paris part 1: la urbanisme
Oct. 7th, 2024 02:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twoeleventhese are views of paris that don't involve faster, higher, or stronger.
let's start where we did, on rue de la roquette, in the 11th district, on the east side.
our hotel had a photogenic staircase:
views from our 6th-floor balcony:
looking southwest, towards place de la bastille:
looking northeast:
and straight down:
the balcony reminded me of the good parts of living in hyde park, chicago: we used share a huge second-floor apartment with a bunch of friends, and it had a much larger balcony. so, when we wanted to interact with people on the street, we'd sit on the balcony where we could see and be seen. and if we didn't want to, we could hide further back in the apartment. the apartment was long and thin, like a shotgun shack, so unless we were in the front room, we couldn't hear street noise.
this hotel room was too high to really talk to people outside, and the balcony was odd: too big to be just a juliet balcony, but not big enough to really enjoy sitting outside on. i think it was only a half meter wide, so the chairs and tiny table filled it.
rue de le roquette has lots of restaurants and cafes, with apartments and hotels above them. these views are all looking northeast, starting from place de la bastille, and going up the street from there.
sunset over rue de la roquette:
the masque of the red pipe:
and what would paris be without pastries? these are from a place called bon and bo, which is very much worth the prices they charge (about $8 each):
we wandered some of the nearby streets. this is a sign asking for donations to house homeless kids:
(60,000 homeless children, 1,600 street kids)
as with transportation, americans have these odd beliefs about europe's wealth and poverty. apparently, europe is some sort of cradle-to-grave socialist society, where the few hard-working taxpayers are utterly crushed by the burden of paying for medial care and free food for the lazy bums. or perhaps fairies provide social services and nobody works. or something like those, depending on one's politics.
in reality, it's neither. it's less screwed up than the US, but there's homelessness and other need. in vienna, the summer before last, somebody had convinced a restaurant to help him raise money for medical care for his son, who had some rare disease. i have photos of the posters, with the restaurant offering a euro for every fancy drink people ordered.
but back to urbanism:
we wandered down to a garden and collection of museums across the seine. there's a park stretching from place de la bastille to the river, with some sort of bottlebrush tree:
and the gardens themselves:
the local pigeons have expressed their opinion of lamarck's fantasies about evolution. (the french will never credit darwin.)
the bastille metro station has markers for the prison that was once there:
other things:
we saw the thing:
and the other thing:
so, like, we've done paris now, right? we can check it off the list?
the broader view from centre pompidou shows typical paris urbanism: six to seven story buildings, residential over the commercial. (i've heard the claim that "mixed use" residential over commercial doesn't exist in the US. it's rare, but there's some in newark, delaware and in chicago, and probably other places. i'm pretty sure there's some in manhattan, for example.)
chicago, famously, is mostly three stories tall, because there's a law that any building over that height needs an elevator (no new york style six-floor walk-ups). there's not much between three stories and ten stories tall, since it doesn't pay to put in elevators in medium-size buildings. so it's a short city, studded with tall buildings. the height difference shows clearly in population density:
chicago: 12,000 people/square mile
paris: 20,000 people/square mile
most of the difference between paris having exactly twice chicago's population density is the loop, which is all skyscrapers. they're mostly office towers, but there are plenty of huge high-rise apartments and condos. wakipedia gives the loop's population density as 27,000 people/square mile.
a couple of random photos:
a nice building:
whoever f. potin was, he had money and taste. the embellishments are a bit rococo for my tastes, but the basic design is pleasing.
a street named after some science guy:
let's start where we did, on rue de la roquette, in the 11th district, on the east side.
our hotel had a photogenic staircase:
views from our 6th-floor balcony:
looking southwest, towards place de la bastille:
looking northeast:
and straight down:
the balcony reminded me of the good parts of living in hyde park, chicago: we used share a huge second-floor apartment with a bunch of friends, and it had a much larger balcony. so, when we wanted to interact with people on the street, we'd sit on the balcony where we could see and be seen. and if we didn't want to, we could hide further back in the apartment. the apartment was long and thin, like a shotgun shack, so unless we were in the front room, we couldn't hear street noise.
this hotel room was too high to really talk to people outside, and the balcony was odd: too big to be just a juliet balcony, but not big enough to really enjoy sitting outside on. i think it was only a half meter wide, so the chairs and tiny table filled it.
rue de le roquette has lots of restaurants and cafes, with apartments and hotels above them. these views are all looking northeast, starting from place de la bastille, and going up the street from there.
