
The Greening of Paris Makes Its Mayor More Than a Few Enemies - elorant
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/05/world/europe/paris-anne-hildago-green-city-climate-change.html
======
AdrianB1
The article is mixing a few different points in a strange way. Paris has an
excellent subway system with about 350 stations, everywhere you want to go
there is a subway station less than 500 meters away, sometimes you have 2-3
stations in this range. There is also the RER that connects to surrounding
cities and villages. Driving is Paris does not make too much sense to me. But
building lots of bicycle lanes is not making any significant difference, as a
person that used to use the bicycle to commute to the office I can tell I had
just 6-7 months when I was able to do that - in hot summer and in the middle
of the winter it is simply too unpleasant to use the bicycle.

On the other side, the article suggests part of the disagreement with the
mayor is because she is a woman. Well, that is a bad excuse, I don't think
anyone has a problem with her gender.

Then it mentions the piss smell. Yes, it is there, it is terrible, but
greening and piss have no relationship. There are some obvious causes for the
piss smell in some neighborhoods, but they are not even mentioned because it
does not match the political color of the newspaper. No comment.

But then it jumps into the Airbnb problem: while this is a real problem, it
has nothing to do with "greening" the city. It should be discussed separately,
not thrown in the pot and stirred just to put more words in the article or put
more substance in the list of problems, even if there is no link to the
subject.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Paris too hot in the summer? C'mon, the average high is like 25C. Too cold in
the winter? Oulu, Finland would like a word.

As Germans would say, there is no bad weather, only bad clothing. Or in this
case, probably bad infrastructure. Only visited once, but Paris didn't seem to
have all that many protected bike lanes and paths compared to even Munich --
which definitely still favors cars over bikes -- let alone compared to Dutch
cities.

~~~
AdrianB1
You don't go to the office on the average temperature, everything higher than
25 degrees, some longer distance and/or some small hills and you get there
sweaty and smelly. Anything over 30 degrees guarantees that and an average
high of 25 degrees means you can have 2-3 hotter days every week - it is
enough to make cycling unpredictable.

I currently work in Bucharest and the average high is higher, from May to
September you have 30 degrees or more, while in the winter you have snow on
the road and it is illegal to ride a bicycle. Not Finland and not Cairo
(Egypt), but good enough to make cycling unpleasant.

~~~
hokkos
Now there is something called electric bike that solve the summer and hills
problems. And clothing that solve the winter one. I used to take public bus on
an unconvenient path with a lot of walking, but now with an electric bike on
150m of positive climbs I take less time.

~~~
Faark
> And clothing that solve the winter one.

How exactly does that help you get grip on snow and ice? Combined with less
light (harder to notice bikes) and generally more rainy days, biking just
isn't an all around the year thingy here in central Europe. I do try as much
as possible, though. And Paris might not be as bad as well.

~~~
CydeWeys
It flat out does not snow that much in Paris. I live in NYC which gets more
snow and there's rarely a single day per year where it snows enough to make
biking impractical. It just doesn't actually snow that much, and when it does,
it's cleared quickly.

On the very rare day where there's enough snow on the roads to make biking
impossible, just don't bike on that day. Take the subway, or work from home,
or whatever.

------
michalu
It's not the greening that makes people in Paris angry, it's the the
incompetence in implementing nice sounding ideas. Anyone can have a good idea
and say it to get elected ... nobody is going to argue with more trees, family
friendly city, less crime etc. everyone can recognize these are good ideas ...
the difference is in that you put an incompetent but marketable idiot into
office and the final outcome will be negative to where you started.

An example, Paris has now public piss boxes on every major cross-roads to
avoid people pissing in small streets so now you have smelly pissed over boxes
in the highest foot traffic areas and people openly pissing there.

Good idea, poor implementation, the net value is negative i.e. the situation
is worse.

