What makes Paris look like Paris? (2012) • Hacker News Board

Re: What makes Paris look like Paris? (2012)

#61

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 1:03 PM UTC

grumpydba wrote: post #51

eloisant wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because Paris is stuck in the 19th century with its Haussmannian style. Usually a city lives and changes to adapt itself to its times, and Paris was no exception... Until the 19th century. Now the local government wants to "preserve" it for the joy of tourists, to the detriments of locals. Housing is scarce causing high prices. Buildings are old and inconvenients. Paris is a museum-city. Designed for tourists.

I live there. Its cohesive architecture makes its beauty. We parisians certainly don't want to make the city as ugly as London or Berlin. Some of us can enjoy art.

[deleted]

Re: What makes Paris look like Paris? (2012)

#62

Post by baud147258 » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 1:15 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #30

woodpanel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not entirely true. If you walk the inner-city neighbourhoods, you will rarely encounter buildings with more than 10 stories [1]. Clearly there are options, which aren't on the table because of preservationism and zoning. [1] https://www.google.de/maps/@48.8575448,2.2997841,3a,75y,329....

There just isn't that much undeveloped land in the inner cities, and no one wants to tear down a 100-year old 5-storey building to make room for a 10 or 20 or 50 storey building. If an empty construction spot is found for some reason, or the odd house is torn down, then I agree with planners: don't make 1 building in 100 tall. That's just an eyesore. Heterogeneous vs homogeneous I can agree is debatable, but almost-h…

Also there are height limitation for buildings in Paris, which are in parts of Paris around 8-10 floors.

Re: What makes Paris look like Paris? (2012)

#63

Post by baud147258 » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 1:18 PM UTC

bfuller wrote: post #2

I think the smell of Paris is very unique

The mix of subway smell, I guess?

Re: What makes Paris look like Paris? (2012)

#64

Post by nailer » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 1:26 PM UTC

HAL9000Ti wrote: post #49

nailer wrote: post #29

I'm not sure Paris does look like Paris. It's quite famous for being a let down: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome

"From the estimated six million yearly visitors, [...]around 20 Japanese tourists a year are affected by the syndrome" With 0.0003% of people being affected, I'd argue that this so called "symptom" is hardly a noteworthy phenomenon.

The syndrome - with panic attacks etc - is the most severe response. Most people I know who've been to Paris with high or romantic expectations just get scammed, spat on, yelled at or robbed and feel a bit disappointed.

Re: What makes Paris look like Paris? (2012)

#65

Post by pluma » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 1:56 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #64

HAL9000Ti wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"From the estimated six million yearly visitors, [...]around 20 Japanese tourists a year are affected by the syndrome" With 0.0003% of people being affected, I'd argue that this so called "symptom" is hardly a noteworthy phenomenon.

The syndrome - with panic attacks etc - is the most severe response. Most people I know who've been to Paris with high or romantic expectations just get scammed, spat on, yelled at or robbed and feel a bit disappointed.

I've been to Paris a few times and when people tell me they want to go there for romantic reasons, I just tell them to go to Bruges instead. The Old Town of Bruges is exactly the way most people seem to imagine Paris: old buildings, reasonably clean, lots of street cafés and horse-drawn carriages.

Even the Eiffel tower looks better from a distance than close-up (mostly because it's really just a massive lump of steel). There are nice corners in Paris but if you haven't actually ever been to Paris before, you'll probably be disappointed by the overall experience.

Re: What makes Paris look like Paris? (2012)

#66

Post by obmelvin » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 2:18 PM UTC

graeme wrote: post #60

tormeh wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of building taller if you just increase the street width so total livable area per ground area is the same? That's nonsensical. Of course people will have to live with shadow. It's the only way to increase density (unless you want people to live in basements).

I don’t think any city does this. Humans need sunlight. (OP is not talking about shadow on one side of the road. They mean perma shadow the whole day long.)

From what I remember, Rio de Janeiro has something similar to this. Huge buildings were built basically right up to the beach so you can be 1-2 blocks away from Copacabana and not really know

Re: What makes Paris look like Paris? (2012)

#67

Post by tomatotomato37 » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 2:22 PM UTC

CaptainZapp wrote: post #54

ovi256 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the rules meant to preserve the Haussmanian parts beloved by tourists are applied uniformly throughout the city, even in those neighborhoods without tourists which you mention. There were deviations from the rules throughout the ages, especially on the left bank with the newer, taller towers (Place d'Italie, Montparnasse, Berges de Seine). But these deviations were always one off, pushed through by an…

One deviation that comes to mind and smack in the center of town would be Beaubourg (Centre Pompidou[1]), which is a very massive, very modernist building, surrounded by some of the oldest parts of the city. The canopy at Les Halles also pretty much puts a stop to the rumour that new, massive constructions are not possible in Paris, let alone in the center of Paris. Granted, context certainly matters and Beaubourg wa…

The Beaubourg is a museum though, which nowadays are allowed to look like a pretentious eyesores that clash with the surrounding landscape as some form of statement. A better comparision would be the construction of new property that is purely residential or commerical

Re: What makes Paris look like Paris? (2012)

#68

Post by ckarmann » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 2:25 PM UTC

tormeh wrote: post #45

Thlom wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But taller buildings equals wider streets to such a degree that the density you win by building high mostly gets eaten up by the lost real estate used for wider streets.

Why do you need wider streets? Moving people is what the metro is for.

Except if you plan to build an underground city, people still have to walk from/to the metro station to/from wherever they live or work. And people also still strangely favor having a bit of sunlight.

As a French living now in Canada, Paris streets are narrow in general, and especially the sidewalks are ridiculous, most of the space is for cars. One of the first thing to do would be to reclaim that street space for pedestrians and cyclists, which is an ongoing, slow and painful battle.

Re: What makes Paris look like Paris? (2012)

#69

Post by realusername » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 2:34 PM UTC

fiblye wrote: post #53

realusername wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you build taller buildings, you will need to have wider streets, thus resulting in the same density, it won't solve anything.

What? I've never seen this in practice. Hong Kong is incredibly dense and full of high rise buildings (Kowloon has 110,000 people/square mile) and streets aren't exactly wide. Seoul packs in 42,000 people per square mile without many significantly wide streets. Tokyo streets are often only suitable for one way traffic.

Paris is already more dense than Hong Kong and Tokyo

Re: What makes Paris look like Paris? (2012)

#70

Post by twic » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 2:59 PM UTC

Mansard roofs. It's the mansard roofs. I never noticed them until i moved into a flat (not in Paris) which is in a mansard roof, and now i'm hyper-aware of them. Paris has them everywhere, and even has multi-storey ones, which are very rare in the UK.