[thecleaner]

I don't understand this romantic idea of Olden Times. I doubt any Parisian misses dying of simple dieases or just not having access to emergency care. I don't understand why people would ever romanticize with the old days. Sure, we ought to remember our history but we don't need to romanticize it. It was awful.

[keiferski]

Progress is not all-encompassing; it is entirely possible to claim that 21st-century medicine is preferable to 19th-century medicine while simultaneously preferring 19th-century architecture, art, or other aspects of society. Paris today may be cleaner and safer than it's ever been, but it's also far less exciting or intellectually interesting than it was in its heyday.

The prevalence of this view in the tech community is especially ironic considering that San Francisco was a far nicer city to live in 50-60 years ago (in general, of course - not for every segment of the population.)

[AdrianB1]

Knowing Paris as it is now and comparing to the photographs in the article I am happy that cleanup was performed. The old architecture was maybe interesting to some extent, but very close to a huge slum.

[masklinn]

Note that you can also clean things up without tearing it down entirely. Many cities have retained historical centers in that style without keeping the "slum" bits, and it does makes for more interesting walking around than huge boulevards and avenues.

There's an architectural movement to come back to these more human-sized city designs too: smaller streets, more mixed use, less emphasis on large (and motorised) transportations, incorporation of structural shading and breeze-shaping, ...

[AdrianB1]

It works for small towns, not capital cities with multi-million inhabitants. Even with the (fabulous) dense underground network you need larger boulevards and parks, not 3 meter wide streets everywhere. I am not a fan of Champs Elysee (there are so many better places), but it gives some air to the city. I think Paris 200 years ago was claustrophobic and a maze.

[ldng]

See Strasbourg for an example of that. Center was left alone and 19th century building were built in a brand new neighboorhood.

[kmlx]

see brussels for a counter-example. tore down everything, and became of laughing stock for urbanists, and a sad place to live in for the rest of us.

[nelgaard]

Maybe. But had those buildings survived they would now be attractive, clean, and very expensive.

From the perspective of today the problem was that the families living in the small apartments was way too big and did not pay enough rent to maintain the buildings. They just did not have enough rich single professionals willing to pay chic apartments and studios back then. Or student with rich parents seeking a studio downtown.

[AdrianB1]

The 2-300 year old buildings would be easier to raze and rebuild than to put electricity and plumbing in it, improve resistance to earthquakes, make it safe to live in case of fire or other events that requires evacuation. They were not safe on modern standards.

[mojuba]

Still great to see some remains of the older Paris here and there, such as le Marais.

[thecleaner]

Intellectually interesting is not an objective thing to pursue. I believe if you look closely all modern day architecture is an intellectual marvel. Architects of today have an attention to detail that you wouldn't find in the olden days. As for SF, I would never choose to live there. A wooden old looking house for a very very high rent ? I don't see any data to support living there.

[swebs]

>50-60 years ago

Rent wasn't high back then.

[Reason077]

> "I don't understand this romantic idea of Olden Times. I doubt any Parisian misses dying of simple dieases or just not having access to emergency care."

Of course not. This isn't a call for a return to poverty and disease. It's about the organic neighbourhoods, architecture and street layouts that are gone forever and replaced with centrally planned layouts and homogenous buildings.

One of the reasons I think London is a better city than Paris (in my opinion, obviously - I've lived in both) is that it has, whether through accident or design, managed to retain significant numbers of it's medieval streets and diverse, centuries-old buildings while also embracing modernity.

Where as in Paris you have a rather homogenous city, mostly all built in the same era, in London you can walk a few blocks and be transported through centuries.

[KaiserPro]

Its interesting to contrast the two approaches taken by london and paris.

Barring the great fire (and I suspect there will have been similar events in paris as well) There was no one architect or style that completely flattened the victorian london.

The strand, which is now a large paris style boulevard was a semi-slum/porn publishing district. Around the houses or parliament was a spectacularly large slum.

https://publicdomainreview.org/2016/06/29/the-secret-history... (warning Victorian porn. NSFW)

This did mean that in the 1920-40s there was a massive expansion into the "suburbs" to escape the slums, poverty and diseases of central london. This is a decline that has only really just reversed in the last 20 years. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_London)

The crucial thing was that "social" housing was placed in every borough of the city, not just on the outskirts. The highest density of social housing is in southwark, which is opposite both the houses of parliament and the "city". I imagine its the equivalent of building ~80k houses exclusively for the poor in the 6th and 7th arrondissement

[new2628]

Surely you can think of stuff that got worse with time, development seems to be a tradeoff in general.

[thecleaner]

No, I cannot. Everything got better with time. Except maybe air quality. I cannot imagine spending a day in 18th century. I would either die of disease or kill myself. It only looks great in paintings and pictures and what not.

[sea-shore]

Lets try with some quick cut and paste.

Paraphrased from wikipedia on the term fairy tale - is mainly used for stories with origins in European tradition, originally meaning a little story from a long time ago when the world was still magic. Tales were told or enacted dramatically, rather than written down, and handed down from generation to generation.

Wikipedia on Paris - The Parisii inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. This meeting place of land and water trade routes gradually became an important trading centre. The Parisii traded with many river towns and minted their own coins for that purpose. During the 17th century, Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister of Louis XIII, was determined to make Paris the most beautiful city in Europe.

And from this post - Costly confusion, the triumphant vulgarity, the awful materialism that we are going to pass on to our descendants. ... Thousands of people were forced from their homes to make way for luxury buildings that the former tenants would not be able to afford. The overcrowding turned Paris into an “immense workshop of putrefaction, where misery, the plague, and disease work together in harmony,”. One way to successfully quell rebellion then was to to insulate the rich from the poor. The social ills that helped motivate the 1848 revolution did not disappear with the renovation of Paris and the subsequent restructuring of its social life. They may have even been made worse by the stratification of urban life,

[9nGQluzmnq3M]

This. Notice the little rivulet running down the left side of the lane in the first photo? Odds are that's either urine or sewage.

[toxicFork]

You can romanticise the parts of it that was beautiful.

A lot of times people talk about particular aspects of a period, or in general, of objects, not absolutely everything that comes with it.

You don't need to bind every thing to its context entirely.