Category: Paris

• An overview of rental housing in France

  Rental housing in France is both heavily regulated and supported through dedicated public funds. Here’s a high-level overview of what that means (via this 2021 Brookings case study by Arthur Acolin):

  • Homeownership rates in France went from 35% in 1954 to 56% in 2001
  • As of 2018, 58% of French households own, 40% rent, and the remaining 2% supposedly get free housing from either their employer or a family member
  • Not surprisingly, younger households are most likely to rent (the figure is > 60% for people aged 18-29)
  • Household size seems to play a major factor in how likely people are to live in public housing

  

  • France has some 4.5 million public housing units and 17% of all households live in them (which represents about 43% of all renter households)
  • Within the unsubsidized rental market, 93.5% of households live in homes owned by individual investors (this is as of 2013) and only about 3.5% live in homes owned by institutional investors
  • This is pretty typical of Europe, where multi-family isn’t an established real estate asset class like it is in North America; so for those of you who like to hate on individual condo investors, check out France
  • In the decade between 2010 and 2020, 28 metro regions in France adopted some form of rent control and, in a few markets, like Paris and Lille, there are also maximum rents that can be charged for specific housing types

  If you’re interested in rental housing, Brookings also has articles covering the US, Germany, Spain, Japan, and the UK. They can be found here.

  2024.01.22

• Paris on top of Toronto

  There are about 2.1 million people who live in Paris (2023 figure).

  The metro area is, of course, much larger with over 13 million people. But if you look at Paris proper — that being the 20 arrondissements within the Boulevard Périphérique — it’s the 2.1 million number.

  The footprint of this area is 105 km2, and so that means that Paris has an average population density within its administrative boundaries of just over 20,000 people per km2.

  This is about 4.5x more dense than the City of Toronto as a whole. Which is why if you overlay the outline of Paris on top of Toronto, as Gil Meslin has done over here, you get this:

  Ok, just for fun, three maps:
  
  1) The outline of Paris, within the Périphérique, overlaid on central Toronto.
  2) Toronto subway lines and stations within that area (including Crosstown).
  3) Paris Métro lines (1-14) and stations within that same area. pic.twitter.com/i2xxHWoZGv

  — Four-Storey Tower (@g_meslin) October 20, 2023

  To be fair, there are pockets of Toronto that are very dense, even by Paris standards. North St. James Town, for example, was estimated at over 44,000 people per km2 back in 2016. But generally speaking, Toronto is not that.

  And Gil’s maps do an excellent job of demonstrating it.

  2023.10.20

• Paris in August 🇫🇷

  We’re no longer in Paris. We’ve been back in Toronto for about 3 weeks now. But the pictures live on and I finally got around to processing all of the ones that I took on my Fujifilm X-T3 (23mm f/2).

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  2023.09.18

• Paris just banned tall buildings

  

  So, Herzog and de Meuron are building this trapezoidal-shaped tower in Paris right now.

  It’s 158m tall and about 40 storeys (which makes it comparable in height to One Delisle). It’s extremely narrow in one direction (see above), and so from central Paris it is intended to be read as a kind of thin pencil tower. But when viewed in the east-west direction, you get the full width of its trapezoidal shape (see above, again).

  Not surprisingly, this has been a highly contentious development — which is why it was 15 years in the making. It is now under construction, though, and it is expected to be completed sometime in 2026. But this is likely to be the last tower in Paris for quite some time.

  Partially because of this Triangle Tower, Paris has just decided to ban tall buildings in the city. The new height limit is now back to 37 meters (or 12 storeys), which is essentially the same height cap that was put in place in 1977 following completion of the Tour Montparnasse.

  So this is seemingly how things work in Paris. Somebody builds a tall tower. People mostly hate it. And then the city bans tall buildings for a number of decades. The previous height cap was relaxed in 2010. (Also, for those of you who are wondering, La Défense, which is generally where Paris puts its tall buildings, is outside of the city limits.)

  Regardless, I think there’s no question that this new Triangle Tower is destined to become an iconic punctuation in the city’s skyline. Which means that we’re probably going to have to update our thinking. If Paris, today, is sometimes thought of as a city with two principal towers — the Eiffel Tower and the “awful tower” — it will soon be a city with three principal towers.

  Perhaps the only question that remains is: Will people learn to love it like the Eiffel Tower or will it end up as another Tour Montparnasse?

