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Old Paris Is No More

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Re: Old Paris Is No More

#41

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

zwaps wrote: post #25

One difference between Haussmann and others is that his buildings turned out to create one of the most beautiful cities in the world. In contrast, 20's century urbanism projects - even on a smaller scale - are almost always considered a failure ex post. In Paris itself, walk yourself through the Les Olympiades area, from Tolbiac down to Porte d'Italie, if you like an impressive testament to that fact. Some other favo…

Here is a Twitter account to follow if you're interested in "good urbanism": https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon

Re: Old Paris Is No More

#42

Post by Renaud »

Those interested in old photographs documenting Paris should have a look at the work of Eugène Atget.

He basically documented the streets, shops, crafts, people of Paris at the end of the XIXth century, before most of the old and derelict housing were demolished and replaced with the "modern" ones we see today.

https://www.moma.org/artists/229#works

Re: Old Paris Is No More

#43

Post by shoo »

phillc73 wrote: post #16
thecleaner wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or because we think it was worth it, in the end. This. I mean if the people put up with the problems caused by the new construction, I believe they deserve credit for being pro-civilization. Not the "oh no, look their old world is gone" nonsense. Surely nobody rebuilt the city for garnering sympathy.

I understood a completely different point from the article. The old mediaeval city was destroyed to essentially disenfranchise the working poor. No longer would they have strong defensive positions in small winding streets during revolution, they were also displaced from the city centre to make space for the wealthy and elite. Money and power weren't working towards a pro-civilisation agenda. They were working in the…

This kind of thing is described in Scott's book "seeing like a state". The state takes steps to modify the environment and society to make it more legible to management by a central bureaucracy, to further the aims of the state.

For example, the state knocks down existing dwellings to build more roads so it is easier for the army to rapidly mobilize and crush unrest.

The state begins to require all subjects to have a last name, where the people themselves have no real need of one, in order to better identify individuals for more effective taxation.

It's worth a read, both for the appreciation of how it plays out in the world, and also as a source of interesting analogies for how other regimes, such as large hierarchical organisations, will embark on grand projects to attempt to make the surrounding environment more legible and tractable to centralised control and governance.

Re: Old Paris Is No More

#44

Post by ticktacktock2 »

zwaps wrote: post #40
ticktacktock2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unrelated to the topic, but your comment is a good occasion to learn more about what seems to me to be weird (grammatical) article usages by English speakers. Why did you call it _Les_ Olympiades, and not Olympiades (no article) or _the_ Olympiades (article in English), or _les_ Olympiades (no capitalization of the article) ? For Porte d'Italie, you did not add any article, i.e. Porte d'Italie and not _La_ Po…

Honestly? Because I am not French and I just wrote very thoughtlessly. Sorry, no further reasoning behind it.

I see. Still, this is quite common. For instance the English Wikipedia article [0] use the "random French capitalized article" ("Though the proportions are more modest, _Les_ Olympiades are designed similarly to the esplanade of _La_ Défense.", emphasis mine) but not the French Wikipedia 0article [1], which uses "normal" (to me) grammatical articles.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Olympiades

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympiades_(quartier_parisien)

Re: Old Paris Is No More

#45

Post by masklinn »

thomasfl wrote: post #35
zwaps wrote: post #25

One difference between Haussmann and others is that his buildings turned out to create one of the most beautiful cities in the world. In contrast, 20's century urbanism projects - even on a smaller scale - are almost always considered a failure ex post. In Paris itself, walk yourself through the Les Olympiades area, from Tolbiac down to Porte d'Italie, if you like an impressive testament to that fact. Some other favo…

Poundbury in Dorchester (UK) was nothing but plain grass in the 1990'ies. Now Poundbury is a city that has generated more new jobs than new homes. The price for real estate is 30% higher than neighbouring cities. And they have yet to experience a traffic accident. Beautiful walkable cities is good for business.

