Tag: paris

• How built form (not more lanes) solves traffic congestion

  

  I snapped this photo while we were in Paris a few weeks ago. We were walking down the street in the 7th and I noticed this mother (I’m presuming) picking up her daughter from the library. The daughter (I’m also presuming) got on the back of the bike and then they took off down the street. She also happened to be wearing a beret, which only added to the whole experience.

  When I posted this photo on Twitter, I got some of the comments I would expect. Some people called the mother (we’re all presuming) irresponsible for not wearing a helmet and for not forcing her passenger to wear one as well. Okay, maybe the child is of the age where one is technically required. But another way to look at it might be that it’s a testament to how safe they feel on the roads of Paris.

  My implied point was that this could have been a minivan ride. The solution to traffic congestion is not optimizing around the car; it is getting people out of them. Paris proper has about 2 million people compared to Toronto’s 3 million. But the footprint of the former is about one-sixth the land area, making it, on average, about 4 times more dense. And yet, Paris feels counterintuitively less congested, and easier to get around.

  The answer, and solution for all cities looking to get people moving, lies in its built form, its rail network, and what you see pictured above.

  2026.09.20

• Travel isn’t always pretty

  

  Sometimes there’s an elevator down to the metro, but more often than not there isn’t. 

  Sometimes there’s AC, but oftentimes there isn’t.

  Sometimes Vivienne is peacefully sleeping in her stroller or carrier, but sometimes she’s having a diaper blowout meltdown and screaming loud enough that passersby start giving concerned looks.

  Traveling can be positively inconvenient at times. We’ve never traveled with so much paraphernalia before. We’ve never had to keep breast milk chilled on ice and think about bottle expiries while navigating busy metro trains with no room for our stroller. 

  But in my mind it’s like exercising. It’s work, especially with kids, but it changes you for the better. We also want Vivienne to grow up to be adaptable, resilient and patient in the face of hot, urine-soaked transit elevators and the like.

  As Anthony Bourdain once said:

  “Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”

  We finished our week in Paris, walking and taking transit everywhere. We didn’t step into a car once. We averaged just over 10k steps a day, which is significantly lower than what we would have done sans baby, but it’s still respectable. 

  Seeing the data on my watch and my surging step count reminded me how sedentary my life has gotten over the last two years while working from home (at least from a steps per day perspective).

  It’s unacceptable and I need to make some life changes when I get back to Toronto. But for right now, it’s time to head south.

  2026.09.07

• Raw meets refined

  I love how Saint Laurent’s creative director, Anthony Vaccarello, has taken a form of brutalism — corduroy-imprinted concrete and generally raw and exposed materials — and elevated it to high fashion. It’s a perfect example of “raw meets refined.” And you’ll find this approach in its stores all around the world, including in Toronto on Bloor Street. For me, it’s also a great microcosm of Paris. This is a city with a deep, rich history, but one that isn’t afraid to disrupt that history and look forward when it makes sense to do so.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  2026.09.06

• We are now in a post-camera world

  

  This is a wall of 20th-century filmmaking equipment captured at the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé. For background, Jérôme Seydoux is a French businessman and movie producer (and the grandfather of French actress Léa Seydoux). Pathé is the second-oldest operating film company in the world. It was founded by the Pathé brothers in the late 19th century. (For architecture fans, the Fondation itself was designed by Renzo Piano. Note: Full architecture tours only happen once a week.)

  

  

  Seeing this taxonomy of equipment and reading about its market adoption reminded me that technologies change, but human impulses tend to remain remarkably static. Film cameras at the beginning of the 20th century were made for industry. They were expensive, bulky, and required teams of people. But as you’d expect, by the middle of the century, these devices became more affordable and suitable for individual use. This gave rise to amateur filmmakers and eventually, you could say, proto-influencers.

  The introduction of smartphones made creation even easier and social media platforms completely changed the game of distribution, turning content creation into an even bigger business. But in the end, the human desire to capture, create, and share remains the same. Today, however, the game is fundamentally changing. AI eliminates the need for handheld devices and physical models and locations. Now you can just prompt. The possibilities are endless.

  As I was walking around the Fondation and reading about how it took a year to cast the right female lead for L’Amant (Jane March was eventually found in the suburbs of London), I couldn’t help but think about how AI completely collapses this process. Today, there’s no need to look; you just need to describe exactly what you want. Invariably, this is going to feel like some kind of loss to purists. Isn’t this artificial?

  We are now in a post-camera world. But what will never change is our desire to tell stories.