So you have a woman with no track record in life in an office surrounded by
other people with no track record but ticking the political, sociological
boxes. And if you're 50 and you haven't built a track record of any productive
work with your own resources at your own risk, you're not likely to suddenly
build one with other people's resources (money) at their risk ... your
incompetence is likely going to show up.

~~~
jimktrains2
I spent a week in Paris last Christmas, and made use of many of those public
toilets, especially because I have a toddler. The ones I used didn't spell
outside. I'm sure I only have a small sample of maybe a dozen, but I have no
reason to think they're an exceptional sample?

>So you have a woman with no track record in life in an office surrounded by
other people with no track record but ticking the political, sociological
boxes. And if you're 50 and you haven't built a track record of any productive
work, you're not likely to suddenly build one with other people's money

I obviously do not follow Paris municipal politics, but why would it flow that
never having help public office means you'll never be able to hold off and
"build a track record"? That seems a bit circular.

~~~
michalu
No, the problem is these people only held public jobs. They are what you get
when bureaucrat breeds with a PR guy ... no creative work, no-problem solving,
no personal stakes on their resumes.

When they then decide it's time to be productive the lack of competence and
disparity between ideas and skills show up. You'll get the case of industrious
idiot.

For such people a creative task is like a school activity with no personal
risk other than bad grade ... but in reality the risk exists they play for
other people's money and livelihoods. I've personally observed such tendencies
and attitudes among eurocrats.

~~~
baud147258
> No, the problem is these people only held public jobs

We had a good example under the last administration, with an employment
minister who could even answer a basic question on how many times a duration-
limited contract can be renewed (after reaching that number of times, the
employer has to hire with a non-duration-limited contract (CDD => CDI)). And
that's the people who are writing the work code!

------
viburnum
The mayor, Anne Hidalgo, has said she wants Paris to be a place "where you can
let go of your child’s hand." I think that's beautiful. People sacrifice so
much freedom to allow cars to dominate their space.

~~~
TulliusCicero
That's a nice way to put it. Once you have a toddler and you're walking around
on a street with them, you realize that cars represent _DRASTICALLY_ more
imminent, lethal danger to your kid than basically anything else around.

~~~
viburnum
Have you seen this illustration?

[https://ggwash.org/view/36573/to-a-pedestrian-a-roads-a-
tiny...](https://ggwash.org/view/36573/to-a-pedestrian-a-roads-a-tiny-space-
with-danger-just-beside)

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
Thank you so much! I've been searching the Web for years to find this cartoon
(to no avail) and funnily that was to describe my life as a Parisian.

------
localhost
I've recently become a huge fan of Horace Dediu's writing and podcast on
micromobility[1] (defined as the rise of vehicles <500kg). He frames
micromobility as the "unbundling of the car".[2]

While the article only tangentially talks about micromobility vehicles, the
core argument of this article is the creation of infrastructure that enables
micromobility.

I just spent yesterday walking through parts of Brooklyn and Queens in NYC (14
miles, 33K steps - a record for me). I saw people actually talking to each
other on the street, and based on my deliberate route, very little traffic.
That's a stark contrast to my usual suburban lifestyle on the eastside in
Seattle.

I really hope to see more infrastructure creation happening in the US. It will
likely need to start in dense places like NYC with good transit
infrastructure.

[1] [https://micromobility.io/blog](https://micromobility.io/blog)

[2] [https://medium.com/micromobility/micromobility-
episode-1-tra...](https://medium.com/micromobility/micromobility-
episode-1-transcript-a4a017c3d3ec)

~~~
chillacy
There's been an explosion in electric things in the past few years (scooters,
skateboards, one-wheels, etc), they're mighty convenient for last mile
transportation, and not particularly expensive.

------
xenospn
Paris traffic was insane long before she got elected. I'm always amazed at how
people are unable to think two steps ahead, instead focusing just on today and
how traffic is 'awful'. Well, she's doing something about it, isn't she?!

~~~
michaelbuckbee
It's not like traffic jams weren't a thing prior to this, just that there
wasn't an alternative.

What's the pro-auto solution to the traffic jams and pollution? You can't
physically fit more cars in the space. Bikes, scooters and public transit are
all so much more efficient and truly practical for city transportation that it
feels hard to argue with.