An other interesting new urbanism project — though I'd have a hard time calling it "beautiful" — is Louvain-La-Neuve in Belgium: a completely planned city resulting from the split of the "Catholic University of Leuven" into the flemish KU Leuven and the walloon UCL the city was set up such that the city center is entirely pedestrian, cars within the city center travel below the giant concrete slab which makes up the city's ground.

Re: Old Paris Is No More

#46

Post by deltron3030 »

zwaps wrote: post #25

One difference between Haussmann and others is that his buildings turned out to create one of the most beautiful cities in the world. In contrast, 20's century urbanism projects - even on a smaller scale - are almost always considered a failure ex post. In Paris itself, walk yourself through the Les Olympiades area, from Tolbiac down to Porte d'Italie, if you like an impressive testament to that fact. Some other favo…

By whom? It's a matter of perspective. If you're into architecture and design you'll care more about the practicality and function of the building than it's exterior appearance. A sterile exterior then becomes an indicator that the budget went into what matters most.

In my personal opinion, the exterior of buildings (excluding windows) should all be considered public space, they should be open for decoration, like street art, mural paintings etc., so this problem would be solved by the people who live there and take action.

Re: Old Paris Is No More

#47

Post by glup »

On a similar topic, I greatly enjoyed "The Other Paris" by Luc Sante, a sort of long-term social history of the city with focus on the marginalized.

Re: Old Paris Is No More

#48

Post by [deleted] »

ticktacktock2 wrote: post #39
zwaps wrote: post #25

One difference between Haussmann and others is that his buildings turned out to create one of the most beautiful cities in the world. In contrast, 20's century urbanism projects - even on a smaller scale - are almost always considered a failure ex post. In Paris itself, walk yourself through the Les Olympiades area, from Tolbiac down to Porte d'Italie, if you like an impressive testament to that fact. Some other favo…

This is unrelated to the topic, but your comment is a good occasion to learn more about what seems to me to be weird (grammatical) article usages by English speakers. Why did you call it _Les_ Olympiades, and not Olympiades (no article) or _the_ Olympiades (article in English), or _les_ Olympiades (no capitalization of the article) ? For Porte d'Italie, you did not add any article, i.e. Porte d'Italie and not _La_ Po…

[deleted]

Re: Old Paris Is No More

#49

Post by kristianc »

ticktacktock2 wrote: post #44
zwaps wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly? Because I am not French and I just wrote very thoughtlessly. Sorry, no further reasoning behind it.

I see. Still, this is quite common. For instance the English Wikipedia article [0] use the "random French capitalized article" ("Though the proportions are more modest, _Les_ Olympiades are designed similarly to the esplanade of _La_ Défense.", emphasis mine) but not the French Wikipedia 0article [1], which uses "normal" (to me) grammatical articles. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Olympiades [1] https://fr.wik…

The French article repeatedly refers to it as _Les_ Olympiades.

Re: Old Paris Is No More

#50

Post by vinceguidry »

ticktacktock2 wrote: post #39
zwaps wrote: post #25

One difference between Haussmann and others is that his buildings turned out to create one of the most beautiful cities in the world. In contrast, 20's century urbanism projects - even on a smaller scale - are almost always considered a failure ex post. In Paris itself, walk yourself through the Les Olympiades area, from Tolbiac down to Porte d'Italie, if you like an impressive testament to that fact. Some other favo…

This is unrelated to the topic, but your comment is a good occasion to learn more about what seems to me to be weird (grammatical) article usages by English speakers. Why did you call it _Les_ Olympiades, and not Olympiades (no article) or _the_ Olympiades (article in English), or _les_ Olympiades (no capitalization of the article) ? For Porte d'Italie, you did not add any article, i.e. Porte d'Italie and not _La_ Po…

I think this comes down to the fact that English speakers don't consider their own articles very much because they're always the same. We don't have to put any effort into picking one, so selection is unconscious and automatic.

I recall Ukrainians objecting to the English-speaking world's fixation on calling their country "the Ukraine" instead of just "Ukraine." The propensity to just append articles to nouns to facilitate flow is hard to overcome.

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