  Image: Herzog and de Meuron

  2023.06.14

• France’s luxury goods empire

  The US has tech and France has luxury goods:

  The roots of French dominance lie in a luxury ecosystem that dates to the court of Louis XIV, and a culture of corporate raiding that began with Bernard Arnault. After gaining control of LVMH in 1989, he set out to build the first house of luxury brands through serial acquisitions. Rivals followed his lead. Increasingly, the global luxury industry is based on goods that are still made by small Italian firms but sold by big French conglomerates. Gucci, Bulgari, Fendi — all are Italian brands now under French owners.

  While US tech firms overshadow all rivals, the same can be said of French luxury. Among the top luxury firms, the French have annual sales three times higher than the Swiss, more than four times the Americans and Chinese and 12 times the Italians.

  One of the most interesting things that LVMH is doing, though, is a combination of tech and luxury goods. In 2021, they announced, along with founding partners Prada and Cartier, a new luxury goods blockchain called Aura.

  The idea behind Aura (an appropriate name, in my opinion) is to create a kind of digital passport that proves authenticity and ownership, and also allows for traceability. So if you want to sell one of your luxury items or you need to service it, now someone can easily see the chain of ownership and determine that it’s real.

  This to me is a perfect use case for the blockchain technology and, as of March of this year, the group was reporting 24 brands on board. At the same time, they also announced a new feature that allows brands to participate through public chains such as Ethereum or Solana.

  All of this is probably still very esoteric to most. But eventually the tech will recede into the background and most will probably just see it as, “I’m buying this expensive purse and along with it I get this digital passport thingy that lives on my phone. I don’t know or care how the tech works, but it makes me feel even more special.”

  However, a big question remains: What does all of this innovation do to industry concentration? (Which is one of the main points of the above article.) One promise of crypto is that it will be a decentralizing force in our economy. And while I believe this to be directionally true, I obviously understand that LVMH has an empire to maintain here.

  For those of us who deal in real estate, it is also interesting to think about this topic of brands and authenticity when it comes to property. And so we will talk about that later this week on the blog.

  2023.06.04

• How Paris’ zoning envelope has changed over the centuries

  I came across this French paper over the weekend, while I was at the gym pretending to work out my legs. It is a fascinating look at the evolution of Parisian urbanism from 1600-1902, including how the city’s height limits have changed over the centuries. Here, for example, are two section diagrams showing the allowable building envelopes for both an 8 meter street and a 10 meter street:

  

  The way to read these is to start at the bottom with the width of the right-of-way (“voie”). As you move up, it then gives you the allowable heights for various dates. So for example, in 1667, the allowable building height for a 10 meter street was 15.60m. After this height, there was then a requirement to stepback following a 45 degree angular plane. Or in some cases, following a certain radius:

  

  We don’t have a ton of 8 and 10-meter wide streets here in Toronto, but there are obvious similarities between what is shown here and what is in our mid-rise design guidelines. Of course, the big difference is that we’re mostly zoned for low-rises houses and Paris is not. This broader context matters a great deal and it’s why I keep asking: Are you sure you want Parisian-style urbanism?

  2023.05.01

• A small subset of Parisians really don’t like shared electric scooters

  So Sunday came and went and Parisians voted overwhelmingly to ban shared electric scooters in the capital. Of those who voted, 89.03% were against them. And this, to be honest, is not all that surprising. Also not surprising is the low voter turnout (7.46% of 1.3 million registered voters).

  But I do think it raises important questions about this “democratic” process — and not just because I happen to like electric scooters. One problem is that there’s an inherent bias. And this same phenomenon can be found in community meetings for new developments.

  If you’re upset about something (and you have the time), then you are probably more intrinsically motivated to participate. In other words, if you think that electric scooters are a horrible nuisance, then you’re more likely to take the time to say something about them. But if you think electric scooters are just, like, fine, then you’re probably less motivated to go out and vote.

  Maybe this doesn’t matter. Maybe the turnout percentage itself is the answer you’re looking for. Only 7.46% of registered voters cared enough about electric scooters to voice an opinion. So if the rest actually liked them, it’s their problem for not voting.

  But if you think that this percentage should be higher to be more representative, then one solution is to try and reduce the barriers to participation. And I think there’s an argument to be made that something as dumb as a Twitter poll, open only to Parisians, might have been more inclusive.

  2023.04.04

• Should Paris ban electric scooters?

  This Sunday, Paris will be hosting an important referendum that has nothing to do with France’s retirement age. The question is whether shared electric scooters should be banned citywide. And while there are concerns about whether this single-question referendum will draw many people out to vote, the city has said that, whatever the outcome, the results will be binding.