~~~
njarboe
Lots of tunnels a la The Boring Company and electric vehicles. The tech seems
to work, but the politics doesn't support it. People in government want mass
transit they control, not personalized transit.

~~~
javagram
The boring company has not yet demonstrated their ability to dig tunnels
quickly and cheaply compared to the many existing tunnel-digging companies.
Politicians actually seem to love Musk’s claims of being able to do so though,
considering Boring is doing well landing some deals with them.

There isn’t really much “tech” there, just a small subway tunnel with car-
sized cabs instead of trains. Personal rapid transit systems have already been
demonstrated decades ago and there isn’t really reason to believe they could
be cost-effective at replacing personal car use.

------
maxaf
I don’t know how things are in Paris (never really been), but here in NYC
public transit is extremely unreliable and optimized for only one use case: to
move 9-5 commuters between their homes in the outer boroughs and the two
central business districts of Manhattan. For any other use case the transit
system is basically useless. For example, my kid needs to get from school to
swim practice multiple times a week. School and swim team schedules are set in
stone, but there isn’t a public transit option that will allow the two to
coexist without incredible daily feats of arbitrage between ride share and a
hellish commute involving two buses. This is physically impossible, not merely
inconvenient.

Let’s not pretend that transit can solve for the needs of every single city
resident. If the city has any ambition to be a melting pot for all, it needs
to allow everyone to coexist. Some people will choose to drive, others will
take transit, but to push one group out in favor of another will leave the
city a hollowed out core once again... just like it was before the urban
renaissance which began in the 1990s.

PS: If your main objection to cars is pollution, we’ll mosey on over to
electric cars as soon as charging infrastructure gets off the ground. There’s
only a smattering of Teslas in Manhattan, but soon enough there will be enough
charging stations to get our gas guzzlers off the road for good.

~~~
jamil7
> If the city has any ambition to be a melting pot for all, it needs to allow
> everyone to coexist.

Which is an excellent argument for public transport, the point of it is to
serve everyone rather than those who can afford to own and run a car and those
how have the ability to drive.

I can't comment to NYC public transit but there are plenty of cities around
the world with reliable and effecient public transport, don't write it off
completely because NYC's is subpar. The idea is not to ban cars completely but
to make taking alternatives easier and better than taking a car, in doing that
we need to divert some of the money and land that cars have historically
dominated.

~~~
maxaf
> plenty of cities around the world with reliable and effecient public
> transport, don't write it off completely because NYC's is subpar.

I'm certainly not writing off public transit as a concept. I'd _love_ to be
able to step out of my building, step into a magical conveyance that I didn't
have to drive myself, and step out next to my destination.

It's great that other cities managed to solve this problem, but I don't live
in those other cities. Yes, NYC could right itself, and build more
subway/tram/BRT lines, but this tends to take forever. I need to get places
now. My life won't wait for the city to sort itself out.

------
jokoon
I've left Paris 12 years ago. I hate cars so much.

Glad to see they're realizing those things.

People should never forget how the car industry lobbied so that cars own most
of the street. Biking and walking have become marginal things. How often do
you realize you can't go from point A to B because it's impossible to street
walk anymore? I've walked around cities many times, and I could not go in a
direction because of how roads could not be crossed.

The "1-person car " meme is a real, real problem. Most people think that
driving is a right, but we soon realize it's more a privilege and a source of
problems.

~~~
momokoko
_> People should never forget how the car industry lobbied so that cars own
most of the street._

Please stop with the conspiracy stories. I hate cars more than anyone, but all
this "Big Auto" stuff just discredits the entire thing as a bunch of fanatics.

~~~
dhhdhdsbdb
There is a documented history of this kind of thing. See
[https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-
history](https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history)

~~~
momokoko
That is a vox article. It's fun to read and gets a lot of shares on social
media. But it wildly exaggerates reality and wildly downplays that massive
demand and growth in car ownership during that period.

The idea that everyone hated cars and the evil car lobby came in and forced it
upon them is flat out incorrect.

~~~
petersellers
You'll probably convince more people by citing evidence to support your claims
instead of using ad homs.

~~~
momokoko
Literally and chart about automobile ownership from 1940 to 1980.

~~~
MereInterest
Such a chart would in no manner prove your point. Something can become
prevalent could be because (a) it is the preferred option out of many
equivalent and equally available options or (b) it is the chosen option due to
having been given preferentially treatment. Given that your time period
contains Eisenhower's expansion of the federal highway system, option (b) is
the more reasonable interpretation.

