this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
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That sounds like a mix of public transportation sucking and people needing to travel too far to me
Driving sucks... But compared to not having a reliable way to get around? It's total freedom
But better yet is being able to have a nice walk where you need to go, and frequent/plentiful options to go further. You just have to mix everything up and cut down on the parking lots. Low cost housing with full homes tucked here and there, smaller grocery and hardware stores every few blocks, gyms and parks a few blocks away - and all centered around a main street with offices and lower cost housing a few blocks away, so the main street can have a bus running by every 5 minutes
My time working in Paris for a bit really blew my mind - only one guy at my office wasn't walking distance to work. I passed several grocery stores and bakeries on my 20 minute walk back if I wanted to grab something, there was a big park a couple blocks up if I wanted a scenic walk back.
And if I was feeling lazy, you could just start walking until you saw a bus coming up behind you - there was a bus stop like every quarter mile just going up and down that main street
Almost as good as all that is the fact that if you did have to drive, there was so much less traffic. You could park on side streets, but those spots were limited and needed specific permits. They had parking garages at the edge of the suburb area near the highway entrance and near the metro station, so while you could drive up to wherever to load/unload, it discouraged it and kept the cars mostly on the bigger roads in between areas.
Granted, it's only amazing when the pieces all fit together like that - a lot of the designed communities in the US are nowhere close to as good because they don't commit far with. I later moved to a designed community in the States which had most of the same aspects, but I never walked to the grocery store. It was across the street from the town center and a 10 minute walk, but it involved crossing 2 much higher speed/busy roads and walking across a huge parking lot. It was just a little island in a world still built for cars
But when it works, it's amazing
Yeah it sounds extreamly unusual that people in Paris live so close to their home. But I think the French culture is about enjoying life as much as possible. They may choose a job nearby to avoid having to deal with shitty transports every day.
It's more just the option - a short commute is amazing. It makes an enormous difference in work and life satisfaction. They have the mixed zoning so you could find a cheap apartment or a three story house with a big yard without paying for it with 2 hours of your life every day
Their public transportation is great too... Even with a car, it's just so much faster and more convenient most of the time. You just hop on and off with very little waiting. It's cheap too, it was like 25 Euros a month for unlimited metro and bus rides, and even in the center of the city on a weekend it's less crowded than DC is in the middle of a weekday
This is just a tangent, but I don't think that's quite right... They actually say "c'est la vie" like they're trying to convince themselves they can accept things
They have plenty of problems, there were two or three murders within my walking distance in a couple months... Not like it was an unsafe area, people just flipped out on family members and co-workers. One just (mostly) decapitated someone with a katana in an office over a fine or something. They're constantly fighting over politics and culture, they share public spaces but you'll see tons of people sitting alone carefully not interacting with each other - they're very closed off in a lot of ways. Work-life balance is really what they've got going for them. That certainly leaves a lot more time for family and hobbies (which is huge), but I wouldn't describe them as happy exactly... Some definitely do make the most of it, but a lot of people don't
It's more that they draw a very hard line between "acceptable" and "not acceptable", but it's a constant fight. They take their time eating good food and enjoy their outdoor time, but a lot of them are isolated and/or bitter. They're going through the same stuff we are, but they've had more to lose
But that's just my take away, and it's not like I saw much of the county