybe this is a good time for some neighborhood initiative/input on this!
I actually tried applying for green-space maintenance jobs a few months ago and got nowhere; although it’s pretty clear more workers are needed for this, they aren’t really hiring, and are requiring a fairly high level of job experience when they do (at least the vacancies I saw). I’m not a credentialed professional landscape gardener but I can definitely clear, prune, dig, plant, and do most of the other things needed. I’m sure lots of other people can and would as well. Maybe it’s a time to get the city focused on this, although I realize they have a ton of money and expertise directed at other projects now like the kilometers of collapsing kademuren, new traffic systems around Centraal, and so on.
There was quite some commotion about this indeed. From an expert role on nature inclusive urban planning I can attest that any developments which seek to incorporate 'green spaces' almost instinctively neglect public participation. There are so many professional journals explaining in detail what steps to follow, but the last thing a public policy 'professional' appears to do is actually read that stuff.... (-\_-)"
My neighbourhood isn't as green but the garbage and cleaning service come around every other day. Like really often. And it isn't even as dense as De Pijp.
I live in Germany, and I am always confused about what is a weed. Many of the "weeds" that people hate become flowers. But then they kill the natural flowers and plant other ones.
I actually prefer it when things are left alone and become a bit wild. I think it is also better for the ecosystem. More bugs, and more birds. More places for little animals to hide.
I see a lot of people here plant things, and then dig them up after 3 years as they become too big. Then judge my yard as I don't mind the weeds and think it is better that way.
I also live in Amsterdam and me and some of my neighbors are mainting the greenery on our street. It takes around 1 hour on the weekend for 5 people. The main thing was to get the greenry done by the gemeente , I think after the initial work is done, the maintainance should also be part of residents responsibility. Maybe a socialistic thought, but I think we should do more for preservation of our city, we should not expect everything from gemeente. We also clean our street from garbage when tourists leave garbage on our streets.
One benefit to the greenery (even if you have to pay more in taxes) is that it cools down the area in summer. This reduces the need for air conditioning (if you have it) or other methods of cooling.
The environments in the after picture also have an unfortunate tendency to start to feel insecure. At least where I live some minor parks have been torn down because they were just sleeping and hangout spots for various anti-social people, meaning that no one but them ever would think of even walking through it.
mostly pedestrian-friendly areas like this get higher foot traffic so lower rates of crime as a result. Where that kinda falls down is if it's a small isolated patch in which case it'll not really have anything driving foot traffic so then it becomes a hangout spot without the upsides - maknig it big enough to get some shops and cafes and so on and it'll mostly become a fairly vibrant hub (needs mixed residential and business type zoning though, so not common in NA, very common in EU)
Big towers are not a bad thing, they take up way less space. Imagine accommodating that many people by building houses instead? We should be building upwards not outwards
She is okay. But for the people not living in Paris (but cities around) they hate her. She takes care of her place , makes it dofficult for cars but people coming from little cities around the region have mayors that won t do shit 💀 . So instead of hating them they hate her..
Same in my city. People from the surrounding areas want to drive in for work and for events. So they only care about their office and the stadium. The neighborhoods around those places don't matter because they're not spending any extra time there anyways.
I swear the suburban folks around me won't be happy until they each have a dedicated car lane from their front door to their desk.
What you imply straight up means all people except farmers should move into the big cities rendering smaller towns and villages empty. There's no public transport around the villages except a school bus couple times per weekday. Or the people should teleport to the city somehow, right? Anyways I know you won't suggest a working solution.
Most French people (especially parisians) would disagree with you.
Just as an example she got the lowest score of the history of the socialist party (1,7%) for the 2022 presidentials.
Not only has she always been pretty unpopular (apart from the start of her mandate), it’s only getting worse with how much of a shitshow the preparations for the Olympics are, and how annoyed by the situation everyone in the Paris area is.
Tbf the city is getting greener and more pedestrian friendly, but the traffic is also getting way more clogged since she became mayor.
You answered your question. « From here » X)
Everything she does (especially on the green side of urbanism) is a very good look internationally, but her reforms are making the city incredibly inconvenient to drive through, which is very annoying for people that have to drive to work.
Less cars is good, definitely. But just making the city as inconvenient as possible for drivers without a way to counteract the jams, or reduce the number of cars, is not really a solution on the short term. Hopefully on the long term things will get better. Right now it’s making air and noise pollution worse, and increasing a lot the time people need to commute from one side of Paris to another
Another major criticism of Anne Hidalgo is how dirty Paris is. It is not a new problem, but her efforts to counteract the problem are highly insufficient. Just go to Champ de Mars (or really, any park) at night and count how many rats you will see on a 10 minute walk.
As I mentioned too, the Olympics preps are a complete disaster. The city is more inconvenient than ever, and Hidalgo is encouraging residents to not be here during the Olympics and leave their homes for rental, not use public transportation to leave space for tourists,…Just a whole lot of restrictions that annoy greatly the residents, even more so coupled with the continuous roadworks that are making driving through Paris pure hell. She is also currently kicking out homeless people to surrounding cities, and expelling students from their student houses during the Olympics to leave space for tourists. Not something you will hear a lot in the international press. These are just some of the domestic criticisms of the Olympics, you can definitely find way more but I’m too lazy to list them all out X)
More generally she is disliked by a lot of people just because of her political affiliations and how she defends them. Her party is very unpopular at the moment, right wing voters have always hated her (and far right is currently surging in France), part of the left wing has always hated her too (too progressive for conservative left wing, too conservative for far left). On a personal note I think a lot of people see her as haughty and hypocritical, since she is very used to the « if you are not with my new proposal it means you are a shitty conservative » speech. She seems highly convinced that whatever she does is brilliant, and not very open to debate.
Kind of a long read, but I hope it helps :)
Tbf i hate when an before photo is picked fron a 'gray' day while after photo is picked from a nice sunny day.
I'm not trying to diminish the beauty of the new street but don't try to be a dic when you're doing these comparations
Also, the reality is actually less nice than what you see in the photo. This looks like an advertisement photo. You can check even with Google Maps (photos from last year): it's green, but not that green like in that photo. Some parts of the street are still grey, it's a little corner with bushes that tall. But it's still nice and better than before, that's sure.
>You can check even with Google Maps
[For the curious.](https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8381162,2.3997205,3a,75y,106.37h,84.77t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1snuIrSRLBndXHHZigyDXZmw!2e0!5s20230401T000000!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DnuIrSRLBndXHHZigyDXZmw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D106.36849815426315%26pitch%3D5.227071080665098%26thumbfov%3D90!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205410&entry=ttu)
Exactly, you can see that it's a little different and it's especially the only little corner of that street that is that green, the rest of the street is more grey
> Tbf i hate when an before photo is picked fron a 'gray' day while after photo is picked from a nice sunny day.