  2026.09.05

• Micro-retail on the corner of rue de Mogador

  This corner, the corner of rue de la Victoire and rue de Mogador in Paris, could have very easily been nothing. The side wall of the main building is, for whatever reason, blank. There’s a tall mural, two advertising billboards, and a remnant parcel of land that looks to be no deeper than about 3 metres at its absolute deepest.

  But instead, you’ll find a Japanese street food restaurant called Mian Fan Onigiri (I’m not sure what the Taiwan sign is all about). The interior can’t be larger than 20 or so square metres, but it’s surrounded by a 0.7-metre-deep patio that wraps around the outside of the space and runs about 10 m in total along three faces (see city terrace permit document).

  It’s a simple and unfussy space. The patio consists of milk-crate furniture. But these kinds of small spaces punch well above their weight in what they contribute back to a city in terms of street animation and public life. Cities would do well to reduce the barriers to this scale of business and encourage more small entrepreneurs to hang a shingle.

  And until they do, we’ll never know how much of this urban spirit is being suppressed.

  

  

  

  

  

  2026.09.04

• Window-to-wall ratios and density in Paris

  One of the reasons Paris’s built form works so well is that the buildings aren’t all glass. The window-to-wall ratios afford a degree of privacy, despite the high densities and minimal separation distances. Imagine how different the city would feel if this wasn’t the case.

  

  

  

  

  

  2026.09.02

• From YYZ to CDG to central Paris with a 3-month-old

  We arrived in Paris this morning and Vivienne’s first flight was a 10/10. She slept most of the way in our arms. The bassinet looked like some sort of elaborate torture device (see below), but she did also sleep in it for a bit. The problem is that they make you take her out whenever the seat belt sign is on, and so we ended up just keeping her in our arms to make sure she stayed asleep. So she slept well; we did not. Thankfully, Toronto to Paris is a super easy flight. It was around 6 hours today.

  

  When we arrived at CDG, we stopped at Monop’ for some juices and a snack, and then went straight to the RER B train. Tip: Never fuss with the ticket kiosks. Open Apple Wallet. Add the Île-de-France travel card to it, and then choose the airport pass for €14. The express train took about 30 minutes to get to Gare du Nord. We then did one transfer and one stop on the RER E line, paused in the station to feed Vivienne and admire its vaulted ceilings, and then walked to our hotel. I think we were under an hour inclusive of the meal break.

  

  I’ve said this many times before, but I very much enjoy the feeling of getting off a plane and not having to drive. In terms of our experience with a travel stroller, none of the trains we took had level boarding, so I would just grab the front of the stroller and we’d lift. But every station we were in had elevators. Not all of them were in order, but we could always find one to use. In some cases, we just managed on the escalators.

  Full disclosure: We failed at our plan of only checking one 85L bag. We ended up checking one of our 36L carry-on rollers as well. We’ve never travelled with so much stuff before. But I will say that the Patagonia 30L MLC carry-on backpack is incredible. It miraculously fits a lot of stuff and it keeps everything organized and accessible. I don’t do bag reviews on this blog, but I almost want to now.

  It turns out that travelling with a 3-month-old is harder than not travelling with a 3-month-old. It requires full-on logistics management, especially in a big, dense city like Paris where we’re accustomed to only walking, biking, and taking transit. Vivienne is already giving us a different appreciation for the city and we’re excited to let her do that. One of the things she suggested is a picnic in the park. That sounds great, and a perfect way to enjoy late-summer Paris.

  2026.09.01

• Navigating cities through a stroller lens

  I love to travel and I try my best to be efficient at it. Pre-kid, Bianca and I would leave for weeks with just two carry-on suitcases and a laundry event at some point in the middle of the trip. But now we’re planning our first trip to Paris and Nice with Vivienne (she’ll be ~3 months old) and this has forced us to rethink our entire operation.

  I have spent more time than I care to admit researching travel strollers and super-light car seats and thinking about how best to navigate the places we are going. It’s an expensive world that I didn’t really need to know about.

  All of this is still to be tested out in the field, but here’s where we’ve landed:

  • Our two carry-on suitcases have been consolidated into one larger 85L checked bag. This is about freeing up our hands as much as possible.
  • I’ve swapped my personal item for a Patagonia Black Hole Mini MLC Pack (30L). MLC stands for maximum legal carry-on. This is not a referral link. I just like the bag. My business partner introduced me to it.
  • We got an Ergobaby Metro 3 travel stroller from family that we’ll be using. It fits into overhead compartments. Unfortunately, it’s not compatible with our car seat, and so we came close to buying a second and lighter travel-only car seat (along with the requisite travel stroller adapters). This felt wasteful. We scratched the car seat. I was also not excited about lugging it around.

