Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
Between 2010 and 2025, the Métropole du Grand Paris added nearly 160 kilometres of new or extended transit lines and opened 200 new transit stations across the region. These numbers include all modes of transport, including RER, metro, tram, cable cars, and BRT. On top of this, a further 199 new stations are scheduled to open between 2026 and 2032 (a shorter time period), meaning there's an argument to be made that Paris is getting better and faster at delivering transit.
Imagine that.
This, as we have talked about before, is a remarkable achievement and one that is reshaping the Métropole — particularly outside of Paris proper. Take a look. Here's a recent study and map from Apur that shows how these completed and upcoming lines have impacted, and are expected to impact, transit access in the region:
The coloured areas represent access to transit within a 15-minute walk (assuming you're able to walk at a reasonable 4 km/hr). The lightest blue areas are lines/catchment areas that existed in 2010. The medium blue represents lines/areas that came online between 2010 and 2025. And the darkest blue represents lines/areas that are scheduled to come online between 2026 and 2032.
If you're familiar with Paris, you'll be able to tell that the majority of the recent transit expansion has happened outside of the boundaries of Paris. This is important because prior to 2010, all of Paris was already well-served by transit (seriously, 100% of the population was/is within walking distance of at least one transit line).
However, this is not the case in the rest of the Métropole. In 2010, about 56% of the population (outside of Paris proper) had access to at least one line, with 23% having access to two. As of 2025, this number has increased to 66%. And by 2032, with the opening of the lines currently underway, it is expected that 80% of the population within the entire Métropole will be transit-connected.
It's hard to overstate the importance of these changes. The Paris region has long been criticized for the divide that exists between its historic centre and its surrounding suburbs and cities. Historically, this has been a socio-economic divide, and a built form divide. But this divide is now being erased. New infrastructure is stitching the region together, tightening its geography, and encouraging the development of new economic centres.
Forget the Paris you know. The growth and change are now happening along its edges. Welcome to the new Greater Paris Metropolis.
P.S. To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Métropole du Grand Paris (created on January 1, 2016), Apur recently published a book called Atlas de la Métropole du Grand Paris. I haven't been able to find a site that will ship to Toronto, but if you're in Paris, you can order or pick one up at the following bookstores.
Cover photo by Ally Griffin on Unsplash
Maps and charts from Apur
I'm a big fan of walking. I like it for the health benefits, the freedom to explore, and the simple luxury of being able to walk to things. In fact, it's an important housing prerequisite for me: can I walk to stuff?
But as we often talk about on this blog, the ability to do this depends largely on the prevailing land use patterns, the overall built environment, and, to a great extent, when a neighborhood was built.
It is commonly argued that the "best" neighborhoods were all built before the widespread use of the car, and there's a lot of truth to this. (This makes me wonder if self-driving cars will eventually create a similar "pre and post" divide in our built environment.)
However, not everyone sees it this way. I just read an article about how residents in the suburbs of Minneapolis-St. Paul are vehemently opposed to the construction of sidewalks in areas where there are currently none.
Perhaps I haven't been paying enough attention to the suburban sidewalk wars, but this is the first time I've seen this level of opposition. Some people view sidewalks as a feature, and some people view them as a bug. Clearly, there are residents in the Twin Cities who view them as the latter.
Why? Because they interrupt large front lawns:
“I chose my home with the nice big lawn out front,” Edina resident Melissa Cohen told the mayor and City Council at a Dec. 8 hearing about proposed sidewalks for streets in Prospect Knolls. “We are in a quiet neighborhood. This does not require a sidewalk.”
And for some people, they're unsightly:
In 2007, a Golden Valley resident named Charles Upham told the Star Tribune “sidewalk is a four-letter word. U-G-L-Y.”
You could call it a kind of rural ideology, where sidewalks symbolize the opposite: the city. I suppose there are also practical considerations, like the fact that snow removal on sidewalks often becomes the homeowner's responsibility.