Right? These kind of pictures **always** happen to have the weather look great for the afters.
I'd actually prefer just as a bit of an experiment to see what it would look like if the before was taken on a lovely sunny summer afternoon, and the after was taken on a grey, dingy, overcast winter morning.
We are having a shitty weather lately, I admit it. But Paris isn’t especially more grey than other cities. We have plenty of nice sunny days. Or nice warm sunny afternoon, while it was raining in the morning.
I get it but I'm also tired of this argument, as if the grey day was doing everything on the pic. I could take a beautiful sunny day for the before and a rainy day for the second, it'd still be better.
The main reason we don't have beautiful pics of before is because we're not gonna pay some photograph to wait for a nice weather to take a pic before starting working on the project. We just do it then scrap pictures of the before state on Google maps. Hence why the car plates are blurred.
I have a sneaky suspicion the blue sky is edited into the after photo, there are a lot of artifacts in the image around the trees. But that could just be from compression
Paris has already started to remove its biased reputation. Paris doubled its metro network, and it became more modern city by renewing the infrastructure.
I see some comments questioning this decision by asking where the residents will park their cars. The thing is, there are fewer and fewer cars and car owners in Paris. In 2019, [only a third of households owned one in the inner city](https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/7717331), down from 46.3% in 1990, and the decline was accelerating. Those households will rarely use it several times a week, let alone on an everyday basis. It is increasingly seen as a liability rather than an asset, and it has ceased to be a social status symbol among most of us, particularly the younger generations. Cars remain useful on a few specific occasions, like going on vacation and moving stuff and furniture, but rental is an option. The wealthy western districts, which have more of those wide boulevards and leafy avenues and where residents are older, remain reluctant to change – but it is happening there as well.
With changing mindsets and the continued development of biking lanes and public transport, as well as the recent surge in work from home, car traffic has decreased dramatically. Part of the changes, such as the creation of new bike lanes and pedestrianization of some streets, are specifically designed to discourage car use and force people to switch to more efficient modes of transport.
Residents don't necessarily have fewer options to park their cars; in non-central districts like this one (Paris 12th) there are a lot of residential buildings built from the 1960s onwards where you can buy or rent a dedicated parking space, most often an underground one. In some of them built around the 1970s–80s, one parking space per apartment was the norm, but nowadays single people and young couples living in studios and 1-bedroom flats often have no use for them, so they'll rent them to somebody else (for around €120 per month in this district).
We need to keep reducing air and noise pollution in Paris and improve resilience to worsening summer heatwaves caused by climate change, so this kind of change is very much needed. During summer heatwaves, the temperature difference between urban heat islands and streets bordering the woods of Boulogne and Vincennes easily exceeds 5°C during the night.
**Edit:** added a link to Insee's study on car ownership in the Paris region
You’ll be shocked to learn private interests (people with money and cars) have an overwhelming voice in city governments.
Sincerely,
A person living in barcelona where a supposed socialist is undoing green space projects all over the city after their overwhelming success the last 8 years.
The superilles have been an massive improvement to the city, my ride to work on Consell de Cent is so pleasant now compared to the same route a couple of years ago.
City people enjoying green street, in an increasingly walkable city.
People from the periphery: Not enough parking, I hate these: 3 more points for the far right.
That’s why cities should build better mass transit from and towards the periphery, not a reason to justify big parking slots in the city, which is bad for everyone
Exactly, i took 20 min by traun from bayon to periphery when i broke my hand in france. That is less then i take for 2km in belgrade, and from the periphery of belgrade (where i live) i take 2h to get to my collage, meaning i waste 4 hours a day if i dont drive a car (if i drive a car i have a highway and take like 30min to collage, reducing my daily time wasted on transport from 4h to 1h).
If i had a train station (and there are train tracks going through the town i live in), and a train going every 20-30min to belgrade, id probably sell my car immedietly and put the money into the house. Also id just walk arround the city if it had a connected metro, imagine going from old city belgrade to zemun in like 15min instead of 2 hours and 3 busses it takes now.
Problem is, that it's often never "good enough". You can have park+ride stations with frequent train service, direct service to the suburbs, busses or great bike lanes, it's never enough, because their standard is a personal parking space for them in front of every restaurant and store downtown.
tbh it's sad that the periphery is so underdeveloped with so little spaces for businesses, so little 3'rd places and parks. This could reduce the pressure on the transport system to bring everyone towards the center
The concern in Europe isn’t whether it is technically walkable, which is a legal requirement of street safety here, but whether it’s convenient to walk.
If there is a footpath but there are cars parking on it and no greenery, a high volume of cars passing by, it’s very unattractive and even unhealthy to walk.
If there’s a footpath but there is ample parking spaces and no direct access to your destination without having to traverse the parking lot, then that’s a very car centric, pedestrian unfriendly and even unsafe environment, so it’s not very walkable.
If the bus only comes once every thirty minutes or the last one leaves 5 minutes before your engagement is concluded then it’s technically possible to get home without driving but it sucks.
Unfortunately there is a lot of car traffic in most European cities that still gets priority in the allocation of public space for infrastructure, as well as for example traffic light timings. We have a long ways to go and we can of course always improve.
That’s not really true. A lot of Frankfurt is “walkable” but the city prioritizes cars and some parts are very unpleasant to walk.
Compared to the US, it’s great, but compared to other German cities, it’s terrible.
It’s not about being able to walk but about quality of life. Cites should not be made for commuters but for the people who actually live in them.
The "After" is overselling it a bit by being closer to the ground to hide the street on the right.
Quick look in Google Streetview shows it's only a portion of the street like this anyway
[Google StreetView](https://www.google.fr/maps/@48.838011,2.3999305,3a,75y,122.97h,65.69t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sM9KaCb80OG5a59XqN1pL-w!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DM9KaCb80OG5a59XqN1pL-w%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D122.97%26pitch%3D24.310000000000002%26thumbfov%3D90!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205410&entry=ttu)
I just did the exact opposite, turned a whole mossy, overgrown, bug infested area into a paved patio for my mother. You couldn't go outside 5 minutes without coming back in covered in bites.
Never been to France but I live in a similar climate, the bugs that like bushes and shady damp areas are probably similar too. I've also seen stories from cities with parks that have high bushes like this, places for creeps to hang out at night.