  To be clear, this would only apply to the three micromobility rental companies that operate in the capital: Lime, Dott, and Tier. It would not apply to privately-owned scooters, of which there are many. In fact, France might just be one of the scooter capitals of the world. Over 900,000 scooters were purchased across France in 2021, and last year the number was about 759,000.

  Mayor Anne Hidalgo has publicly said that she thinks these scooters should be banned. But does that really solve things given the number of private scooters in circulation? And are the current problems truly ones we can’t solve? As I have said many times before, I like scooters. I like them a lot. They’re convenient and fun to ride, and I see their value in helping to solve the last-mile problem.

  I also can’t help but think back to the early 1900s when cars were just starting to infiltrate our cities and there were absolutely no traffic regulations to think of. It was chaos, it was dangerous, and I’m sure it was similarly divisive at the time. So should we have banned them and stuck with horses? Hmm. Maybe.

  2023.03.30

• The Centre Pompidou in Paris now owns NFT art

  Last week, the Centre Pompidou — which is Europe’s largest modern art museum — announced that it has acquired its very first NFTs (18 pieces by 13 artists) and that it will be exhibiting the collection this spring. This makes them the first museum in France to own NFT art and, I’m guessing, one of the first in the world. (The Los Angeles County Museum of Art recently got some as well.)

  This is fun for a few reasons. The obviously fun reason is that it’s good for NFT collectors and people who generally support this space. Big institutions bring legitimacy. It’s one thing to say that these JPEGs are stupid while sitting at home on your computer, but it’s an entirely different thing to travel to Paris, visit the Centre Pompidou, look at its white gallery walls, and then say that these JPEGs are stupid!

  The other fun thing about this is that it shows a continued openness to new ideas and new technologies. Here are some words from the Pompidou (that have been translated, by Google, from French):

  The idea was not to be the first, but to bring together a relevant collection, which could testify to a creative and critical appropriation of a new technology by artists, and how this disrupts and displaces the art ecosystem. From its creation, the Center Pompidou has relied on the idea that contemporary technological creation and creativity should be at the heart of the institution. From 1974-1975, therefore even before the opening of the Center, the National Museum of Modern Art acquired major works and installations by Dan Graham and Bruce Naumann. Video installations using real time, and it was the very first institution to do so.

  This wasn’t always the case in France. One of my favorite art history classes from university was one that covered Impressionism. Partly because I thought their work was cool, but mostly because Impressionist painters were, in a way, early modernists. They rejected the academic approaches to painting and instead decided to make up their own rules.

  At the time, in the 19th century, this was seen as entirely radical. And it meant harsh criticism from the established art world and an inability to meaningfully exhibit at the Salon (which was everything at the time). But history has a way of showing us that if something is inherently a good idea, you can only remain stubborn for so long.

  The Impressionist painters began hosting their own exhibitions starting in 1874 and, by 1881, the government had withdrawn its official sponsorship of the annual Salon. The jurors wanted to cling to only traditional painting styles and the world wanted to move on. And here it is doing that again, today.

  2023.02.14

• Single-exit housing in Paris

  

  Lloyd Alter of Treehugger recently wrote about this infill housing project in Paris. Designed by Mobile Architectural Office (MAO), it is a 6-storey building with 6 residential suites (two of which are 3-storey triplex suites) and 1 ground floor non-residential space.

  Building section:

  

  But here’s where things get really remarkable: the area of this corner site is less than 100 m2 (~1,000 sf), the construction budget was €940,000 (excluding VAT), and almost the entire structure was built out of cross-laminated timber. So overall, this is an incredibly sustainable build: it uses land and services efficiently and it uses low-carbon materials.

  At this point, you should now be wondering, “why can’t we just do this everywhere?” And this would be the right question.

  Lloyd correctly points out in his article that one of the things that makes this building feasible is that it only has one exit stair (as well as no elevator). Typically you need two means of egress, which can serve as a real barrier to smaller builds like this one here.

  But in this case, and this is part of the argument, the building is small enough that, should a fire or emergency happen, occupants could be rescued through their windows. So technically there are still two ways of getting out.

  In this year’s predictions, I mentioned that we would see “supportive building code changes”, which would help to encourage more infill housing. Exiting is one of the changes I had in mind when I wrote the post. So here’s hoping that policy makers are reading this blog, looking to projects like this one in Paris, and recognizing the benefits.

  Talking about exit stairs may not be as exciting and seemingly impactful as something like a foreign buyer ban, but I promise you that removing the many barriers to building this scale of housing would ultimately bring more benefit to our cities.

  P.S. This project is also social rental housing.

  Image: MAO

  2023.01.07