But it appears to me that a large part of this opposition stems from wanting to maintain some semblance of pastoral exclusivity, even if we're talking about higher-density suburbs and the opposition is masquerading as an environmental preservationist movement.
Between 2010 and 2025, the Métropole du Grand Paris added nearly 160 kilometres of new or extended transit lines and opened 200 new transit stations across the region. These numbers include all modes of transport, including RER, metro, tram, cable cars, and BRT. On top of this, a further 199 new stations are scheduled to open between 2026 and 2032 (a shorter time period), meaning there's an argument to be made that Paris is getting better and faster at delivering transit.
Imagine that.
This, as we have talked about before, is a remarkable achievement and one that is reshaping the Métropole — particularly outside of Paris proper. Take a look. Here's a recent study and map from Apur that shows how these completed and upcoming lines have impacted, and are expected to impact, transit access in the region:
The coloured areas represent access to transit within a 15-minute walk (assuming you're able to walk at a reasonable 4 km/hr). The lightest blue areas are lines/catchment areas that existed in 2010. The medium blue represents lines/areas that came online between 2010 and 2025. And the darkest blue represents lines/areas that are scheduled to come online between 2026 and 2032.
If you're familiar with Paris, you'll be able to tell that the majority of the recent transit expansion has happened outside of the boundaries of Paris. This is important because prior to 2010, all of Paris was already well-served by transit (seriously, 100% of the population was/is within walking distance of at least one transit line).
However, this is not the case in the rest of the Métropole. In 2010, about 56% of the population (outside of Paris proper) had access to at least one line, with 23% having access to two. As of 2025, this number has increased to 66%. And by 2032, with the opening of the lines currently underway, it is expected that 80% of the population within the entire Métropole will be transit-connected.
It's hard to overstate the importance of these changes. The Paris region has long been criticized for the divide that exists between its historic centre and its surrounding suburbs and cities. Historically, this has been a socio-economic divide, and a built form divide. But this divide is now being erased. New infrastructure is stitching the region together, tightening its geography, and encouraging the development of new economic centres.
Forget the Paris you know. The growth and change are now happening along its edges. Welcome to the new Greater Paris Metropolis.
P.S. To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Métropole du Grand Paris (created on January 1, 2016), Apur recently published a book called Atlas de la Métropole du Grand Paris. I haven't been able to find a site that will ship to Toronto, but if you're in Paris, you can order or pick one up at the following bookstores.
Cover photo by Ally Griffin on Unsplash
Maps and charts from Apur
I'm a big fan of walking. I like it for the health benefits, the freedom to explore, and the simple luxury of being able to walk to things. In fact, it's an important housing prerequisite for me: can I walk to stuff?
But as we often talk about on this blog, the ability to do this depends largely on the prevailing land use patterns, the overall built environment, and, to a great extent, when a neighborhood was built.
It is commonly argued that the "best" neighborhoods were all built before the widespread use of the car, and there's a lot of truth to this. (This makes me wonder if self-driving cars will eventually create a similar "pre and post" divide in our built environment.)
However, not everyone sees it this way. I just read an article about how residents in the suburbs of Minneapolis-St. Paul are vehemently opposed to the construction of sidewalks in areas where there are currently none.
Perhaps I haven't been paying enough attention to the suburban sidewalk wars, but this is the first time I've seen this level of opposition. Some people view sidewalks as a feature, and some people view them as a bug. Clearly, there are residents in the Twin Cities who view them as the latter.
Why? Because they interrupt large front lawns:
“I chose my home with the nice big lawn out front,” Edina resident Melissa Cohen told the mayor and City Council at a Dec. 8 hearing about proposed sidewalks for streets in Prospect Knolls. “We are in a quiet neighborhood. This does not require a sidewalk.”
And for some people, they're unsightly:
In 2007, a Golden Valley resident named Charles Upham told the Star Tribune “sidewalk is a four-letter word. U-G-L-Y.”
