@F100 (Of note, the line about Paris having the worst overcrowding in the developed democratic world is qualified because in the developed undemocratic world, Hong Kong is worse - it builds too little housing, aiming to concentrate monopoly profits in the MTR, to the point that during the 2019-20 protests, Carrie Lam tried and failed to mollify the protesters by promising to do something about housing costs.)
@Alon Oh thanks, this is interesting. From a pretty ignorant street level perspective (which might be part of the problem) I haven't liked Hidalgo because she's tearing down old buildings to build horrible new ones. If they were affordable housing that would be ok but they usually are not. Also, there are still too many cars on the streets. But these are not serious observations.
@F100 Hidalgo tries to have a high share of social housing (this is subsidized rather than rent-controlled). Her priority is also to build it in rich neighborhoods too - it's, just, overall housing production is anemic. In both the city and the suburbs, around a third of the new units are social, it's just, one third of near zero is still near zero.
@Alon as a citizen my overly simple rule for building in historical city centers is: tear down and rebuild any building built after 1979. You almost can't go wrong.
@F100 The ugliest shit in Paris is from the 1950s and 60s, with a campus designed for security against student riots more than for learning. But it's considered historic so when they discovered asbestos in the ugliest building in an already repulsive complex, they couldn't just tear it down and had to clean it up in place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jussieu_Campus
@Alon If Paris is at 31 sq M density and is denser than Tokyo and Seoul (as a designer Seoul is a complete nightmare) are you saying it should be denser still and if so what is the goal density or are you saying that metric doesn't work at all? (yes to Jussieu, holy shit)
@F100 Paris has 31 m^2 of residential space per resident - this is different from density in people per km^2; some of the suburbs of Paris, much less dense than the city, have even less space per person, they just have less built-up stuff. Seoul and Tokyo are pretty infamously overcrowded, is why I was surprised to see them have more residential built-up area per resident than Paris. New York is way roomier - it's at 50 - but also makes it impossible to build microapartments, pushing people out.
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