I keep seeing photos of urban renovation in countries other than my own and marveling at the fact that even the “before” photo looks better than most streets in my city.
Over 20 years ago I moved from my native Portugal to The Netherlands.
Then over time I’ve moved backwards in this - in the sense of moving to countries with progressivelly worse urban planning and increasing pro-vehicle mindsets - first to Britain, then back to Portugal.
It’s pretty infuriating when you actually know first hand how it feels to live in a place that doesn’t put cars uber alles and are now living in one where its painfully obvious in everything from urban planning to how drivers tend to break mostly the rules that are there to protect pedestrians, that you’re in a society which at least in this has a mindset from 40 years ago.
You don’t even need to go live somewhere else; just visit.
I’m from Canada and went back to visit Germany and Belgium a few months ago. I already went to Germany and the Netherlands a few years ago and just used the trains. I had no fixed itinerary and was deciding where to go a day in advance before buying a train ticket to go there. It was obviously fine (most of the time) but because of how trains “work” here, I was anxious about buying tickets a day in advance, thinking it was “last minute”.
Then while I was in Belgium I had to plan a train ride in Canada a week later, and there was no affordable tickets left. I was sitting in Liège, and just bought a train ticket to Bruxelles that was departing in the next hour… while trying to book a train a week in advance in Canada, and failing to do so.
Every time I have to use a train in Canada, or just any kind or intercity service, even a coach, I’m painfully reminded of how bad it is here.
This is Haussmannien architecture, it looks pretty and unfiform because the prefect of Napoleon III in the 19th century got the permission to destroy most of the shitty medieval districts with poor people inside and build good looking housing with modern accomodations for rich people instead. That’s largely why Paris is pretty today.
Interesting, I didn’t know that.
I mean, it also has to be a little bit because they didn’t let the car companies demolish the whole city and replace it with parking lots in the 1960s, right?
Well, yeah nobody would thought to destroy this kind of valuable architecture for parking. We did get some aweful towers in other districts though, like Montparnasse tower.
In the US, people definitely thought destroying valuable architecture for parking (and highways) was a great idea. It’s heartbreaking what we’ve lost.
Letting cars into cities was a mistake from the beginning. Cars should be required to park on parking lots or garages at the edge of the city. The only large motorized vehicles allowed within cities should be trains, buses driven by professional drivers, and delivery vehicles limited by governors to the speed of a bicycle. The only forms of motorized personal transit allowed should be e-bikes and scooters that can travel no faster than a human-powered bicycle is capable of traveling. Cars should be used only for getting between towns and cities, not for traveling within them.
This genuinely made my day
If you’ve ever read Mistborn one of my fav things in that book is that all trees have to be fruiting trees in cities, so that cities naturally produce food in case needed. I always liked that idea.
Cool, ticks right at your front door!
I’ve never heard of anyone getting ticks from street vegetation. You would typically not walk through it unless you’re a rat. What’s your species?
While this is nice, I do not really see any places where one can now cross the street?
Some cut-outs for pedestrians would probably be helpful for people who need to access a building on the other side.Given that a guy is walking in the middle of the street, why do you assume that cars are even allowed?
Rue du Dr Paquelin was pedestrianized so crosswalks aren’t really needed.
Whoa! Checking out street view, I’m so impressed by the bike/scooter shares all being parked relatively neatly in designated areas at either end of the block where they aren’t blocking the pedestrian paths!
I don’t mean crosswalks, I mean places where people can cut through the greenery to get to the “road”.
As it stands now I don’t see a way for people to actually get to the other side of the street.Maybe they exist, but I don’t see them in the picture…
Maybe they should have just treed the middle of the road and left the outside free for movement?
Oh, I see what you mean. You’re right, if there’s a path through the bushes it’s not obvious.
I think you see the start of a path halfway down the road on both sides
You mean like access front doors of buildings? It looks like they block everything.
I think the old sidewalks are still there on the other side of the bushes. There is certainly space for them.
Yeah. I’d do more little islands instead, which would also give space for other stuff, like benches or other seating areas, bike racks, etc.
Move the road over to one side, and give double space for greenery on the other side.
Then you can add benches, playgrounds, etc.Still… As it currently stands it is an improvement over what came before
Definitely agreed. Strictly better than cars, but there has to be something we’re missing here, else this is a huuuge pain in the ass for literally no reason.
I have to disagree. Amenities such as benchs, and playgrounds can be place into the next street but there is a need to add important vegetation at least in some streets of dense urban environment to deal with heat wave and flood issues.
The problem isn’t the vegetation; it’s the lack of outlets to the other side of the road amid the vegetation. From the perspective shown here, it’s a solid 40-ish meters until the next entrance to the sidewalk.
That is probably just perspective. By zooming, I can see two possibles places when they might be outlets.
Idk looks like a pretty short street to me I’d say it’s fine
I wanna punch the voice that says “but won’t the homeless sleep in the bushes?”
I’m a bush.
This looks great, but I feel like the trees might become a problem to the adjacent buildings when they mature, unless they’re the type of trees that only grow tall and skinny?
Were I live there is a tendency to put trees in holes (about 1m wide) on the road side of the sidewalk - which puts them at least 1m away from the houses, generally more - and unless they get really tall (20m + tall) their roots are only really a problem for the sidewalk itself (which gets raised and bumpy) and even in this it depends on the kind of tree (so, for example, pine or oak are a problem but not orange trees).
I don’t remember even seeing even the kind of brick wall that might surround a property cracked due to such nearby trees, much less actual buildings. Mind you, buildings over here are made of brick and concrete and have actual foundations.