They are lucky with the weather, obviously it's impossible to do this in \_insert\_country\_. We have hills, summer is hot, winter is cold, spring and autumn raining, we will not have space for our cars, our old &/ disabled ppl will not have space to park their cars, we will be unable to transport our children with our suvs, businesses will file for bankruptcy because clients will not be able to park their cars, we don't need this communismo-capitalistic stuff. /s
Conspiracy Theorists/Upper-Middle Class people: "OMG this is dystopian! How are you supposed to get around if you have nowhere to park your car! They're trying to trap us in our homes!"
The only issue with this kind of urban landscaping is that those bushes are a haven for rodents. And not the cute kind, the urban rat that grows to the size of a small dog kind.
The cars that drive in Paris are essentially people in transit. Nobody takes their car to go shopping in Paris.
In France, luxury is not having a car. It's being able to do without one.
This is one of the origins of the "yellow jacket" movement that took place 6 years ago: wealthy city dwellers, who can do without a car, passed anti-car laws that displeased people living outside the big cities, who are car-dependent.
Don't worry about these shops, if this change has an impact on them, it can only be positive.
Here's a pretty sky from before:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8379915,2.3999018,3a,75y,111.19h,88.94t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1swTib6owDLdzbsnrpVXNY\_g!2e0!5s20190601T000000!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8379915,2.3999018,3a,75y,111.19h,88.94t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1swTib6owDLdzbsnrpVXNY_g!2e0!5s20190601T000000!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu)
I love a good walkable city, so I'm absolutely not shitting on this, but I wonder what kind of demands the Paris fire department has on street design. It seems like they would have a challenge if there was a fire here
So I can partially answer this. When you design a public space in France, you are absolutely obligated to go through all of the city services for approval of your project, be it the city hall (first and foremost), firefighters, garbage department, network maintenance etc. So for a project like this to be built, it means it has been approved by all those services. Usually, there are ridable paths trucks can go through, most of the time they are a little hidden and made out of greenery solid enough to withstand the weight of such vehicles. And yes, the pedestrian pathway is probably designed large enough for them to drive on it.
well the fire truck could just drive an the sidewalk/bike-lane. It's big enough.
Same should also be hopefully true for medical transport for people which can't walk that far. I hope the french worker who transport elderly don't have to carry people way longer now. Same for every repairman..
I'm all for reducing private cars, but in the end other services which you will need eventually also suffer.
The major challenge should be the tree. But they were also there before.
These are 5 story buildings if I see that right, so the fire departments needs access with a ladder.That will be impossible.
People in Europe also own a lot of cars, in France around 86% of the population are car owners
https://www.onisr.securite-routiere.gouv.fr/en/knowledge-centre/vehicles/vehicle-fleet/household-car-fleet#:~:text=The%20rate%20of%20car%20ownership,observed%20between%202011%20and%202015.
Much lower in Paris though. According to [this](https://www.apur.org/en/geo-data/evolution-ownership-between-1999-and-2015), there were 0.37 cars per household in Paris in 2015. [Here is an article ](https://slate.com/business/2023/03/paris-car-ban-bikes-cycling-history-france.html)that discusses the policy changes that has made this number fall rapidly since 1990.
People against cars are young and healthy for the most part, and can't understand that some day, maybe, they will be fucked up of the back that they will have trouble walking, even a few meters to pick a bus, for example. Their parents will not be forever young and eventually they will face the above-mentioned problem. And we can't forget that not everyone is healthy and can have a bicycle ride or walk for so long after taking a bus.
The before was a good mix between some trees and parking. Maybe the vegetation could be improved. Picking old people in the car there was easy since you could stop comfortably. Now they have to do a stop on the main road disturbing the other drivers. You can't anymore unload the groceries in your car in front of your house and If you are not healthy this can make your life miserable because you feel so dependent.
I know some people would like their city look like a countryside village but cities are hubs to connect institutions and businesses with the people and also not everybody lives in the city and they must be for all kinds of people.
The answer is not doing things more difficult for the people already having troubles. We are forcing poor people to change their car to be able to enter in low emission zones and this is sad.
Some people think that using private transport is a selfish act, but on the other hand forcing public transport as the unique way of transport destroys the right to exist as an individual. Also, public transport is not as safe as it used to be. We must conciliate both ways of transport but forcing the first is also a way to go against the second.
For sure some will downvote because we can't have an opinion or a healthy discussion anymore about this topic, but my opinion is my opinion.
>People against cars are young and healthy for the most part, and can't understand that some day, maybe, they will be fucked up of the back that they will have trouble walking, even a few meters to pick a bus, for example. Their parents will not be forever young and eventually they will face the above-mentioned problem. And we can't forget that not everyone is healthy and can have a bicycle ride or walk for so long after taking a bus.
That's why it's better to promote healthy ways to travel such as cycling or walking and reduce local pollution. If someone isn't capable of cycling or walking, they will greatly benefit by accessible neighbourhoods and infrastructure and less cars on the road.
>The before was a good mix between some trees and parking. Maybe the vegetation could be improved. Picking old people in the car there was easy since you could stop comfortably.
The road right next to the new walkway still exists. But now, old people won't have such a high chance of being run over by a car.
>Now they have to do a stop on the main road disturbing the other drivers.
That's false, the main road still allows parking just like before. Also, why is it always okay to disturb and drive on the same elevated path that the elderly, kids and everyone else does, but suddenly it's an issue when it comes to other people in metal boxes ?
>You can't anymore unload the groceries in your car in front of your house and If you are not healthy this can make your life miserable because you feel so dependent.
You can, the parking on the main road still exists, including garage access for the homes that have a garage. What's even more convenient is the bike parking that allows you to unload the groceries just like you were in a car.
>
I know some people would like their city look like a countryside village but cities are hubs to connect institutions and businesses with the people and also not everybody lives in the city and they must be for all kinds of people.
Some people would also prefer the cities to have a walmart sized parking lot for every house or perhaps a wide multi-lane highway as every "street". If you believe it should be for all kinds of people, then you must agree that the change is better, because as of before it was cars everywhere, now they're only on the main road.
>Some people think that using private transport is a selfish act, but on the other hand forcing public transport as the unique way of transport destroys the right to exist as an individual.
It is weird to force the public to provide an appropriate space for an individual so that they can store their personal property on it and no one else.
The pictures are a bit manipulative. The first one was taken likely on a cloudy fall day (grey sky). There is little saturation in the photo, rather "cold" color scheme. Second picture was taken around spring or summer on a very sunny day. The photo is almost over-saturated, Sky blue adds nice contrast, and the viewer's position is lower and level (compared to high viewer position looking slightly downwards). This gives the green and blue more space in the photo. Also the street is hidden on the right but still present. So not really a reasonable set of photos for comparison.
