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Why has the ‘15-minute city’ taken off in Paris but become a toxic idea in UK?
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2024
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Because Paris is its own jurisdiction.
Paris' mayor, Anne Hidalgo, is incredibly unpopular in the rest of the Parisian Metropolitan Area (whose government is right-wing under Valérie Pécresse). Much of these areas are still car-dependent beyond belief with bad-to-awful public transit, meaning they are progressively getting cut-off from car-hostile Paris. Paris is completely unaffordable to live in, so it is normal for the working class to have a 1h+ commute into Paris.
This understandably breeds resentment from most people who have never heard of the term "induced demand" or think that the lack of rail transit it Hidalgo's fault.
Except for 25% of the accomodation which is sponsored by some public organization.
Interestingly the public transit in paris and its metropolitan area is entirely under the authority of the "region", that is to say Pécresse.
There are massive investments in infrastructure throughout the area though. With metro lines being created and prolongated all over the place at huge expanse. Obviously this doesn't happen overnight.
Affordability is a really important part that is not talked about enough. Walkable cities are better for people and the environment but they need to be affordable for it to matter.
Walkability generally means higher density and higher density means lower cost. The only reason why walkable places are generally less affordable right now is that they are scarce. If everywhere was walkable that wouldn't be a problem.
If only the law of supply and demand had some guidance to offer us on how to make walkable areas of cities more affordable...
I think Vienna has a great model to follow for making housing more affordable.
That does sound like a great model. Reading between the lines gets at what I was insinuating, too. Vienna built a lot of housing in good places. If walkable cities are expensive, it's because they're in high demand. We can lower the cost by making more of them.
Absolutely, much more housing is definitely needed. Not-for-profit housing already exists in the US, but there's very little of it. Not-for-profit housing units fill up very fast because they are usually less expensive, and once in the units, tenants tend to want to stay. This leads to long waiting lists for the limited Not-for-profit housing that already exists. Much, much more must be built. Changing restrictive zoning laws should help this, but I think federal and state governments are going to have to get involved as well, providing financing or subsidizing financing for Not-for-profit housing organizations to build or acquire properties.
This is not just Paris too. France as a whole did not change municipality boundaries since WW2. So usually legal city is just what in the rest of Europe we would be the city center. You often can not really tell the difference between the city and a French "suburb" on a satellite picture.
As a result it is rather easy to kick cars out of the city, as the residents do not need them and are just annoying for them. It also leads to bad connections to the outer parts of what really is the city, which pisses off the residents and that leads them to vote facist.