You could call it a kind of rural ideology, where sidewalks symbolize the opposite: the city. I suppose there are also practical considerations, like the fact that snow removal on sidewalks often becomes the homeowner's responsibility.
But it appears to me that a large part of this opposition stems from wanting to maintain some semblance of pastoral exclusivity, even if we're talking about higher-density suburbs and the opposition is masquerading as an environmental preservationist movement.
Bruno Carvalho has just published a new book that is right in the wheelhouse of this blog. It's called The Invention of the Future: A History of Cities in the Modern World.
The book starts in the mid-18th century with cities like Lisbon, Paris, and London. However, more than being just a history of cities, it is (from what I've read) the story of how city builders throughout history have tried to predict and create the future, only to often get it wrong.
In the words of Carvalho (via CityLab): "The constant of urbanization is change, so we have to always imagine our solutions as being contingent."
The same is, of course, true today. For example, building tunnels for Tesla cars may seem like a clever and futuristic solution to urban traffic congestion, except that it's hard to imagine it actually working (also via CityLab):
"One of the values of history is to give us a sharper sense of what’s new in the present. Many people imagine solutions that to them represent the great rupture, but that’s not always the case. The tunnels are a good example; they bring together the problems of cars having very low carrying capacity and subways being very hard to build. That doesn’t strike me as a very futuristic approach to mobility, but rather one that just hasn’t learned enough about the past."
I now have Carvalho's book on my reading list, and I thought I would share it here in case some of you would like to do the same.
Cover photo by Michiel Annaert on Unsplash
On the flip side, there are practical benefits to sidewalks. They give you a safe place to walk. So, what I wonder is to what extent are the people opposing these sidewalks also anti-walkers? Or is it that the traffic flows in these neighborhoods are so low that people simply feel comfortable walking on the street, like here?
Not surprisingly, there's lots of data to support that people who live in neighborhoods with sidewalks are significantly more likely to walk and be active. If you want people to walk more, build sidewalks. If you want people to ride bikes more, build bicycle lanes. And if you want people to drive more, build roads and highways.
This is how this behavioral stuff works. We're not completely independent actors; we're products of our environment.
Cover photo from The Minnesota Star Tribune
Bruno Carvalho has just published a new book that is right in the wheelhouse of this blog. It's called The Invention of the Future: A History of Cities in the Modern World.
The book starts in the mid-18th century with cities like Lisbon, Paris, and London. However, more than being just a history of cities, it is (from what I've read) the story of how city builders throughout history have tried to predict and create the future, only to often get it wrong.
In the words of Carvalho (via CityLab): "The constant of urbanization is change, so we have to always imagine our solutions as being contingent."
The same is, of course, true today. For example, building tunnels for Tesla cars may seem like a clever and futuristic solution to urban traffic congestion, except that it's hard to imagine it actually working (also via CityLab):
"One of the values of history is to give us a sharper sense of what’s new in the present. Many people imagine solutions that to them represent the great rupture, but that’s not always the case. The tunnels are a good example; they bring together the problems of cars having very low carrying capacity and subways being very hard to build. That doesn’t strike me as a very futuristic approach to mobility, but rather one that just hasn’t learned enough about the past."
I now have Carvalho's book on my reading list, and I thought I would share it here in case some of you would like to do the same.
Cover photo by Michiel Annaert on Unsplash
On the flip side, there are practical benefits to sidewalks. They give you a safe place to walk. So, what I wonder is to what extent are the people opposing these sidewalks also anti-walkers? Or is it that the traffic flows in these neighborhoods are so low that people simply feel comfortable walking on the street, like here?
Not surprisingly, there's lots of data to support that people who live in neighborhoods with sidewalks are significantly more likely to walk and be active. If you want people to walk more, build sidewalks. If you want people to ride bikes more, build bicycle lanes. And if you want people to drive more, build roads and highways.
This is how this behavioral stuff works. We're not completely independent actors; we're products of our environment.
Cover photo from The Minnesota Star Tribune
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