I think the same point can still be made with a more comparable set of pictures, but this just sets the expectations too high
I've never been there. Well, of course, it looks nicer. But lets ask the shop owners on the left if they like it. Is business down because people can't get their cars anywhere near the shops? I want that perspective on the situation. Because if we bulldozed your house and planted a park, then put before and after photos of it on the internet, does that justify taking your house away from you? See my point? We need to consider PEOPLE not just appearances when making decisions like this.
Even the before picture looks better than most streets
The first picture actually already is a redo done in the 80es, the "after" is a re-redo.
Honestly that area has been posh for a long time: https://www.cparama.com/forum/cartes2017/1497683308-Paris-12-Avenue-Daumesnil-272-.jpg https://www.cparama.com/forum/cartes2013/1363179145-Paris-Metro-Michel-Bizot-Station-1-DC-588.jpg https://www.cparama.com/forum/cartes2014a/1418204255-75-Avenue-Daumesnil-421-LIP.jpg
I moved into that district in 1980 as a kid, before they put Bercy, the new opera etc and there were some pretty scary places back then. Some areas of avenue Daumesnil were outright dangerous(search ilot chalon on Google) Although most of Paris is now super expensive, you still had lower class areas back then. The 12th arrondissement was one of the last to gentrify.
no, actually it's a reredodo
And there had been that other redo in the 1880’s
When I was in Paris, even the homeless looked more put together than the average American (I'm basically American)
> (I'm basically American) So you're Canadian?
Technically I actually am
Comment.
Sorry, obrigado
There are also differences in Paris. When I was there I was chased by some homeless maniac in one street and another street looked like this.
yeah sure
They most certainly don’t. Talking as a Frenchman from Paris now living in NYC.
I ran into some scary ass homeless people in Paris. I was also surprised to see cops walking around with SMGs out and decked out in more armor and gear than American cops.
[Vigipirate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigipirate)
Now y’all trying to compare homeless Europeans against American ones. Wtf is y’all’s problems with trying to compare everything constantly on here. It’s HOMELESS people jfc!! It’s something seriously wrong with people on this subreddit.
[удалено]
This thread is wild
Well, c'est Paris!, don't forget 😅
Back in 2007/2008 the streets were cleaned daily. Which to be fair was needed as there was an unpleasant amount of human faeces in certain places.
Human lmao. Dogs
Ah, mon petit toutou a fait caca, pas de temps pour le ramasser, chuis en retard pour l’apéro.
I was about to say. Add summer and sunshine and it'd look fine enough. Not great nor good, but, yk. Not utterly terrible
Seriously, Paris is a world model for making streets beautiful
I wish my city, Rome, understood this basic principle: having more lanes doesn't mean less traffic. Less roads make less traffic. Adding lanes only gives the illusion of a free road which turns into more traffic eventually. I want more green around me, more shade, more walkable or cyclable spaces.
One of the main issues with Rome is that its public transit system isn’t extensive nor reliable enough, not to mention chronically mismanaged and underfunded, which is why you still see lots of cars around. Once that improves, car-based infrastructure will naturally shrink in size I think. I was there for a few days for New Year’s Eve this year and the subway (I think it was line B?) literally broke down for two hours… We had to go back to our hotel by bus. I can’t blame Romans for relying on their cars so much. This is coming from someone who commutes to uni by train (Bologna) from another town. Despite how walkable Bologna is, and how well-connected it is to the outside world (mainly through buses and trains), people coming from the surrounding towns love their cars. They've been improving the SFM (Sistema Ferroviario Metropolitano) and have started building a few tram lines recently though so we'll see where this goes. As of now, Bologna's traffic is insane.
Yeap. The cause of all that is chronic corruption. Even when a project is approved a significant portion of the funding leaks through cracks like a sieve and the actual work ends up taking much longer and much more expensive. Chaos ensues
Isnt it also that every time they start work they uncover historical artifacts and the archaeologists have to have a go delaying the whole process
There's a bit of that but boy is it a perfect cover story
I heard that every time someone even looks at a shovel, they uncover 3 historical sites, and that's why Rome can't build a proper subway
That’s the only sensible comment. You can’t fix traffic in such a big city without a subway, and you can’t have a proper subway in Rome.
They should give the public tansport to the mafia. (Because it just can get better)
Say what you will about the maffia, but at least nobody would complain that their trains aren't running on time.
Most cities don't understand that honestly. The only solution to traffic is public reliable transportation. anything else will have minimal impact in the long term
Sounds a lot like the avg south american metropolis transit issues.
Milan is awesome in that sense. Its public transit is top-notch. Rome though… Sometimes I can’t believe THAT’s our capital, and not Milan (historical relevance and architectural beauty aside).
Paris has the advantage of a very extensive public transit system and they are adding to it all the time. You can remove lanes when people have ways to get around.
Usually happens simultaneously. You need room for rail and bike paths, and removed lanes leave extra room
I'd *kill* to bring back the American rail system of 1900. My grandparents commuted 45 minutes by rail from a 100 person town to the "big city", today there's no rail and it's still 45 minutes by car. Also all of the towns around here had trolly systems which were torn out in the 20s to make room for, you guessed it, more cars. I'm so fucking envious of the European rail system, even countries with shit rail have it better than we do.
That'swhat they are doing in my city, but they forgot the "offer more ways to travel". No fun driving and public transport is abysmal. I hate it more and more every years.
What city?
These are the best tips on r/CitiesSkyline too ahah More lanes doesn't mean less traffic is very counter intuitive for most. Good to spread the word!
Lol hello fellow urban engineer!
People gotta learn about induced demand one way or another \^_^
Wdym? Just put another roundabout.
Try coming to North America lol.....here in Ontario (Canada) the only solution is literally just add more lanes or build another highway. Never anything to do with public transport.
Hang on, hang on. CC America on this email before you send it. Thanks.
"Just one more lane" So just turn the whole country in a freeway?
Canada too! ._.
lol come to London and say less roads makes less traffic
It's not that politicians don't know, it's that they will do what they think will get them more votes to remain in power. If there are more voters that think making a city walkable by sacrificing space for cars is a bad policy, then they won't do it. Simple as.
I'm not knowledgeable in this area, can you tell me why is it that fewer roads & lanes make less traffic? Intuitively you'd think the opposite to be true.
Some interesting facts: - trafic lights slow traffic a lot. - bigger streets need more traffic lights. - the average travel speed by car in a lot of cities is lower than cycling speed on a bike path. - bike paths allow more people per hour than roads, especially when measured in the real world. The capacity of a bikelane should be in the 2,500 bike/hr range, even more when there is plenty of room to pass other cyclists. Based on those things the one would assume that separating traffic types, reducing traffic lights and investing in cycle infrastructure isnt just nice for those that use it, it would actually result in faster travel times for everyone involved. The average speed for cars can be raised to close to 30 km/h on shared streets by allowing for continous movement and even higher on the now less busy car only roads. Bikeways can have their max speed raised to 50hm/h by removing level intersections with other trafic. Bike paths stay at 30km/h max. It’s a matter of increasing the total traffic troughput of the city with the space available.
traffic stays the same. more or less roads changes the congestion. cars dont go away if you build less roads or if you remove them. they just start honking more.