~~~
momokoko
We've seen the phenomenon globally.

~~~
coldtea
Not in the way it is in the US...

Even Paris discussed in TFA is 10 times better than 99% of American cities...
and most of European cities are even better walkability wise...

------
Scoundreller
It's too bad their electric carshare system failed:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autolib%27](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autolib%27)

And their municipal bike-sharing system probably won't survive the triple
whammy of drop-bikes, e-scooters and a contract change.

~~~
lucasverra
Disclaimer : I live in Paris and my commute is 95% the municipal bike-sharing
system.

My prediction is it wont go away because :

\- too much branding associated, velib = Paris

\- too much (taxpayer) money invested. Competitors are X5 in prices due to
muncipal money distortion.

~~~
ElFitz
Hard to beat those 30 free minutes per ride at ~30€ / year

~~~
lucasverra
Well, price got revisited[1], now is more 40€/year for that

[1][https://www.velib-metropole.fr/en/offers#subscription](https://www.velib-
metropole.fr/en/offers#subscription)

~~~
ElFitz
Oh. My bad. I should have kept up to date.

Still, at 0,20€ / minute on Lime, that's the same price as five half-hour Lime
rides.

~~~
lucasverra
plus the 1€ unlock fee charged by most (IDK about lime particularly)

------
Scoundreller
> Don’t mention her name to taxi drivers.

This has more to do with Uber than a war on the car. If you thought your taxis
were bad, Paris' were worse.

------
Iv
There is a war in the French twitter vs bike-enthusiasts and car users every
time a major road sees a bicycle lane added.

It feels weird to the rest of us, living outside Paris, to see so much media
noise over 500 m of asphalt...

~~~
epistasis
New York gets physical altercations at public meetings:

[https://gothamist.com/news/battle-over-park-slope-bike-
lane-...](https://gothamist.com/news/battle-over-park-slope-bike-lane-gets-
physical-you-wanna-clown-around-me)

~~~
versk
That has to be one of the most entertaining, bizarre and depressing accounts
of local politics I have ever read. Thanks.

------
on_and_off
>But the city itself has seen a steep drop in car ownership, from 60 percent
of households in 2001, to 35 percent today.

Having lived in Paris for 4 years (and I guess I could be accused of being a
bobo since I am an engineer and I care about mitigating climate change), I
wonder what the situation of these 35% is.

I sold my car as soon as I moved in Paris. The subway is just as efficient in
almost all cases without having to drive.

And driving in Paris is just the worst..

~~~
_n_b_
> I wonder what the situation of these 35% is.

Easy. Live in Paris, work in the Banlieue somewhere inconvenient to an RER
station...

~~~
on_and_off
I was just wondering from a stat perspective :)

I do know that there are cases where you still need a car.

I did dig up some info :
[https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/1285604](https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/1285604)

Interestingly, it looks like the current mayor is just pushing the city in the
direction where it is already going.

~~~
baud147258
The "less car" direction was already started by the previous mayor, though.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> The environmental results are ambiguous at best. There were around five days
> with elevated ozone levels, for instance, in 2014, the year Ms. Hidalgo took
> over; in 2018 there were from 15 to 22, depending on which part of the city
> you were in.

>“There are fewer cars, but there is more congestion, and that can affect
pollution levels,” said Paul Lecroart, an urban planning expert at the Paris
regional planning agency.

I think this is what makes people angry. There is no evidence that this
actually reduced pollution, in fact, it seems like it increased pollution. In
addition, it has greatly inconvenienced a lot of people. So, unless you are a
die-hard bike fan, this mayor’s program seems like a net negative to you.

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
That's short sighted. It takes time for people to change habits.

I've been a "die-hard bike fan" for a few years now (living in Paris for 10+
years, but commuting with bikes for only the last 2-3). However, most of my
friends (especially girls/women) are only _now_ considering buying a bike
because the infrastructure is just starting to look safe enough for "prudent"
people

That's why bike usage rising fast in Paris. But it will still takes a few more
years to switch like Amsterdam.

Of course, many are still riding Ubers but they're changing mind right now. Be
patient.

------
CapitalistCartr
American here. I wish we had a way to restrict trucks to delivery and work
crews, with commuters who don't need a land yacht to driving something like
Fiat 500, Toyota IQ, Mini Cooper: Max 1.6m tall, 1.8m wide, 4m long. Cities
would be drastically more livable.