sunset over rue de la roquette:
the masque of the red pipe:
and what would paris be without pastries? these are from a place called bon and bo, which is very much worth the prices they charge (about $8 each):
we wandered some of the nearby streets. this is a sign asking for donations to house homeless kids:
(60,000 homeless children, 1,600 street kids)
as with transportation, americans have these odd beliefs about europe's wealth and poverty. apparently, europe is some sort of cradle-to-grave socialist society, where the few hard-working taxpayers are utterly crushed by the burden of paying for medial care and free food for the lazy bums. or perhaps fairies provide social services and nobody works. or something like those, depending on one's politics.
in reality, it's neither. it's less screwed up than the US, but there's homelessness and other need. in vienna, the summer before last, somebody had convinced a restaurant to help him raise money for medical care for his son, who had some rare disease. i have photos of the posters, with the restaurant offering a euro for every fancy drink people ordered.
but back to urbanism:
we wandered down to a garden and collection of museums across the seine. there's a park stretching from place de la bastille to the river, with some sort of bottlebrush tree:
and the gardens themselves:
the local pigeons have expressed their opinion of lamarck's fantasies about evolution. (the french will never credit darwin.)
the bastille metro station has markers for the prison that was once there:
other things:
we saw the thing:
and the other thing:
so, like, we've done paris now, right? we can check it off the list?
the broader view from centre pompidou shows typical paris urbanism: six to seven story buildings, residential over the commercial. (i've heard the claim that "mixed use" residential over commercial doesn't exist in the US. it's rare, but there's some in newark, delaware and in chicago, and probably other places. i'm pretty sure there's some in manhattan, for example.)
chicago, famously, is mostly three stories tall, because there's a law that any building over that height needs an elevator (no new york style six-floor walk-ups). there's not much between three stories and ten stories tall, since it doesn't pay to put in elevators in medium-size buildings. so it's a short city, studded with tall buildings. the height difference shows clearly in population density:
chicago: 12,000 people/square mile
paris: 20,000 people/square mile
most of the difference between paris having exactly twice chicago's population density is the loop, which is all skyscrapers. they're mostly office towers, but there are plenty of huge high-rise apartments and condos. wakipedia gives the loop's population density as 27,000 people/square mile.
a couple of random photos:
a nice building:
whoever f. potin was, he had money and taste. the embellishments are a bit rococo for my tastes, but the basic design is pleasing.
a street named after some science guy:
no subject
Date: Oct. 7th, 2024 02:00 pm (UTC)Doesn't San Francisco also have a height restriction?
no subject
Date: Oct. 7th, 2024 02:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Oct. 7th, 2024 03:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Oct. 7th, 2024 04:11 pm (UTC)i have been amused reading about the poison pill california put into the laws allowing NIMBYs to stop growth in their areas.¹ In short, if a city/county doesn't build enough housing to meet demand, developers can do what they want to meet the need.
So hoity-toity neighborhoods of single-family mcmansions are sprouting manhattaneqse high-rises. This doesn't solve all of california's problems, but it's caused a lot NIMBYs to reconsider their "no nothing nowhere" approach to growth and development.
1: maybe "poison pill" is the wrong term, since everybody knew the requirement was there, and the cities and counties assured the legislature that they were mature enough to handle the problem...
no subject
Date: Oct. 7th, 2024 04:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Oct. 7th, 2024 06:01 pm (UTC)I really liked how city blocks were structured in Copenhagen, with internal courtyards, so there was quiet and fresh air on one side of things. There are some neighborhoods in Paris that have that, and Parisian suburbs still have pretty good transit and access to everything, making them more pleasant than American suburbs by a long shot.
So, to no one's surprise, I'd favor Nordic cities over most else.
no subject
Date: Oct. 7th, 2024 07:57 pm (UTC)yeah. i was looking for those, but i think the only one i saw was near the pompidou. in the skyline picture from there, the block of buildings on the right edge of the frame seems have an internal courtyard.
chicago houses and apartments typically back up to alleys, but because of the width of the city blocks, the "alley" includes open space around it. behind the apartment we lived in, there was sufficient open space that there were mature trees, and the area looked like suburban back yards.
no subject
Date: Oct. 7th, 2024 08:20 pm (UTC)This neighborhood in Paris is particularly fun: https://flic.kr/p/2p29dLj
no subject
Date: Oct. 7th, 2024 08:36 pm (UTC)