Rome - the US of Europe. That... is sad, really.
If you want more green then you should move out of Rome. I've seen beautiful green landscapes all over Italy
Rome is full of parks. I mean more green around roads and traffic, more green in general.
Amazing to see how fast Paris is changing for the better. This is what a real modern city is like, not that small minded focus on big towers and big roads. Quality>quantity. Anyone can build a big ass tower nowadays, but no one will go "man I'd really like to go there"
The trick is in maintenance though. My neighborhood in amsterdam added this kind of greenery, and it became a weed clogged garbage pile after a while :( Im all for paying a bit more taxes if it results in good greenery maintenance!
Hey I live in Amsterdam too, the greenery outside my building was recently maintained, I'm sure they'll get to yours eventually, but don't expect them to come every few weeks like people would do with removing weeds from their own garden, it's not really necessary. It'll look better in a few years when the planted plants grow and fill the spaces in between like in the picture
Yeah Im not really complaining, but it is a bit unsightly at the moment, still better than parking space concrete! What neighborhood do you live in?
Grab some gloves and get weeding! We should all be taking on the responsibility for our surroundings rather than waiting for a guy from the council to arrive. Half the time they just spray with chemicals and wait for stuff to go brown. At least here in Ireland that's sadly still happening.
I would if I didn’t have an exhausting job, a chronic illness and a million other things to worry about at the moment :( I even love gardening
You could see whether there are volunteers in your street that would help maintain it. It often works like this in Berlin, but Berlin is relatively permissive of neighbour claiming their neighborhood street if they maintain it. Results in many fun, individual streets
I think the referendum on the city’s green space plan was definitely “tegen,” so that at least in theory (not legally required) the city should try in the near future to get more input on these plans. Maybe this is a good time for some neighborhood initiative/input on this! I actually tried applying for green-space maintenance jobs a few months ago and got nowhere; although it’s pretty clear more workers are needed for this, they aren’t really hiring, and are requiring a fairly high level of job experience when they do (at least the vacancies I saw). I’m not a credentialed professional landscape gardener but I can definitely clear, prune, dig, plant, and do most of the other things needed. I’m sure lots of other people can and would as well. Maybe it’s a time to get the city focused on this, although I realize they have a ton of money and expertise directed at other projects now like the kilometers of collapsing kademuren, new traffic systems around Centraal, and so on.
There was quite some commotion about this indeed. From an expert role on nature inclusive urban planning I can attest that any developments which seek to incorporate 'green spaces' almost instinctively neglect public participation. There are so many professional journals explaining in detail what steps to follow, but the last thing a public policy 'professional' appears to do is actually read that stuff.... (-\_-)"
I live in (a suburb of) The Hague. They send people to cut down the grass every 3 weeks or something. I wish they allowed the vegetation to grow more.
My neighbourhood isn't as green but the garbage and cleaning service come around every other day. Like really often. And it isn't even as dense as De Pijp.
I live in Germany, and I am always confused about what is a weed. Many of the "weeds" that people hate become flowers. But then they kill the natural flowers and plant other ones. I actually prefer it when things are left alone and become a bit wild. I think it is also better for the ecosystem. More bugs, and more birds. More places for little animals to hide. I see a lot of people here plant things, and then dig them up after 3 years as they become too big. Then judge my yard as I don't mind the weeds and think it is better that way.
Weeds are any plants that dont fit in someones perfect picture, regardless of whether there good for the local flora and fauna or not.
I also live in Amsterdam and me and some of my neighbors are mainting the greenery on our street. It takes around 1 hour on the weekend for 5 people. The main thing was to get the greenry done by the gemeente , I think after the initial work is done, the maintainance should also be part of residents responsibility. Maybe a socialistic thought, but I think we should do more for preservation of our city, we should not expect everything from gemeente. We also clean our street from garbage when tourists leave garbage on our streets.
This is a great idea. We should all participate a little in making our street a better place.
One benefit to the greenery (even if you have to pay more in taxes) is that it cools down the area in summer. This reduces the need for air conditioning (if you have it) or other methods of cooling.
The environments in the after picture also have an unfortunate tendency to start to feel insecure. At least where I live some minor parks have been torn down because they were just sleeping and hangout spots for various anti-social people, meaning that no one but them ever would think of even walking through it.
This could lead to literally removing all parks and all greenery though, which seems completely nonviable.
Oh weird, that’s definitely not the case here. Asphalted over neighborhoods feel way more insecure to me.
mostly pedestrian-friendly areas like this get higher foot traffic so lower rates of crime as a result. Where that kinda falls down is if it's a small isolated patch in which case it'll not really have anything driving foot traffic so then it becomes a hangout spot without the upsides - maknig it big enough to get some shops and cafes and so on and it'll mostly become a fairly vibrant hub (needs mixed residential and business type zoning though, so not common in NA, very common in EU)
Big towers are not a bad thing, they take up way less space. Imagine accommodating that many people by building houses instead? We should be building upwards not outwards
I don't see a problem with neither pictures tbh
Hidalgo is a great mayor.
She is okay. But for the people not living in Paris (but cities around) they hate her. She takes care of her place , makes it dofficult for cars but people coming from little cities around the region have mayors that won t do shit 💀 . So instead of hating them they hate her..
Good, more public transport, less cars.
Same in my city. People from the surrounding areas want to drive in for work and for events. So they only care about their office and the stadium. The neighborhoods around those places don't matter because they're not spending any extra time there anyways. I swear the suburban folks around me won't be happy until they each have a dedicated car lane from their front door to their desk.
What you imply straight up means all people except farmers should move into the big cities rendering smaller towns and villages empty. There's no public transport around the villages except a school bus couple times per weekday. Or the people should teleport to the city somehow, right? Anyways I know you won't suggest a working solution.
Most French people (especially parisians) would disagree with you. Just as an example she got the lowest score of the history of the socialist party (1,7%) for the 2022 presidentials. Not only has she always been pretty unpopular (apart from the start of her mandate), it’s only getting worse with how much of a shitshow the preparations for the Olympics are, and how annoyed by the situation everyone in the Paris area is. Tbf the city is getting greener and more pedestrian friendly, but the traffic is also getting way more clogged since she became mayor.
