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Paris Mayor: It's Time for a '15-Minute City'

citylab.com

141–150 of 189 posts

Re: Paris Mayor: It's Time for a '15-Minute City'

#141
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if you look carefully at the data it looks like air pollution has reduced in areas where cars were removed but has increased elsewhere. Are you trying to imply some sort of causation here? Because I can't see how decreasing car use in the city centre would increase usage outside it. > It’s hardly a win for air pollution Decreasing the use of (internal combustion) cars in city centres is a huge win for air pollu…

Car use in Paris has just shifted around. For it to disappear people would need credible alternatives. Remember most Parisians don’t have a cars and have fantastic public transport. It’s workers and commuters from far away that need vehicles. Basically the river side used to be like a highway where you could travel from West to East and vice versa. This is essentially gone now. But all the traffic has moved more inla…

Paris' greatest asset is its river, the Seine. Devoting a section of one of its two banks to a car highway is simply insane. If the city wants good uninterrupted travel East-West to replace that riverside highway it should build a tunnel.

Re: Paris Mayor: It's Time for a '15-Minute City'

#142
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put the valuable stuff into your trousers front pockets. I'm doing this for years, it works better than having anything in my back pockets. Though being 193cm tall might deter perps from trying something funny.

Perhaps insist on better law enforcement than blaming the victim. Pick-pocketing, by many accounts, is rampant in Paris and is just a sign of how lax policing is. Its not something to be even modestly indifferent about.

[deleted]

Re: Paris Mayor: It's Time for a '15-Minute City'

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone can get to what they need within 15 minutes, traffic as a whole would be greatly reduced

No. Because of the vast majority of people who work in Paris can’t afford to live there. And if you live in an area with terrible public transport (not uncommon far from the inner city and the first ring of surrounding suburbs) then you basically have no choice. It’s either you spend 3+hrs in public transport or 1.5hours in a car. Guess what people do....

Can't people 'park & ride'?

i.e. drive to their nearest train station and then catch the train in to the city centre.

Re: Paris Mayor: It's Time for a '15-Minute City'

#144

In contrast, I’ve always considered Los Angeles to be a “45 Minute City”, but by car. Everything you need is a 45 minute drive from wherever you are now. The beach is 45 minutes away. It’s 45 minutes to work. Your friends are each about 45 minutes away, in different directions, and the downtown bar you meet at on Friday night is 45 minutes away. You can even get out into the mountains on angel crest highway in about…

When i lived there it was 20 minutes everywhere. Now between 3pm and 7pm it can easily be 2-3hrs. A few years ago visiting I made the mistake of trying to from Santa Monica at 4:30 pm to Alhambra. Took 3 hours. The ride back was 30 mins

My mom who still lives there said she was on the freeway for 5 hours (2in, 3out) from Temecula to Pasadena and back. With no traffic it would have been 1hr each way.

Re: Paris Mayor: It's Time for a '15-Minute City'

#145
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if you look carefully at the data it looks like air pollution has reduced in areas where cars were removed but has increased elsewhere. Are you trying to imply some sort of causation here? Because I can't see how decreasing car use in the city centre would increase usage outside it. > It’s hardly a win for air pollution Decreasing the use of (internal combustion) cars in city centres is a huge win for air pollu…

Car use in Paris has just shifted around. For it to disappear people would need credible alternatives. Remember most Parisians don’t have a cars and have fantastic public transport. It’s workers and commuters from far away that need vehicles. Basically the river side used to be like a highway where you could travel from West to East and vice versa. This is essentially gone now. But all the traffic has moved more inla…

> It’s workers and commuters from far away that need vehicles.

They need vehicles to reach the public transports, not to move around in Paris.

Re: Paris Mayor: It's Time for a '15-Minute City'

#146
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, and improving the lives of those people is important but should never be detrimental to the Parisians themselves. For example, tourism means lots of Airbnb’d flats that are thus taken away from the people who could live there, and higher rents for those who can.

Your comment seems highly tone-deaf. Look at some of the comments above about pollution and what it has done to areas immediately outside of the city core.

The air quality in Paris has significantly improved over the past few years, thanks to multiple initiatives to reduce the car traffic, both at the city and regional level [1].

[1]: https://www.la-croix.com/France/qualite-lair-sameliore-Paris...

Re: Paris Mayor: It's Time for a '15-Minute City'

#147
post #69

I live in Paris and whatever you think of the current mayor, this is pure marketing babble for the elections next month. Paris has always had this very dense city core where 99% of daily life is 5-10’ away. It’s a great concept for dense metropoles, but it only works because the city is so small: 100 square kilometers in an ocean of much lesser density. 80% of “Greater Parisians” live outside Paris itself. Unfortunat…

I agree with you and if there was a survey of problems (at the municipal level) the inhabitants think of as priority, the walkability of the city would probably not be their main priority (which, as noted, is good).

> I agree with you and if there was a survey of problems (at the municipal level) the inhabitants think of as priority, the walkability of the city would probably not be their main priority (which, as noted, is good).

There is a survey at the municipal level called the “Budget Participatif”, where inhabitants can suggest and vote for projects that’ll then be executed by the city. These projects represent 5% of the annual city budget. There have been so many projects about pedestrian areas in 2018 that they decided to remove the whole category in 2019 not to be overwhelm by the quantity of new projects and have time to do the previous ones. If that shows one thing, it’s that the walkability of the city is a main priority.

Re: Paris Mayor: It's Time for a '15-Minute City'

#148
I had traveled to Paris a number of times and decided to take a drive across parts of France. Armed with a classic Michelin guide book, I rented a car at one of the train stations in central Paris. My plan was to simply drive and stop every evening around 5:30pm using the guide book to find a place to stay.

I was quite surprised that I ended up still in greater Paris on the first evening. Between stopping to eat, taking photos, and navigating (pre-GPS), I was still in Paris the first night. Paris is a huge, and lovely, city.

As an aside, it was a great trip. I simply drove south for around 8 days and picked a different route to drive north back to Paris to fly home. I stumbled across so many interesting places, the prehistoric caves of the Dordogne, the dramatic village of Rocamadour located on a cliff, and many other memorable places.

Re: Paris Mayor: It's Time for a '15-Minute City'

#149
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put the valuable stuff into your trousers front pockets. I'm doing this for years, it works better than having anything in my back pockets. Though being 193cm tall might deter perps from trying something funny.

Perhaps insist on better law enforcement than blaming the victim. Pick-pocketing, by many accounts, is rampant in Paris and is just a sign of how lax policing is. Its not something to be even modestly indifferent about.

Giving hints is hardly victim blaming.

Re: Paris Mayor: It's Time for a '15-Minute City'

#150
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only my own opinion, but I believe there is too much centralization of national, international and diplomatic institutions inside the City of Paris. I am _for_ more decentralization of businesses and powers across the Region of Paris and across other cities of France. House pricing clearly shows that the City of Paris is a gravity center in terms of everything, which leads to many of the current traffic and poll…

Or Toulouse ranked 4. That may force the government to invest for some infrastructure. I don’t think we’ll ever a TGV there.

Oh, come on, it's only about 10 years away [1]. Granted, it's been 10 years away for about a decade, now.

But that leaves the question of whether Toulouse will get a TGV before nuclear fusion is invented, Thomas Pesquet walks on Mars, or anyone actually start working on an Hyperloop instead of faking it [2].)

[1] https://actu.fr/occitanie/toulouse_31555/pourquoi-projet-lgv...

[2] https://actu.fr/occitanie/toulouse_31555/hyperloop-piste-ess...

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