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  #1  
Old Posted Jul 1, 2020, 9:01 PM
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How Anne Hidalgo’s Anti-Car Policies Won Her Re-election In Paris

How Anne Hidalgo’s Anti-Car Policies Won Her Re-election In Paris


29 June 2020

By Ido Vock

Read More: https://www.newstatesman.com/world/e...election-paris

Quote:
.....

The incumbent won just under half of the votes cast in the capital during the 28 June vote, about 20 per cent ahead of her closest challenger, Rachida Dati, in a good night for Green-backed mayoral candidates across France. The victory clears the way for Hidalgo to achieve her goal of making Paris the first large, mostly car-free city by the end of her second term.

- Hidalgo is certainly ambitious, but she owes her re-election to a shrewd political calculation. She is elected solely by the two million residents of Paris proper, rather than the metropolitan area ringing the capital, home to between seven million and 13 million souls, depending on how you count. Her position, as the leader of the dense urban core of a larger metropolitan area, has allowed her to be bolder in confronting the private car than administrations elected in conurbations whose electorates stretch out to the suburbs, where voters are more likely to own cars. For instance, in London, about 54 per cent of households own at least one car, largely because of outer London boroughs such as Hillingdon, where three quarters are car owners. In Paris, the figure is 34 per cent.

- The Spanish-born mayor’s bet was that she could largely afford to disregard voters who own a car and appeal instead to the two thirds who do not, a substantial built-in majority. Her opponents’ pleas for her to moderate her war against the private vehicle, by definition, could only speak to a small minority of voters. Some of her challengers argued that her anti-car policies discriminate against residents of the suburbs; a form of bourgeois class war against residents of the downtrodden banlieues. Whether the argument is correct is beside the point: it had only limited salience in the mayoral election because it is not directly applicable to most voters.

- Hidalgo is typical of progressive mayors around the world who are closing roads to polluting traffic and rebalancing the distribution of public space towards pedestrians and cyclists. But her re-election is notable for three reasons. First, the scale and ambition of her plans to eliminate most private vehicles from Paris. Second, the cinching of the single biggest prize in the local elections by a Green-backed candidate, foreshadowing a key theme of the 2022 presidential elections. Finally, the fact that Hidalgo is only able to be as ambitious as she is because of her unique position as the mayor of a world city, accountable to an electorate representing only a fraction of the residents of the larger Paris area.

.....



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  #2  
Old Posted Jul 1, 2020, 9:24 PM
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Paris needed that. London stroke me as much more pleasant for pedestrians without all the heavy traffic we used to see in Paris.
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  #3  
Old Posted Jul 1, 2020, 11:34 PM
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The problem in Paris (and everywhere in Italy) is all the polluting, noisy motorbikes. Please ban them.
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Old Posted Jul 2, 2020, 1:09 AM
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It is more doable in Paris than nearly any other city. Paris not only enjoys an excellent RER system but also a very dense inner-city Metro with station stops that are relatively close.In Paris there are very few areas where a Metro station is not within an easy walking distance and this is helped by a good bus network for the few areas that aren't.
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Old Posted Jul 2, 2020, 8:06 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
The problem in Paris (and everywhere in Italy) is all the polluting, noisy motorbikes. Please ban them.
More and more are e-scooters, quiet and free from any gas emission.
Battery manufacturing and how it actually causes harm to the environment is yet another debate. Hydrogen will be some much better technology in the end.
I'm all in favor of people using their legs exclusively anyway. It is good for their health, making them sexier.

As for Hidalgo's policy, I like the fact that she's been claiming to be so pro-bicycle (though I doubt she actually daily bikes, she must be too lazy and kind of a hypocrite) and pro-skyscraper. The latter being necessary to reasonably manage tomorrow's density over here. We need much more greenery indeed, so residential high-rises will be unavoidable to develop more urban parks/gardens.

What I also like about her is the fact that she's been trying to work with mayors of the inner suburbs neighboring Central Paris, whether they'd be social-democratic like herself or conservative to get us rid of this whole hellish car-oriented thing, and it's been working to some extent. Even though it'd obviously be much easier if the urban area was ruled by a single administrative body. Bikers are all over the place now anyway, using their legs indeed, which is priceless.

On the other hand, her management of cleanliness and safety services has been pretty appalling. When people visit Central Paris, whether they'd be from other regions in France or from abroad, they expect it all to be perfectly clean, romantic, full of lights and good people... And so on. Of course, we over here ain't so naive, but since that's what people in the world want us to be, so be it.

Hidalgo needs to focus on cleaning up the streets. It has to be perfect, all over the city. Requirements are very, very strict in that matter.
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  #6  
Old Posted Jul 3, 2020, 5:09 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
The problem in Paris (and everywhere in Italy) is all the polluting, noisy motorbikes. Please ban them.
Motorcycles are such a sociopathic form of transportation. Even in NYC, I dreamed about laying tripwire to take out the assholes who blasted down Houston St at 3am.
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  #7  
Old Posted Jul 3, 2020, 5:13 AM
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Originally Posted by yuriandrade View Post
Paris needed that. London stroke me as much more pleasant for pedestrians without all the heavy traffic we used to see in Paris.
London should ban cars from a lot of central area roads.