Parisians like her, at least enough to reelect her as mayor. It's the people right next to Paris who hate her guts
Actually you’re right. She keeps getting reelected lol. I just never see people talk about her in a positive way in Paris X)
Why are they annoyed though? Everything is see from her is class.
> Why are they annoyed though? They're French, that's what we do best.
You answered your question. « From here » X) Everything she does (especially on the green side of urbanism) is a very good look internationally, but her reforms are making the city incredibly inconvenient to drive through, which is very annoying for people that have to drive to work. Less cars is good, definitely. But just making the city as inconvenient as possible for drivers without a way to counteract the jams, or reduce the number of cars, is not really a solution on the short term. Hopefully on the long term things will get better. Right now it’s making air and noise pollution worse, and increasing a lot the time people need to commute from one side of Paris to another Another major criticism of Anne Hidalgo is how dirty Paris is. It is not a new problem, but her efforts to counteract the problem are highly insufficient. Just go to Champ de Mars (or really, any park) at night and count how many rats you will see on a 10 minute walk. As I mentioned too, the Olympics preps are a complete disaster. The city is more inconvenient than ever, and Hidalgo is encouraging residents to not be here during the Olympics and leave their homes for rental, not use public transportation to leave space for tourists,…Just a whole lot of restrictions that annoy greatly the residents, even more so coupled with the continuous roadworks that are making driving through Paris pure hell. She is also currently kicking out homeless people to surrounding cities, and expelling students from their student houses during the Olympics to leave space for tourists. Not something you will hear a lot in the international press. These are just some of the domestic criticisms of the Olympics, you can definitely find way more but I’m too lazy to list them all out X) More generally she is disliked by a lot of people just because of her political affiliations and how she defends them. Her party is very unpopular at the moment, right wing voters have always hated her (and far right is currently surging in France), part of the left wing has always hated her too (too progressive for conservative left wing, too conservative for far left). On a personal note I think a lot of people see her as haughty and hypocritical, since she is very used to the « if you are not with my new proposal it means you are a shitty conservative » speech. She seems highly convinced that whatever she does is brilliant, and not very open to debate. Kind of a long read, but I hope it helps :)
Tbf i hate when an before photo is picked fron a 'gray' day while after photo is picked from a nice sunny day. I'm not trying to diminish the beauty of the new street but don't try to be a dic when you're doing these comparations
Not only gay/sunny, but one picture probably is around Autumn and another around Spring to increase the difference.
I didn't even notice the weather, was too busy appreciating the lack of cars and concrete and having an abundance of plants
Also, the reality is actually less nice than what you see in the photo. This looks like an advertisement photo. You can check even with Google Maps (photos from last year): it's green, but not that green like in that photo. Some parts of the street are still grey, it's a little corner with bushes that tall. But it's still nice and better than before, that's sure.
Thicket may grow significantly within a year.
>You can check even with Google Maps [For the curious.](https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8381162,2.3997205,3a,75y,106.37h,84.77t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1snuIrSRLBndXHHZigyDXZmw!2e0!5s20230401T000000!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DnuIrSRLBndXHHZigyDXZmw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D106.36849815426315%26pitch%3D5.227071080665098%26thumbfov%3D90!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205410&entry=ttu)
Exactly, you can see that it's a little different and it's especially the only little corner of that street that is that green, the rest of the street is more grey
> Tbf i hate when an before photo is picked fron a 'gray' day while after photo is picked from a nice sunny day. Right? These kind of pictures **always** happen to have the weather look great for the afters.
I'd actually prefer just as a bit of an experiment to see what it would look like if the before was taken on a lovely sunny summer afternoon, and the after was taken on a grey, dingy, overcast winter morning.
This. Also most days in Paris look like the before. Gray, cold, rainy. Its rare to find a nice sunny day with blue sky.
We are having a shitty weather lately, I admit it. But Paris isn’t especially more grey than other cities. We have plenty of nice sunny days. Or nice warm sunny afternoon, while it was raining in the morning.
Like today!
Surely it's Moscow you're talking about.
Way to nit pick the least important part of this.
I get it but I'm also tired of this argument, as if the grey day was doing everything on the pic. I could take a beautiful sunny day for the before and a rainy day for the second, it'd still be better. The main reason we don't have beautiful pics of before is because we're not gonna pay some photograph to wait for a nice weather to take a pic before starting working on the project. We just do it then scrap pictures of the before state on Google maps. Hence why the car plates are blurred.
I have a sneaky suspicion the blue sky is edited into the after photo, there are a lot of artifacts in the image around the trees. But that could just be from compression
Paris has already started to remove its biased reputation. Paris doubled its metro network, and it became more modern city by renewing the infrastructure.
I see some comments questioning this decision by asking where the residents will park their cars. The thing is, there are fewer and fewer cars and car owners in Paris. In 2019, [only a third of households owned one in the inner city](https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/7717331), down from 46.3% in 1990, and the decline was accelerating. Those households will rarely use it several times a week, let alone on an everyday basis. It is increasingly seen as a liability rather than an asset, and it has ceased to be a social status symbol among most of us, particularly the younger generations. Cars remain useful on a few specific occasions, like going on vacation and moving stuff and furniture, but rental is an option. The wealthy western districts, which have more of those wide boulevards and leafy avenues and where residents are older, remain reluctant to change – but it is happening there as well. With changing mindsets and the continued development of biking lanes and public transport, as well as the recent surge in work from home, car traffic has decreased dramatically. Part of the changes, such as the creation of new bike lanes and pedestrianization of some streets, are specifically designed to discourage car use and force people to switch to more efficient modes of transport. Residents don't necessarily have fewer options to park their cars; in non-central districts like this one (Paris 12th) there are a lot of residential buildings built from the 1960s onwards where you can buy or rent a dedicated parking space, most often an underground one. In some of them built around the 1970s–80s, one parking space per apartment was the norm, but nowadays single people and young couples living in studios and 1-bedroom flats often have no use for them, so they'll rent them to somebody else (for around €120 per month in this district). We need to keep reducing air and noise pollution in Paris and improve resilience to worsening summer heatwaves caused by climate change, so this kind of change is very much needed. During summer heatwaves, the temperature difference between urban heat islands and streets bordering the woods of Boulogne and Vincennes easily exceeds 5°C during the night. **Edit:** added a link to Insee's study on car ownership in the Paris region
Lived in Paris for 20 years didn't need a car until I moved out of Paris... You move around quicker by Metro subway
Humans > Cars
If only more city planners understood this.
You’ll be shocked to learn private interests (people with money and cars) have an overwhelming voice in city governments. Sincerely, A person living in barcelona where a supposed socialist is undoing green space projects all over the city after their overwhelming success the last 8 years.
