I wonder how many of those poor immigrants who live in this public housing to serve wealthy Parisians would prefer to live in something like an American suburb if they could get jobs there.
all of them
Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing
551–560 of 662 posts
Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing
#552Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But is subsidizing people to be service workers for wealthy Parisians a good public policy and good use of public funds? Given that each of us is allotted exactly 8,760 hours in a year: Is it good public policy to force non-wealthy people to spend so many more of those hours in commuting than those who can afford to live closer to their jobs? I live in a small, separately-incorporated city, a few minutes from downt…
> Given that each of us is allotted exactly 8,760 hours in a year: Is it good public policy to force non-wealthy people to spend so many more of those hours in commuting than those who can afford to live closer to their jobs? Wouldn't it be better to direct public policy and funding to helping create jobs elsewhere and leave the wealthy urban people make their own coffee?
If we are going to develop the state capacity to override inexorable forces of nature, like the productivity and desirability of the metropole over the hinterlands, might I suggest we first give the people a good show by turning off gravity? Bring the Mediterranean climate to Chicago? Maybe do something about climate change?
Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing
#553Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Modern cars with functioning mufflers or electric powertrains... aren't actually that loud. Until their tires hit asphalt. Cars have to go very slowly for the engine to be louder than the tires, and that noise is a function of weight, and electric cars are heavier than equivalent ICE cars.
Most of the sound from a modern car with a functioning muffler is wind noise. You can barely hear the tires unless you're standing right next to it. "Electric cars are heavier" is some silly nonsense where people went looking for something to complain about. You can make an electric car as light as you want, with the trade off that it implies making the battery smaller and reducing range. But the Model 3 has a ~300 m…
> Most of the sound from a modern car with a functioning muffler is wind noise
What? Like wind hitting the extremely aerodynamic surface of the car designed specifically not to catch the wind? I have never heard or read this in my life - it is widely known that tires-on-pavement is the biggest contributor of car noise. That roar you hear standing a quarter mile from a busy highway is not wind, it's the tires.
> "Electric cars are heavier" is some silly nonsense where people went looking for something to complain about. You can make an electric car as light as you want, with the trade off that it implies making the battery smaller and reducing range.
Again, this contradicts everything I've read and/or is just willfully ignorant. You can't make EVs superlight by stripping down the body, for example. The battery is the heavy part and while they may get more mass-efficient over time EVs are now and for the foreseeable future strictly heavier than same-size ICE cars.
EVs aren't the savior of the environment, public transit is. EVs are better than ICE cars in most ways, but for noise all cars are a problem and EVs are worse.
Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing
#554Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US government actually spends more per capita on healthcare than the UK or Japan despite it not being universal. We're terribly inefficient with its social spending because have politics is so adversarial and nobody is interested in doing any due diligence.
> We're terribly inefficient with its social spending because have politics is so adversarial and nobody is interested in doing any due diligence. And I'm sure it has nothing to do with the United States having a very unhealthy population and pays doctors the highest salaries in the world.
8% of healthcare spending is salaries, is that your smoking gun?
Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing
#555> 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…
I'm so glad I left the USA and moved to The Netherlands. Public housing in NL isn't perfect, but the one thing I really really do not miss is listening to my fellow Americans share their opinions on the subject.
And you still get to pay US taxes assuming you are a US citizen.
Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing
#556Earlier quoted context omitted.
...This is the state of people living under car-dependency, not dense urbanism supported by public transit and walkable areas. Car noises stress people out, make them irritable, impact their health. Driving in traffic makes people angry/furious/insane (literally - it is not sane to pull a gun on someone driving past you but it happens). Prioritizing parking and roads is a colossal misuse of land which causes crowded…
But, they are closing roads making them one way etc, that creates the traffic problem. It's bad governance - creating pain to allow government to administer the preordained 'solution' - no cars! Moving to car less city is the goal, but, as others note, the infrastructure is not there. So you're just pushing cars out... with no real answers being provided. How is that good government? And the roads you call mismanagem…
This has nothing to do with my comment or what I was replying to, which was a comment about crowded public spaces.
Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing
#557I wonder how many of those poor immigrants who live in this public housing to serve wealthy Parisians would prefer to live in something like an American suburb if they could get jobs there.
Probably none. I'd much prefer to be poor in Paris than America.
https://homelessdeathscount.org/ (arrogent domain given it's a USA count) https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/dying-on-the-streets-franc...
Even adjusted for population size, we're still talking 2-3x the death rate if homeless.
> Acolin notes that France has roughly as many social housing dwellings as the United States, despite having less than one-fifth the population.
https://www.sightline.org/2021/07/26/yes-other-places-do-hou...
Social spending in France is the highest in the world, which has a dramatically larger effect on poor immigrants.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/02/social-spending-highe...
In France, these immigrants woild also have access to public healthcare, meaning they'd get 70-100% back on most medical appointments and reimbursement for prescription medications. There are many other social benefits too. It's also much more likely to be closer to their country of origin than the US, in the event they want and are able to return at some point.
I'm not trying to be rude, but why do you think a poor immigrant would have it better in the US than France? I can't think of a single reason.
Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing
#558Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like the best way to make getting from A to B quicker is for A and B to be closer together. Which makes walking or biking more practical and you don’t have to spend as much money on public transit.
A and B being closer works for cars, too. A 15 minute walk is 2 minutes by car, five by bike.
> A and B being closer works for cars, too.
Only when the distances are greater than short-walk distance. Cars take up (huge amounts of) space at their destination by parking. You can only push two destinations so close together before their parking lots merge.
Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing
#559Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cities are populated by people, not cars. As point A and point B become closer, people are less likely to drive. If your mailbox is attached to your house, you can lean out your front door to get your mail. If your mailbox is at the end of your 20 foot driveway, you take a few steps to get your mail. If you live on a farm, and your mailbox is down a several hundred yard driveway, you might hop in your side-by-side UT…
If you make something more efficient, people often use more of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox If things that had been a 10 minute drive become a 5 minute drive, now they're worth it when before they weren't. You go to the shop instead of waiting 2 days for Amazon. You go to the shop you like more instead of the one you like less even though the lesser one is closer, because now the difference isn't…
It's not only a function of trip length.
If you make the drive shorter but make parking harder,
and you make the walk/bike shorter but walking/biking pleasant,
people will take their cars less.
Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing
#560Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fundamentally disagree with every single word and every thought that led you there > Walk or ride - do whatever you like. But in the new world, one option will have been removed - driving. I'm not cheering the loss of that. I'm for free choice. You seem to be arguing in favour of removing other peoples' choices. And you think that's right! Who made you (or the Paris mayor) king/queen of the world? Akshully it's all…
> Roads create traffic and viable alternatives to driving reduces it. Any child, idiot or PhD urban planner and traffic engineer can tell you this. So, in the past, the governance structure used taxes to install roads and encourage car use.. (ie they were children, idiots and bereft of PhD urban planners). But now, it's using taxes to remove roads and discourage car use. How sage they are, not idiotic at all. Go go g…
Yes, some actions have bad outcomes and some good.
Are you saying everything the government does objectively makes life worse? Then you should be furious about driving anyway, because the government effectively forced you into it.