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Old Paris Is No More

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Re: Old Paris Is No More

#51

Post by reaperducer »

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…

There isn't a rule about that sort of thing, but a convention you get used to over time.

Adding the Les gives Olympiades more context. The extra word provides clues that this is a straight foreign word that should be treated differently. Port d'Italie is already two words, so extra context isn't necessarily needed.

Like many things in English, it's up to the speaker/writer, and the context.

Re: Old Paris Is No More

#52

Post by Nasrudith »

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…

To be frank those defensible streets themselves were an older agenda back when one of the functions of city was defensibility - in the service of the same elite.

They were always for the purpose. While there are rightful aspects to complain about the displacement sanitation and boulevards were good things even if their motives were ulterior.

Re: Old Paris Is No More

#53

Post by KaiserPro »

thecleaner wrote: post #5

I don't understand this romantic idea of Olden Times. I doubt any Parisian misses dying of simple dieases or just not having access to emergency care. I don't understand why people would ever romanticize with the old days. Sure, we ought to remember our history but we don't need to romanticize it. It was awful.

Its interesting to contrast the two approaches taken by london and paris.

Barring the great fire (and I suspect there will have been similar events in paris as well) There was no one architect or style that completely flattened the victorian london.

The strand, which is now a large paris style boulevard was a semi-slum/porn publishing district. Around the houses or parliament was a spectacularly large slum.

https://publicdomainreview.org/2016/06/29/the-secret-history... (warning Victorian porn. NSFW)

This did mean that in the 1920-40s there was a massive expansion into the "suburbs" to escape the slums, poverty and diseases of central london. This is a decline that has only really just reversed in the last 20 years. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_London)

The crucial thing was that "social" housing was placed in every borough of the city, not just on the outskirts. The highest density of social housing is in southwark, which is opposite both the houses of parliament and the "city". I imagine its the equivalent of building ~80k houses exclusively for the poor in the 6th and 7th arrondissement

Re: Old Paris Is No More

#54

Post by tom_mellior »

dmix wrote: post #38
zwaps wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah sure. So it's basically one of these concepts of what a modern city should be. You have cars and traffic completely underground, on top a relative open area with shops on different levels and high rise buildings for living (as to have public space). It seems like a great idea conceptually, because it affords much space to pedestrians, green spots and still allows accessibility. But it failed to be attractive to th…

Toronto built a complex for urban workers which was designed to be highly walkable “Towers in a Park” approach meant for 1950s young “swinging single” workers, the quintessential urban planning done by cities of the era, but before long it turned into an urban ghetto where drug dealers and petty crime thrived because there was poor access for police vehicles and other types of law enforcement with the towering buildi…

> drug dealers and petty crime thrived because there was poor access for police vehicles and other types of law enforcement

Interesting take, not supported by the Wikipedia article. Don't Canadian police have access to bikes, motorcycles, or (gasp) horses that might access areas where cars can't go?

What the Wikipedia article does say is this: "The apartments lacked appeal though, poorly constructed, and with a lack of amenities to support the density spike; many prospective tenants instead moved to suburban houses in the developing areas of Scarborough, Etobicoke and North York. The area quickly became much poorer. Four buildings were later built by the province to provide public housing."

Shoddy housing attracts those who can't afford better, and poverty breeds petty crime, that much is true. Blaming it on missing car access is original. Personally I would be more worried about access difficulties for firefighters.

Re: Old Paris Is No More

#55

Post by rb808 »

Its still amazing to me how bad modern construction is. Paris was build with no electricity, no cars/trucks, no computers, no massive cranes and they can build a city that is more beautiful than any modern city. Even in the US pre-war apartment buildings are more solid, higher ceilings and more ornate than anything built in the last 50 years.

Re: Old Paris Is No More

#56

Post by ticktacktock2 »

kristianc wrote: post #49
ticktacktock2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The article is capitalized only when it is the beginning of a sentence, or for the elementary school of the same name. The article behaves "normally" (eg switches to aux Olympiades when needed) while the English article stick to Les Olympiades with a capitalized "Les".

Interestingly, both articles first words are "Les Olympiades", but:

* "Les" is in bold in the English one, as if it was part of the name, while only "Olympiades" is in bold in French

* The French article says "the Olympiades are" while the English one say "the Olympiades is".

Re: Old Paris Is No More

#57

Post by dmix »

tom_mellior wrote: post #54
dmix wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toronto built a complex for urban workers which was designed to be highly walkable “Towers in a Park” approach meant for 1950s young “swinging single” workers, the quintessential urban planning done by cities of the era, but before long it turned into an urban ghetto where drug dealers and petty crime thrived because there was poor access for police vehicles and other types of law enforcement with the towering buildi…

> drug dealers and petty crime thrived because there was poor access for police vehicles and other types of law enforcement Interesting take, not supported by the Wikipedia article. Don't Canadian police have access to bikes, motorcycles, or (gasp) horses that might access areas where cars can't go? What the Wikipedia article does say is this: "The apartments lacked appeal though, poorly constructed, and with a lack…

I lived next to it for a number of years and often visited friends who lived there. I’m very familiar with it and the problems it has.

The idea of these concrete enclosed blocks of land being havens for crime and gangs is hardly controversial.

This isn’t the open walkable streets of some nice European city or even downtown Toronto. It’s isolated and poorly maintained. Basically what people have come to expect from city run and planned housing from the past generations.

Re: Old Paris Is No More

#58

Post by irishsultan »

hrktb wrote: post #29
harperlee wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When thinking in historical times you should put yourself in that moment of time. Of course if someone travels back in time with current knowledge will do things in different ways than Haussmann - they know whats going to happen, they know about things Haussmann didn’t.

It's not just historic fantasy though, there was opposition to his way, but they didn't have the political clout nor could oppose centering the cities around cars. It's not just Haussmann either, most countries had that tension around letting cars dominate or not (there was an excellent 99pi episode about these tensions [0]), it just happened that one side massively won benefiting from economics, politics and power d…

I think you need better evidence for this tension than an episode that's talking about a different country half a century later (the time difference is especially important, because the changes to Paris took place at a time when cars were still being invented, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benz_Patent-Motorwagen "widely regarded as the world's first production automobile" was patented in 1885, 15 years after the initial development according to Haussmans plans stopped)

Re: Old Paris Is No More

#60

Post by devchix »

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…

Not so weird, its use is governed by convention. Country names derived from geographical feature take a definite article.

Country Names and 'The': The Ukraine or Ukraine https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/country-...

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