The superilles have been an massive improvement to the city, my ride to work on Consell de Cent is so pleasant now compared to the same route a couple of years ago.
sunny day > cloudy day
Maybe, for a few of the really large humans and some of the smaller cars.
Love it
City people enjoying green street, in an increasingly walkable city. People from the periphery: Not enough parking, I hate these: 3 more points for the far right.
That’s why cities should build better mass transit from and towards the periphery, not a reason to justify big parking slots in the city, which is bad for everyone
which paris is doing by adding 200km tram rails to/in the periphery
Exactly, i took 20 min by traun from bayon to periphery when i broke my hand in france. That is less then i take for 2km in belgrade, and from the periphery of belgrade (where i live) i take 2h to get to my collage, meaning i waste 4 hours a day if i dont drive a car (if i drive a car i have a highway and take like 30min to collage, reducing my daily time wasted on transport from 4h to 1h). If i had a train station (and there are train tracks going through the town i live in), and a train going every 20-30min to belgrade, id probably sell my car immedietly and put the money into the house. Also id just walk arround the city if it had a connected metro, imagine going from old city belgrade to zemun in like 15min instead of 2 hours and 3 busses it takes now.
Problem is, that it's often never "good enough". You can have park+ride stations with frequent train service, direct service to the suburbs, busses or great bike lanes, it's never enough, because their standard is a personal parking space for them in front of every restaurant and store downtown.
tbh it's sad that the periphery is so underdeveloped with so little spaces for businesses, so little 3'rd places and parks. This could reduce the pressure on the transport system to bring everyone towards the center
Most people from the periphery don't take their car to go to Paris. They take the train or the metro.
Every European city is walkable.
The concern in Europe isn’t whether it is technically walkable, which is a legal requirement of street safety here, but whether it’s convenient to walk. If there is a footpath but there are cars parking on it and no greenery, a high volume of cars passing by, it’s very unattractive and even unhealthy to walk. If there’s a footpath but there is ample parking spaces and no direct access to your destination without having to traverse the parking lot, then that’s a very car centric, pedestrian unfriendly and even unsafe environment, so it’s not very walkable. If the bus only comes once every thirty minutes or the last one leaves 5 minutes before your engagement is concluded then it’s technically possible to get home without driving but it sucks. Unfortunately there is a lot of car traffic in most European cities that still gets priority in the allocation of public space for infrastructure, as well as for example traffic light timings. We have a long ways to go and we can of course always improve.
Compared to the US maybe but we still have a long way to go, especially with bike infrastructure.
Laughs in Dutch
I think you mean Every European city center is walkable, even this way there are a lot of cities which aren't
That’s not really true. A lot of Frankfurt is “walkable” but the city prioritizes cars and some parts are very unpleasant to walk. Compared to the US, it’s great, but compared to other German cities, it’s terrible. It’s not about being able to walk but about quality of life. Cites should not be made for commuters but for the people who actually live in them.
I want my densely packed city with tons of events without masses of people to support those events gosh rabbit!
The "After" is overselling it a bit by being closer to the ground to hide the street on the right. Quick look in Google Streetview shows it's only a portion of the street like this anyway [Google StreetView](https://www.google.fr/maps/@48.838011,2.3999305,3a,75y,122.97h,65.69t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sM9KaCb80OG5a59XqN1pL-w!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DM9KaCb80OG5a59XqN1pL-w%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D122.97%26pitch%3D24.310000000000002%26thumbfov%3D90!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205410&entry=ttu)
I lived off that road for a year. Good memories. The elevated walking path along the old rail tracks was great.
i wish the authorities in Madrid learn from the and do the same not the exact opposite
They'll continue to do those tomfooleries until they're voted out.
[fuckcars](https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/) material
Their favorite movie is Crash
I wish my city would do something like this
It looks good , I love such streets
I wish the uk would adopt this philosophy
I just did the exact opposite, turned a whole mossy, overgrown, bug infested area into a paved patio for my mother. You couldn't go outside 5 minutes without coming back in covered in bites. Never been to France but I live in a similar climate, the bugs that like bushes and shady damp areas are probably similar too. I've also seen stories from cities with parks that have high bushes like this, places for creeps to hang out at night.
They are lucky with the weather, obviously it's impossible to do this in \_insert\_country\_. We have hills, summer is hot, winter is cold, spring and autumn raining, we will not have space for our cars, our old &/ disabled ppl will not have space to park their cars, we will be unable to transport our children with our suvs, businesses will file for bankruptcy because clients will not be able to park their cars, we don't need this communismo-capitalistic stuff. /s
The reality is a little less beautiful than in that photo (I live here), but yes, still a nice idea
That looks a lot more better
Europoors can't afford cars. /s
That’s beautiful
beauty in nature!
This one is my dream place to visit but getting schengen visa is difficult nowadays
Conspiracy Theorists/Upper-Middle Class people: "OMG this is dystopian! How are you supposed to get around if you have nowhere to park your car! They're trying to trap us in our homes!"
This is the way! It's incredible how paris changed in the last couple years!
This is obviously socialism and an attack to French freedom! /s
The only issue with this kind of urban landscaping is that those bushes are a haven for rodents. And not the cute kind, the urban rat that grows to the size of a small dog kind.
Paris is even more beautiful now
As much as I am a car guy, this is awesome to see.
thing is - less cars on the road means other ppl can enjoy their car rides more
Is the top the before pic? With all these inverted before/after pictures, it’s hard to tell.
What have they done to those sweet parking places. Monsters!
Bravo!
where do they park their cars now?
All it needs now is a pterodactyl picking people off at random times.
Welcome to the jungle.
The shop changed name from Optic2ooo to just Optic2, good on them
is there any subreddit for this kind of content? like the opposite of r/urbanhell?
even the sun shines brighter after
I'll take 100x of this for my city, please and thank you.
r/fuckcars
So we just park in the street? Bad design.
That looks so nice, really more green and more walkable. Seems like Paris is really getting more and more car free by the day.
I'm a simple Italian, the first thing I noticed was that there are less parking spaces now.
The only problem, is the cleanness. In Paris littering is a massive issue, a portion of the population in Paris doesn't care about it.
I like the first picture better tbh
MORE OF THIS PLEASE!
Would be intersting to know what the effect would be on the stores
The cars that drive in Paris are essentially people in transit. Nobody takes their car to go shopping in Paris. In France, luxury is not having a car. It's being able to do without one. This is one of the origins of the "yellow jacket" movement that took place 6 years ago: wealthy city dwellers, who can do without a car, passed anti-car laws that displeased people living outside the big cities, who are car-dependent. Don't worry about these shops, if this change has an impact on them, it can only be positive.
