Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 662 posts

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#191

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

hollerith wrote: post #171
rsynnott wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can certainly cause light issues, but I'm not sure why it would cause _congestion_?

The higher the density, the more vehicles get in each others way. If your reply is that the vehicles are not needed because everyone can just walk: it takes more energy and more carbon emissions to walk a mile than it takes to drive a vehicle a mile -- and that's before we get to transporting things other than people. (Growing food is very energy intensive; walking burns food.)

High density is what enables mass rail transportation, which is much more efficient than personal vehicles.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#192

Post by underlipton »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #164
rsynnott wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can certainly cause light issues, but I'm not sure why it would cause _congestion_?

More people in a smaller area? Congestion doesn't just refer to car traffic Edit: think about crowded grocery stores and restaurants. Think community spaces like parks and libraries being packed all the time. Think about never being able to stop and get a coffee without waiting in a long line. Congestion

I would imagine that the answer would be to open more shops. Obviously, to avoid a NYC-like situation, you would have to bust the CRE cartels that keep retail square-footage absurdly expensive. Parks and libraries are harder... though building taller does tend to allow for more open land space.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#193

Post by fnord123 »

bezier-curve wrote: post #186
hollerith wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The higher the density, the more vehicles get in each others way. If your reply is that the vehicles are not needed because everyone can just walk: it takes more energy and more carbon emissions to walk a mile than it takes to drive a vehicle a mile -- and that's before we get to transporting things other than people. (Growing food is very energy intensive; walking burns food.)

> it takes more energy and more carbon emissions to walk a mile than it takes to drive a vehicle a mile Do you have a source for this? Sounds questionable.

It's false. People will not go into suspend mode when not walking; they still burn calories. A very large person would burn about 130 calories walking a mile. i.e. one large latte. And most people who are this large are not at risk of a caloric deficit by burning an extra 130 calories.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#194

Post by its_ethan »

cultureswitch wrote: post #112
bko wrote: post #4

The problem with charging below market prices for anything is that it necessarily leads to a mismatch of supply and demand. So the question is how do you allocate that supply? One way is to have hidden costs. This could range from straight up bribes, to paid consultants to fill out a lot of forms or talk to the right people, to just knowing someone Another way is a lottery which benefits a tiny percentage of people.…

When someone rents a small apartment in the center of Paris for 4k on the private market in all likeliness they're paying more than 3k of pure rent profit to the owner. The rent can be levied by the owner however the owner actually did not provide any of the investment or labor required to give the apartment the value it has. The apartment has value not because of anything inside the apartment or the building. It has…

> It has value due to its location, something that the owner has no control over and did not spend a single penny to make more attractive

To be fair, the owner is paying property taxes - which do go towards improving the location.

> The apartment has value not because of anything inside the apartment or the building.

I think you'll find, in basically any city, that the quality of a building does correlate to it's rent price or value. You'll also find that owners do invest in increasing the quality of their buildings, which does improve the value or "niceness" of the location. If this wasn't true, gentrification couldn't exist.

> Why should someone profit from the attractiveness of a location they haven't actually built?

If you're claiming that since no real identifiable person or group "built" the attractiveness of a location, and that therefore no one should get to profit from it, you'd be seriously tampering with the signal that the natural markets supply/demand provides in the form of rental prices. That's going to lead to some significant "economic inefficiencies" for the area in the medium to long term.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#195

Post by [deleted] »

hollerith wrote: post #171
rsynnott wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can certainly cause light issues, but I'm not sure why it would cause _congestion_?

The higher the density, the more vehicles get in each others way. If your reply is that the vehicles are not needed because everyone can just walk: it takes more energy and more carbon emissions to walk a mile than it takes to drive a vehicle a mile -- and that's before we get to transporting things other than people. (Growing food is very energy intensive; walking burns food.)

[deleted]

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#196

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

foldr wrote: post #147
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting there's a strong correlation between the number of low-salary workers living in the city and the presence of the Louvre or the Centre Pompidou?

Are you suggesting that nothing of cultural significance has happened in Paris since the Louvre opened as a museum in 1793? Or that Paris's culture can be reduced to a set of buildings? Also, mixed income housing in Paris has a long history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...

>Are you suggesting that nothing of cultural significance has happened in Paris since the Louvre opened as a museum in 1793?

No; I'm not suggesting anything of the sort. In fact, that seems like a fairly strange statement given that I mentioned the Centre Pompidou (opened in the 1970s) in practically the same breath.

>Or that Paris's culture can be reduced to a set of buildings?

No; again, not sure where that's coming from.

My point, which you didn't address at all, was that you seemed to be implying that there was some kind of correlation between lower-income housing in cities and their cultural significance. Was that your goal? If so, can you explain further?

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#197

Post by slibhb »

smeej wrote: post #169

> The program has allowed Mr. Chaillou and his wife to raise their two boys in the city. But he knows that the future of social housing will always face at least one big challenge: “The problem is that once you get in, you never want to leave.” I think this is the reason so many in the U.S. are skeptical of/resistant to such plans. Why work your butt off for 10 years to get to a place where you can afford a nice dwel…

> American culture doesn't like to think about how much of "success" is down to luck. As often as possible, we want to think it's earned. The idea of trying to make up for some of the luck factor by taking some from those with more and giving it to those with less is almost instinctively repugnant, even if it might lead to higher quality of life for everyone involved.

The US is in the ballpark of other OECD countries in terms of social expenditure: https://www.compareyourcountry.org/social-expenditure

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#198

Post by throwaway11460 »

walthamstow wrote: post #131
rafaelero wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean cities need it not to die? Would you say Monaco is dead? What about Zurich? Oslo?

Monaco, absolutely yes, because most of the workers commute from France, they don't live in Monaco. Zurich and Oslo, I don't see the connection, they both have workers of all kinds, old and young people. They're organic and alive cities.

Monaco is artificially restricted from growing, how can you build a factory there if the state border can't be moved?

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#199

Post by foldr »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #196
foldr wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that nothing of cultural significance has happened in Paris since the Louvre opened as a museum in 1793? Or that Paris's culture can be reduced to a set of buildings? Also, mixed income housing in Paris has a long history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...

> Are you suggesting that nothing of cultural significance has happened in Paris since the Louvre opened as a museum in 1793? No; I'm not suggesting anything of the sort. In fact, that seems like a fairly strange statement given that I mentioned the Centre Pompidou (opened in the 1970s) in practically the same breath. > Or that Paris's culture can be reduced to a set of buildings? No; again, not sure where that's com…

In a sentence: artists are poor. Hence the correlation. You can see this on a smaller scale with neighbourhoods in a given city. The culturally cutting edge neighbourhoods of NYC aren't the ones where all the rich people live.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#200

Post by vladvasiliu »

rsynnott wrote: post #135
dv_dt wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It causes congestion if the city refuses to invest in public transportation - which is more a problem in US cities - though some European cities could be behind on keeping up with changes to different degrees

Oh, right, I see, yeah. Would not generally be an issue in Paris, I would've thought, at least not towards the centre.

You'd be mistaken. Public transit is extremely crowded in the centre during rush hour.

For example, two regional lines (RER B and D) need to share a tunnel in the middle of the city. They've been investigating digging another one for a long time, but, AFAIK. they haven't found an economical way of doing so. The solution is to try to move people to other lines, but those are already very crowded and I'm not aware of any project to build a new line inside of the city limits.

Post reply on HN