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

[10023]

Originally Posted by Minato Ku

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.

You understand, of course, that these are subjective opinions. I’m sure many residents of central Paris care more about improving streetscapes in the arrondissements than about suburban transit or schools. And they probably don’t want their taxes redirected toward those things.

As an outsider, but frequent visitor, I wouldn’t want to see that wealth redistributed to the detriment of central Paris (which is a cultural treasure of humanity) either.

With respect to your New York example - the merger of New York and Brooklyn made lots of sense once their was a bridge, but many New Yorkers would be happy to be rid of Staten Island. And many in Staten Island feel the same way.

[Minato Ku]

If they did care about the improving of the streetscapes, they wouldn't have voted for Hidalgo whose legacy about cleanliness and street maintenances is bad.

The City of Paris is throwing money, I don't know where but not on efficiency. Because apart for the opening of some cycle lanes, the rest have been bad.
Deteriorated pedestrian streets and sidewaks, parks in bad shapes, increase of graffiti.
All of that with a big increase of the debt.

I truly believe that a municipality covering a larger area would not have done a worse job.
A better allocation of resources and less waste.

[Crawford]

Why would someone living in Paris vote to add a bunch of much poorer suburbs? No doubt the French aren't quite as selfish and individualistic as Americans but I really cannot see this as broadly popular.

And it looks like many of the wealthier western suburbs are left out, which makes one suspect that this is really intended to use Paris' wealth to benefit the most deprived suburbs. For example, it looks like Versailles and vicinity was left out, and that's one of the wealthiest areas in France.

[Minato Ku]

Then they should stop to makes us believe that they are "progressive" and admit they are just as selfish as the right wing.
At least those in the conservative West part of Paris aren't hypocrite.

My goal is to have a city of Paris where everybody is living correctly and with a good economic development. We are living a in a society, you have to take account of the other.
The current municipality of Paris is a costly and useless level with no good impact on the development (rather bad, the population is decreasing).

A greater City of Paris would work better. It would have better development policies, better transit policies, better housing policies and would be better cost effective.
There would still be the arrondissement for more internal stuff.

It would be much better than a bunch of "greens" who believe that good housing policy is just buying existing housing to convert them in social housing. It costs a lot of money, it doesn't create new housing and it pushes the middle class out of the city while increasing the price of the private sector by reducing the supply.

[Doady]

Divisions and boundaries is a problem in a lot of metropolitan areas, including Paris. I think there can be regional coordination without amalgamation. Regional unity is important but control of local affairs is important too.

In Toronto, there was Metro government composed of six boroughs. Problem is the urban area grew beyond the boundaries of Metropolitan Toronto, so it was no longer really Metro Toronto, so it became pointless and the almagamation of the six made more sense.

Boundaries don't need to be hard boundaries but they too often are. But probably only the high levels of governments have the power to fix that. Mayors can't do much.

Even as pro-transit, anti-car person, I don't see the point of so much focus on creating barriers to suburbanites. Barriers are the anti-thesis of transit-oriented development for example, and it seems to summarize the whole problem with Paris also. The solution is more connections between people and places, not more divisions. That's the key to successful transit and getting people out of the car.