But the real problem in London is the delivery vans. These really need to be restricted in terms of hours, and basically mandated that this becomes an24-hour city with most deliveries to businesses done overnight.
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Old Posted Jul 3, 2020, 9:46 PM
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The real winner of the election was the abstention. More than 60% of the electors didn't vote.

Anyway central City of Paris should be abolished, replaced by a Greater Paris municipality.
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  #9  
Old Posted Jul 3, 2020, 10:17 PM
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^ True. The urban area would be much better managed if we had a common mayor/governor to run it.
As this whole country would be if it was more decentralized, like some kind of federal system.
I'm in favor of regionalism because it's been pretty stupid to think that officials could run a region like say, Auvergne for instance, from Paris where most politicians and senior officials have actually been "disconnected" from the ground.
Regions in this country need a bit more autonomy to be properly managed.

Whatever, the social-democrats and environmentalists from Central Paris have had a good feeling about mobility in our own region proper. They advocate mass transit (just as you've always done, Minato...) and cycling. There is no alternative for a dense urban area like this. It is obvious.

We're not going to destroy our entire city just because a bunch of pricks want to sit in their cars. Fuck, no, huh!
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  #10  
Old Posted Jul 4, 2020, 5:39 AM
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Originally Posted by Minato Ku View Post
The real winner of the election was the abstention. More than 60% of the electors didn't vote.

Anyway central City of Paris should be abolished, replaced by a Greater Paris municipality.
Just to play devil’s advocate here, is that really true? Why not have both?

Clearly the city of Paris proper and the greater urban region have different priorities and concerns. Central Paris might pedestrianise streets, ban certain private cars or impose a large charge, Greater Paris probably would not. Central Paris is heavily dependent on tourism, Greater Paris is not. The socioeconomics of both are very different.

You would at least need something akin to borough status for the historical center (and whatever outlying regions) that allowed it to make many of its own planning and other decisions.
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  #11  
Old Posted Jul 4, 2020, 12:40 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 10023 View Post
Just to play devil’s advocate here, is that really true? Why not have both?

Clearly the city of Paris proper and the greater urban region have different priorities and concerns. Central Paris might pedestrianise streets, ban certain private cars or impose a large charge, Greater Paris probably would not. Central Paris is heavily dependent on tourism, Greater Paris is not. The socioeconomics of both are very different.

You would at least need something akin to borough status for the historical center (and whatever outlying regions) that allowed it to make many of its own planning and other decisions.
I think this is a valid question. In some cities where a larger municipality was created with an inner very urban portion and less urban outer areas, there is potential for the outer zones to dominate its governance politically, and sometimes leads to decisions that can be detrimental to the inner core. Tread carefully on that front, I'd say.
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  #12  
Old Posted Jul 4, 2020, 1:42 PM
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Originally Posted by Acajack View Post
I think this is a valid question. In some cities where a larger municipality was created with an inner very urban portion and less urban outer areas, there is potential for the outer zones to dominate its governance politically, and sometimes leads to decisions that can be detrimental to the inner core. Tread carefully on that front, I'd say.
Yes, this is exactly what I mean. Some coordination is good, but allowing the suburban masses (whether in poor banlieue or bourgeois suburbs to the southwest) to dominate metropolitan politics would probably not be good for the center of Paris.

In American metros with weak cores and most wealth in the suburbs, the political fragmentation is detrimental to the urban core. In a city like Paris, the opposite might be true.
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Old Posted Jul 4, 2020, 2:02 PM
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Yes, this is exactly what I mean. Some coordination is good, but allowing the suburban masses (whether in poor banlieue or bourgeois suburbs to the southwest) to dominate metropolitan politics would probably not be good for the center of Paris.

In American metros with weak cores and most wealth in the suburbs, the political fragmentation is detrimental to the urban core. In a city like Paris, the opposite might be true.
Most Torontonians will tell you that the merger of the core city with some of its closest suburbs was detrimental to the most urban areas, as the areas more suburban in character dominated municipal politics for many of the initial years. This is probably due to the fact that the old city had about 750,000 people out of the 2.5 million that were in the newly merged city. Playing fast and loose with numbers but that's about it. There were some parts of the "suburbs" adjacent to the old city that were urban in character too, but it still wasn't the majority of the population.

Montreal also screwed up its merger in some ways, but the suburban-style areas that merged with it were never dominant in municipal politics. I'd estimate that out of 1.8 million people, around 1.25 or 1.5 million live in urban settings there.
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Old Posted Jul 4, 2020, 11:40 PM
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Let's avocate more segregation just to keep in power your ideas.
Just use race instead of urban. You would refuse this kind of idea if it was a whiter area that would refuse to merge with blacker areas to not share wealth.