I have similar trees in front of my apartment building and I love them, they make me feel like I’m living in a tree house in the summer.
Not every tree essence grows as much as oak. I know some linden trees, older than I am, that were pruned properly one or twice a year and have kept a manageable size. I think hackberry tree don’t get much thick with time and there essences of tree that are chosen to be put in the street because they don’t grow that much in European climate.
It took two years to do the transformation. Do you think it’ll be difficult to do another transformation when the time comes?
Nobody wants to cut down trees once they’ve grown.
Dude, there are whole industries based on cutting down trees once they have grown.
What are you smoking? … can I have some?
Cities don’t want to pay for that. No one is backing logging equipment down a Paris side street.
But yeah, it’s not an issue. I’m sure people planted trees knowing they get bigger. Lemmings just like to point to obvious issues as if no one thought about them.
They are. All cities contract arborists on a regular basis. You don’t need massive machinery, just a person with ropes and a chainsaw, some ground crew and smallish truck and maybe a chipper to remove the wood.
(Source: have worked as ground crew before.)
You should get a prescription, it will do wonders to your humour.
Street trees are trimmed regularly in France when it’s needed. People enjoy to see the green and the added privacy when it reaches their windows.
Id be worried about the roots fucking up the sidewalk and foundations not the greenery.
I have seen it happen with old trees, but I think now they have either species or techniques to avoid that. Trees in streets are very common in France, it’s not a recent thing. There’s even a specific term for streets with trees: “avenue”, although many people use it without knowing.
Can’t you cut trees to make them grow tall and skinny?
I don’t know, I’m not a tree expert. I mean it would be cool if that’s how it works tho
I don’t think the trees will grow much more.
How does one get off the sidewalk?
In the usual way trot trot
Patiently
Between the bushes. How would one get off the sidewalk with the cars parked in the way?
Between the cars, they don’t fill the whole length off the street. Do you see a gap between those bushes?
In the bottom photo I kept scanning for Will Smith and his german shepherd
He couldn’t be in the photo because he was too busy taking his underaged son to P Diddy’s sex parties.
While it looks nicer, the rent has doubled here
Rent has doubled everywhere in the past few years. Real estate industry is to blame
Yes and no. Yes because fuck big corps that buy houses and set rent price to achieve fill factor of 0.7, no because very these corps buy cheap dirty houses, renovate them, and double the rent.
If only.
I live in Portugal which has a similar massive house price bubble, especially in the main cities of Lisbon and Porto, and the “investors”, foreign or otherwise, seldom buy run down places to renovate, much less actually build anything: there’s no need to do it when the market is so tight and the bubble so massive that merelly buying anything and sitting on it (not even rent it) will yield you 14% a year, and way more than that if you AirBnB them (realestate “investors” don’t put their houses in the normal rental market when they can make 4x as much from short term lets to turists).
What you describe might’ve happenned back when prices were just slowly trickling up and there was no “make money fast” scheme of turning habitation spaces into mini-hotels so “investors” had to actually activelly add value to the dwellings they bought in order to extract a better profit, but nowadays thanks to most governments doing all that they can take to pump up house prices - as it makes GDP figures go up plus most top politicians are at the right wealth level to themselves be housing “investors” - simple ownership of such assets yields great returns without lifiting a finger and in touristic places renting them via AirBnB can double or triple that yield with litterally no more investment than having the place painted and adding some IKEA furniture with no need for paying for and spending time in proper renovations.
I bet you don’t live in Paris or even France.
There is a lock on rent in heated housing markets for example. Not everything in the US is the same on this side of the pond.
So: keep cities horrible so that the rent stays low. Got it.
You see, politicians are all just impotent victims and there is nothing at all they can do to control rents and cool down house price bubbles and their inaction (or even actions that help stoke the prices up) have nothing to do with them putting first and foremost the further enrichment of those who have the most riches /s
Also tourists will stay away
Keep that tourism money at home! Our local restaurants can get fucked!
I think your statment here is actual in reverse of what you may want to point out.
An increase in rent shows a induced demand for the property. More people are wanting to live in this location, thus the rents have gone up because of this demand. The rent did not go up because of the cost of installing those trees, but because the trees are there.
Similarly homes located near public parks, schools, hospitals, or transit may have a higher price tag because more people want said properties.
In London you can literally spot where the subway stations are from a map of rent prices since prices within an area go up the closer a place is to the tube.
An increase in rent shows a induced demand for the property.
Nope. Increase in rent shows the pumped up scarcity.
More people are wanting to live in this location, thus the rents have gone up because of this demand.
Again nope. You are spreading propaganda without knowing it. Rent is driven by rental algorithms like Yardi and Realpage. Supply and demand do not work if the property is in the hands of few that calculate their prices using the same database and the same algorithms.
You mean shitty places with no amenities rent for the same as desirable locations because of algorithms? TIL
No, they renovate it to increase the property class, rent cost for this one, and rent prices overall
The rent would have doubled anyway. Paris is Paris.
Due to reno or price gouging?
nature is a costly amenity
Honestly? Looks like shit.
By what measure? You don’t like green?
Its unkempt and chaotic. At first glance I thought it was an abandoned street that was overtaken by wild overgrowth.
It’s made to look like that on purpose, but it’s kept. It’s the counter reaction to the biodiversity disaster of loan monoculture style like you often see in USA suburbs. I actually enjoy the feeling of wilderness.
I agree. The 2022 pic looks like shite.
![[Misc] Less parking more green evolution in a Parisian street](https://jlai.lu/pictrs/image/b287d811-fc24-4f77-a20d-7a52f5d7dc1c.jpeg){kind=link}