~~~
noobermin
It's really amazing. I recently traveled to see my SO in Singapore, and made a
stop in Seoul, and seemingly every city is laying down restrictions on SUVs.
SUVs even make the road worse for other drivers yet no city in the US has the
guts to put restrictions on them.

------
grecy
And it's OK that this move is making the Mayor more than a few enemies.

The job of elected officials is not to please everyone. The job of elected
officials is to improve stuff, and leave the region in a better state than
when they came into office.

In the coming years and decades we're going to need _a lot_ of elected
officials to "make enemies" as they work hard to improve the unsustainable
world we've built.

~~~
rootusrootus
The job of elected officials is to represent the people, no more, no less.
"Improve stuff" is extremely subjective I don't think I want one guy to decide
what it is.

~~~
Barrin92
> "Improve stuff" is extremely subjective

well breathing clean air and not cooking the planet is about as non-subjective
as it gets. We're not really talking about sophisticated moral quandaries
here, the bar for improvement in our societies is actually surprisingly low.

Not having everyone of the billions of people living in our cities carry
around two tons of steel wherever they go ought to appeal to anyone who can do
a bit of napkin math about energy consumption.

Elected officials doing whatever people tell them like a sort of walking
strawpoll is a nice fiction but at the end of the day letting the inmates run
the asylum is a bad idea. If we want to make necessary improvements it's going
to come at the cost of going against the often short-sighted interests of
citizens.

~~~
brankoB
Ah yes the old "the majority of people are wrong, MY ideas are correct, why
doesn't the government just implement all of MY ideas as they're obviously
correct" argument.

~~~
Barrin92
in some cases the majority of people _are_ wrong, and it is trivial to show
why they are wrong. In case of environmental issues or degrading of the
commons in general the issue is that externalities are not priced in as
economists would say, and if they are tried to be priced in like in France,
the democratic process or even street violence is used to prevent that from
happening.

Again I think it's important to state that this isn't the case for all issues.
On many fronts majority opinion may be useful, but on some issues it's
glaringly obvious that people are unwilling to bear the costs for their
lifestyle, and ignore the long-term harm they cause.

In fact there's another democratic majority that is completely ignored by this
appeal to the people, and that is future citizens. As Chesteron once said
about the dead

 _“Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our
ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.” Tradition refuses to submit to
the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking
about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of
birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death.
"_

I think more importantly than the dead are the countless of people who have to
live with the mess we've left for them and in which they didn't have a say.

------
fizixer
something wrong with the title?

> The Greening of Paris Makes Its Mayor Make More Than a Few Enemies

?

~~~
AdrianB1
Not really. There is a repetition, but that is a minor issue that does not
deserve a comment. The title is definitely overly complex for what it wants to
tell, but that's just modern journalism/

------
ajross
FWIW: a few high-rise apartment buildings would do far more for climate impact
than all the trees they could possibly squeeze into Paris. Paris's building
codes have historically been a disaster for density, and at the end of the day
it's urban density that matters more than anything else. Get/keep the people
off then land, then turn it into something less impactful.

~~~
selectodude
That’s an odd take. Paris is the densest city in the EU and one of the densest
cities in the world.

~~~
greggman2
That's arguable one of those lies of statistics. This comes up every time for
example Hong Kong is way way WAY more dense than Paris. But because of
arbitrary city boundries some unpopulated mountains are included in the city
borders so the true density is not remotely the density listed on these kinds
of lists.

Go visit Hong Kong and you'll see it's easily 5x as dense as Paris. Maybe
more. The same is true of many other cities in Asia. Visit and you'll realize
the stats that show Paris in the top 10 are complete BS.

The same thing comes up NYC vs LA. By the land / people they are about the
same density but anyone who's been to both knows NYC is more dense than LA.
Using population weight density shows NYC is up to 3x more dense than LA

[https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollecti...](https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/census-
bureau-embraces-weighted-density/69236/)

With poulation weighted density Paris is not #1 in Europe

[https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/weighted-density-of-
eu...](https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/weighted-density-of-european-and-
australian-cities.24635/)

And if the same was applied world wide Paris would not even be in the top 100