To rule means to take into account of everyone. Something done in the City of Paris has an impact on what happen to those in suburbs. You can't act as if they don't exist.
I don't see the need to separate the City of Paris to its suburbs appart to create segregation.
In Paris, many of the suburbs are urban, why excluding them ? They are also pro-transit.

The City of Paris is useless, it contributes to nothing and it costs a lot of money. €10 billion that would be better used if distributed more equitably.
Transit ? Operated and planned at regional level, the City of Paris is just contributing in funding.
Economy ? Regional level.
Housing ? It built just 6% of the total housing u/c in Paris area, a number so low that the City of Paris is loosing inhabitants and the current Green (part of the new municipal majority) want to decrease the number of housing in development.
Cleaness and managment ? Hidalgo has been disaster on those points.

There are already the arrondissements to cope with the internal things.

Quote:
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They advocate mass transit (just as you've always done, Minato...)
Lets remember that they refused to help to fund metro extension in suburbs.
Selfishness at its finest.
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Old Posted Jul 5, 2020, 12:27 AM
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They need to do this to New York.
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Old Posted Jul 5, 2020, 1:03 PM
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Um, often, a sketch or a map is more effective than a long long speech.
This is the Greater Paris Metropolis as it is planned within the whole Paris region.


https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A...du_Grand_Paris

Except for southern Val-de-Marne and northern Seine-Saint-Denis, it is entirely densely urbanized and widely mass-transit oriented. There's no sprawling suburb in there, or only little. So yes, it makes sense to merge this whole thing of 7+ million people.

Sprawl is occurring in grey areas. That's where people really need cars and transit policies can't really be the same.
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Old Posted Jul 5, 2020, 3:07 PM
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They need to do this to New York.
That would be near-impossible, given that most inner suburbs of NY aren't even in the same state as NYC. How would a city in NY add cities in NJ?

And NY State (and NJ and CT) don't really allow city mergers.
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Old Posted Jul 5, 2020, 4:33 PM
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New York City is already at a more metropolitan level than the City of Paris.
Most of the Brooklyns, Queens and Bronx (and obvious all of Staten Island) equivalent in Paris are in suburbs.
Imagine if Manhattan was acting as if nothing existed around and everything should follow its logic. Imagine if the people of Manhattan were against the idea that there tax should benefit to the poorest tracks of Bronx.

Obviously the wealthy Hauts de Seine is against the idea that its tax money benefits to the Seine Saint Denis but everybody is criticizing it for doing so. The City of Paris gets a green light because it has a "progressive" agenda but is doing absolutly the same. I don't understand how one can call progressive when it excludes others. Progressive means being inclusive.

Instead of throwing money in useless and inefective policies (budget participatif, "greening the street") and having an over staffed administrative city hall. This money could be use to improve transit in suburbs. It could be use to improve the elementary and middle schools in the poorer areas.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mousquet View Post

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A...du_Grand_Paris

Except for southern Val-de-Marne and northern Seine-Saint-Denis, it is entirely densely urbanized and widely mass-transit oriented. There's no sprawling suburb in there, or only little. So yes, it makes sense to merge this whole thing of 7+ million people.

Sprawl is occurring in grey areas. That's where people really need cars and transit policies can't really be the same.
Even if you includes those grey areas, it is not a part where they are against transit. There aren't bias against transit here. If they use the car is because transit is lacking.
Both left and right are in favor. The more anti transit semms to be the green who bleieve that transit is useless and that everything should be done by bike.
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Old Posted Jul 5, 2020, 4:53 PM
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^ I was born and raised in Yvelines; I know how people would kill for more Transilien and RER lines over their side of the metro area. They want everything anyway. Every single possible option for themselves.

But a lot of people over there want to be in their single-family homes with yards. They don't want to live in apartments/condos. They want to be at peace on their own sides in their detached properties. Well, they can't have it all.

We're not going to make the entire country pay for our transit system. The region must act responsible, autonomous in that matter of local transit, given our local wealth (that's great enough, huh) and everyone's yearnings.

You want your single-family detached home and your yard? Fine, you go to Val-d'Oise, Yvelines, Essonne or Seine-et-Marne. You drive your car and deal with traffic without complaining.

At least, all options are available here, with a whole bunch of "desirable" areas of any style.
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Old Posted Jul 5, 2020, 5:13 PM
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
That would be near-impossible, given that most inner suburbs of NY aren't even in the same state as NYC. How would a city in NY add cities in NJ?

And NY State (and NJ and CT) don't really allow city mergers.
I believe he meant restricting cars, not merges.

But about this, I guess the US should turn counties into cities. Just a 3-tier system instead of this 4-tier, eliminating overlapping bureaucracy. Like Brazil, with the Union (1), States (27) and Municipalities (5,600).
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