  I think this is as minimal as we can be.

  We almost exclusively take the train and walk in Paris (though I have caused chaos in their traffic circles before) and, for Nice, I found a ride-hailing app called SIXT that allows you to reserve rides in advance and add in a car seat for newborns. The main reason we debated a car seat is because where we are staying in Nice is a little out of the centre and we would have wanted to Uber. Now we’ll just test our luck with SIXT and Vivienne’s capacity for long walks on steep inclines.

  It’s amazing how differently you start to think about cities and places when you’ve got a stroller to contend with and an infant with limited neck strength. If any of you have any tips, please leave a comment below.

  2026.08.10

• Louis Vuitton’s Big Duck

  

  When I first saw this picture of Louis Vuitton’s flagship store in Manhattan I thought it was AI. That is where we are right now. When something looks wild, I just automatically assume it’s fake. But alas, it’s not fake. Louis Vuitton is renovating their flagship store at the corner of 57th Street and 5th Avenue and so, naturally, they decided to completely cover it with luggage facade wraps.

  These wraps make the entire building look like six grey trunks stacked on top of each other and are a nod to a 19th century luggage design from the company. They even used real metal details throughout. Apparently the heaviest luggage handle weighs something like 5,000 pounds.

  This is wild and remarkable in so many ways. The scale of it is remarkable. This is a 15 storey building concealed entirely by luggage trunks. It also speaks to the scale and dominance of New York as a city. Not every city can absorb a pile of giant luggage trunks and not bat an eye. But in New York, it’s just another noteworthy thing within its relentless urban grid.

  I also can’t help but think of the work of architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. In 1972, they published a book called Learning from Las Vegas. And in it, they defined two types of contrasting buildings: decorated sheds and ducks. Decorated sheds are, as the name suggests, nondescript buildings. Think big box stores. These buildings get their specificity from signage and other ornament because, without this, they’d just be nondescript sheds.

  Duck buildings are, on the other hand, buildings that take on a symbolic form. In other words, their shape and construction tell you what they’re all about. The term duck comes from an actual building that looks like a duck, namely The Big Duck on Long Island. This is a building that was built in the 1930s to help promote the owner’s duck farming business and is now on the US National Register of Historic Places.

  The Big Duck is and was an actual building, whereas Louis Vuitton’s trunks are just temporary construction wrap. So they’re not exactly the same thing. Still, the similarities are there. Both were erected to promote their respectiveness businesses. And both tell you, through their form, what’s meant to happen inside. So in this sense, Louis Vuitton has just created its own Big Duck.

  Photo by Brad Dickson via Dezeen

  2024.11.19

• Paris may have the busiest bike route in the world

  

  In my opinion, we need far better urban data if we’re actually going to make evidence-based decisions. Thankfully, there are lots of great companies that are focused on this space. One of them is Eco-Counter, which makes devices to count pedestrians and cyclists, among other things. This is an important job, because as Peter Drucker used to say, “you can’t manage what you don’t measure.”

  Let’s look at their bike counters. According to their global map, they have 464 of them installed around the world. Montreal has 58 of them, which we’ve spoken about before, and is an impressive install base. And Toronto looks to have only one, which is located on Bloor Street on the north side of High Park.

  The busiest route/counter in Montreal is at St-Denis Street and Rue des Carriéres. So far this year — up to November 17, 2024 — this counter has seen an average of just under 5,000 trips per day and a year-to-date total of 1,600,468 trips. Both of these metrics are notably up compared to 2023 when I last looked at the data.

  The busiest route in Eco-Counter’s entire network is on Boulevard de Sébastopol in Paris (an important main roadway, not a side street). It has seen an average of 13,667 trips per day and a year-to-date total of 4,386,996 trips. Not surprisingly, the Paris counter exhibits less seasonality. People still cycle in the winter in Montreal, but it’s less than in the warmer months.

  Finally, our lone Toronto counter adjacent to High Park has seen an average of 1,186 trips per day and a year-to-date total of 380,813 trips. Not quite Paris or Montreal (the latter of which has a colder climate), but I would argue that this really isn’t an indicative location for Toronto given how underdeveloped the area is. Plus, you need to see each route as part of a network.

  If you look at Montreal’s top 5 bike counters, all of them have a year-to-date total that exceeds 1 million trips. This is important information if you’re trying to make mobility decisions and these are significant figures. Imagine if these millions of people got off their bikes and instead decided to take transit or drive a car. That would change things.

  Photo by Celine Ylmz on Unsplash

  2024.11.17