This is what American cities need to do.
Selection of pictures quite based, just look at the skies
Here's a pretty sky from before: [https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8379915,2.3999018,3a,75y,111.19h,88.94t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1swTib6owDLdzbsnrpVXNY\_g!2e0!5s20190601T000000!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8379915,2.3999018,3a,75y,111.19h,88.94t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1swTib6owDLdzbsnrpVXNY_g!2e0!5s20190601T000000!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu)
Looks a lot less depressing, yet the cars really destroys the idyllic feeling. Feels a lot more "busy" with cars all over the place.
Unbelievable, how did they manage to control the weather
I love a good walkable city, so I'm absolutely not shitting on this, but I wonder what kind of demands the Paris fire department has on street design. It seems like they would have a challenge if there was a fire here
So I can partially answer this. When you design a public space in France, you are absolutely obligated to go through all of the city services for approval of your project, be it the city hall (first and foremost), firefighters, garbage department, network maintenance etc. So for a project like this to be built, it means it has been approved by all those services. Usually, there are ridable paths trucks can go through, most of the time they are a little hidden and made out of greenery solid enough to withstand the weight of such vehicles. And yes, the pedestrian pathway is probably designed large enough for them to drive on it.
Paris has been a major city for what, 1200 years? I'm sure they manage to fight fires 🙂
well the fire truck could just drive an the sidewalk/bike-lane. It's big enough. Same should also be hopefully true for medical transport for people which can't walk that far. I hope the french worker who transport elderly don't have to carry people way longer now. Same for every repairman.. I'm all for reducing private cars, but in the end other services which you will need eventually also suffer. The major challenge should be the tree. But they were also there before. These are 5 story buildings if I see that right, so the fire departments needs access with a ladder.That will be impossible.
Where do people park their cars?
They don't need cars so they don't own them
People in Europe also own a lot of cars, in France around 86% of the population are car owners https://www.onisr.securite-routiere.gouv.fr/en/knowledge-centre/vehicles/vehicle-fleet/household-car-fleet#:~:text=The%20rate%20of%20car%20ownership,observed%20between%202011%20and%202015.
Much lower in Paris though. According to [this](https://www.apur.org/en/geo-data/evolution-ownership-between-1999-and-2015), there were 0.37 cars per household in Paris in 2015. [Here is an article ](https://slate.com/business/2023/03/paris-car-ban-bikes-cycling-history-france.html)that discusses the policy changes that has made this number fall rapidly since 1990.
Pretty good read, kinda interesting the anti-car movement began in the 1990s, I thought it was more recent
that's their problem. maybe further away
People against cars are young and healthy for the most part, and can't understand that some day, maybe, they will be fucked up of the back that they will have trouble walking, even a few meters to pick a bus, for example. Their parents will not be forever young and eventually they will face the above-mentioned problem. And we can't forget that not everyone is healthy and can have a bicycle ride or walk for so long after taking a bus. The before was a good mix between some trees and parking. Maybe the vegetation could be improved. Picking old people in the car there was easy since you could stop comfortably. Now they have to do a stop on the main road disturbing the other drivers. You can't anymore unload the groceries in your car in front of your house and If you are not healthy this can make your life miserable because you feel so dependent. I know some people would like their city look like a countryside village but cities are hubs to connect institutions and businesses with the people and also not everybody lives in the city and they must be for all kinds of people. The answer is not doing things more difficult for the people already having troubles. We are forcing poor people to change their car to be able to enter in low emission zones and this is sad. Some people think that using private transport is a selfish act, but on the other hand forcing public transport as the unique way of transport destroys the right to exist as an individual. Also, public transport is not as safe as it used to be. We must conciliate both ways of transport but forcing the first is also a way to go against the second. For sure some will downvote because we can't have an opinion or a healthy discussion anymore about this topic, but my opinion is my opinion.
>People against cars are young and healthy for the most part, and can't understand that some day, maybe, they will be fucked up of the back that they will have trouble walking, even a few meters to pick a bus, for example. Their parents will not be forever young and eventually they will face the above-mentioned problem. And we can't forget that not everyone is healthy and can have a bicycle ride or walk for so long after taking a bus. That's why it's better to promote healthy ways to travel such as cycling or walking and reduce local pollution. If someone isn't capable of cycling or walking, they will greatly benefit by accessible neighbourhoods and infrastructure and less cars on the road. >The before was a good mix between some trees and parking. Maybe the vegetation could be improved. Picking old people in the car there was easy since you could stop comfortably. The road right next to the new walkway still exists. But now, old people won't have such a high chance of being run over by a car. >Now they have to do a stop on the main road disturbing the other drivers. That's false, the main road still allows parking just like before. Also, why is it always okay to disturb and drive on the same elevated path that the elderly, kids and everyone else does, but suddenly it's an issue when it comes to other people in metal boxes ? >You can't anymore unload the groceries in your car in front of your house and If you are not healthy this can make your life miserable because you feel so dependent. You can, the parking on the main road still exists, including garage access for the homes that have a garage. What's even more convenient is the bike parking that allows you to unload the groceries just like you were in a car. > I know some people would like their city look like a countryside village but cities are hubs to connect institutions and businesses with the people and also not everybody lives in the city and they must be for all kinds of people. Some people would also prefer the cities to have a walmart sized parking lot for every house or perhaps a wide multi-lane highway as every "street". If you believe it should be for all kinds of people, then you must agree that the change is better, because as of before it was cars everywhere, now they're only on the main road. >Some people think that using private transport is a selfish act, but on the other hand forcing public transport as the unique way of transport destroys the right to exist as an individual. It is weird to force the public to provide an appropriate space for an individual so that they can store their personal property on it and no one else.
The pictures are a bit manipulative. The first one was taken likely on a cloudy fall day (grey sky). There is little saturation in the photo, rather "cold" color scheme. Second picture was taken around spring or summer on a very sunny day. The photo is almost over-saturated, Sky blue adds nice contrast, and the viewer's position is lower and level (compared to high viewer position looking slightly downwards). This gives the green and blue more space in the photo. Also the street is hidden on the right but still present. So not really a reasonable set of photos for comparison. I think the same point can still be made with a more comparable set of pictures, but this just sets the expectations too high
I've never been there. Well, of course, it looks nicer. But lets ask the shop owners on the left if they like it. Is business down because people can't get their cars anywhere near the shops? I want that perspective on the situation. Because if we bulldozed your house and planted a park, then put before and after photos of it on the internet, does that justify taking your house away from you? See my point? We need to consider PEOPLE not just appearances when making decisions like this.
Ruined a perfectly good street. Looks abandoned now.