From the article : "In her re-election campaign, Mayor Anne Hidalgo says that every Paris resident should be able to meet their essential needs within a short walk or bike ride."

"Paris" is defined as Paris intra-muros + the Boulogne and Vincenne parks, which are limited in space and was saturated long time ago. You are a "Paris resident" if you live inside of the City of Paris (the green line of the plot).

The chart is showing "Aire urbaine" and "Unité urbaine" which are another way to draw geographical limits and are only used for statistical purposes, and they include the "Region of Paris", or "Ile de France". Obviously, the region is expanding like any other capital's region in the world, so that plot exactly shows nothing.

The sentence "For most practical purposes Paris is a 10 million inhabitants city" is fake news. People living inside of the City of Paris are asking to be able to use bikes or other transport means, but all the cars coming from outside of Paris everyday are making it difficult.

Stop confusing the Region of Paris and the City of Paris. People living inside the City of Paris (the Parisians) have right to elect a mayor who will defend them. If you live in one of the adjacent cities, go elect a mayor that will locally improve your quality of life, but (real) Parisians are sick of the traffic inside their city and no other city has right to decide for them.

The point of democracy and electing mayors is to empower people to change their destiny. The chart shows that there population of the larger Paris area is increasing, as you yourself confirm:

> the region is expanding like any other capital's region in the world

Why are new people coming there though? Are they coming to tie their lives to the City of Paris, but they must settle for the larger region because of the saturation? Or are they coming to join the Region of Paris because of its merits excluding the City?

If it's for the former, then they deserve some democratic influence on the place that brought them there, and the chart shows that the division into City of Paris and the rest denies the newcomers that influence.

It's only my own opinion, but I believe there is too much centralization of national, international and diplomatic institutions inside the City of Paris. I am _for_ more decentralization of businesses and powers across the Region of Paris and across other cities of France. House pricing clearly shows that the City of Paris is a gravity center in terms of everything, which leads to many of the current traffic and pollution issues imo. Maybe a decentralization of France's institutions, powers, businesses etc could help it?

Edit : Idea : at each new presidential term, move all institutions and the french "white house" to Lyon or Marseilles, second biggest city of France. At the next presidential term, move everything again to Paris.

Or Toulouse ranked 4. That may force the government to invest for some infrastructure. I don’t think we’ll ever a TGV there.

Oh, come on, it's only about 10 years away [1]. Granted, it's been 10 years away for about a decade, now.

But that leaves the question of whether Toulouse will get a TGV before nuclear fusion is invented, Thomas Pesquet walks on Mars, or anyone actually start working on an Hyperloop instead of faking it [2].)

[1] https://actu.fr/occitanie/toulouse_31555/pourquoi-projet-lgv...

[2] https://actu.fr/occitanie/toulouse_31555/hyperloop-piste-ess...

> Obviously, the region is expanding like any other capital's region in the world, so that plot exactly shows nothing.

Yet up until 1860 the growth was being tracked by an expanding political entity. Walk across the périphérique to Montrouge, to Vincennes and tell me whether you see a clear boundary. Go talk to someone who lives in Anthony and see how many have to commute to or through center to go to work. It's all a giant economical and social unit!

Remember when they tried to expand Vélib past the city boundaries: 2 years of delay, tribunals having to chime in...all that just because the official city boundaries don't match how people live.

There is also another big problem, also because of this a lot of people are just being priced out of Paris proper, there is a sharp decline in price (even in nice surrounding counties) as soon as you cross the city limits.

I'm all for reducing cars, but you can't possibly deny there is a ton of people who would just love to cycle or take the Métro to work, but can't afford to live in a place where that is a possibility, yet their job and most of their working hours are spent in a city where they can't elect the mayor!

I have no horse in this argument either way, but it's interesting how this train of thought regarding sovereignty of city vs county contrasts with the current debate between the voting politics of the direct city of San Francisco and it's greater metropolitan area, especially in regard to zoning policies.

Yes. But it’s the same problem on steroids. Paris is really really small. About 6x smaller than SF.

there is nothing "fake news" about this statement. it's just simply factually incorrect.

Many, many, more people than the 2 million intra-muros residents spend their daily life in intra-muros, i bet you could double that number, for these people not to have a voice in how what is essentially their city center is governed is extremely undemocratic. "Real Parisian" is an insulting term to use.

> i bet you could double that number, for these people not to have a voice in how what is essentially their city center is governed is extremely undemocratic

That's nonsense though. You could argue that the influence of Parisian politics go way beyond the city and by your logic the whole of France should be voting for stuff that concerns Paris. That's just not how representation works.

No I lived in Rennes for a while I couldn’t give the slightest damn about Parisian politics.

I am saying that for many around Paris, Paris is like their very own city center, and they cannot move anywhere or do anything without going intra-muros, every single day. And essentially, out of two equally concerned people, the one who’s richest can afford intra-muros and is the only one who has a voice.

It's not obvious to me that only the people who can afford to live in a wealthy city centre should unilaterally make decisions affecting the greater group of people whose destinies are tied to that city. Saying "that's just how it works" is not really a justification.

Then by what logic do you justify that transient workers would have more power than the own residents of Paris about how the city should run? Because this is exactly what is suggested as more people live around Paris than inside.

There are three groups here

- those who have a say

- those who have no say but should

- those who have no say but who don’t fill the conditions to have it

I am advocating for the second group

And it is not a spectrum, the third group’s condition is often orthogonal to the second group’s condition

Said an other way, "Paris" should be defined as a greater area, because the center has extreme day to day and structural influence over those, but there is a point where it stops being the case, of course there is a degree of ambiguity regarding where to stop, but it is definitive and unambiguous that the current state of affair is unfair

Is there a possibility for middle ground between "no say at all" and "some influence"?

Also, people who live in suburbs and commute to a city centre every day may object to being called "transient workers"!

> commuters from other counties had to add some time to their commute and were furious.

This is an unfortunate over-generalization. As an inhabitant of the banlieue, I was very happy for this development, and I'm pushing for the mayor of my commune to ban cars as well. Hoping that the whole urban area is wholly served by public transportation and biking. I hate cars, noise and pollution!

When I visited Paris, it was the scooters that annoyed me to no end. They sounded like two strokes and were everywhere. Will they be banned too?

Well, the scooters delivering their burgers and sushis to the hipsters voting for the current mayor, so it's rather unlikely.

I see a lot of downvotes, but no coherent answers. Seems like I hit a nerve.

> while commuters from other counties had to add some time to their commute and were furious.

Commuting by car to Paris is mostly for near counties (with real estate prices not that far from Paris. Puteaux or Boulogne people are in average well set) or people living very far but are paid enough to spend an hour and half in their car.

The general population takes buses and trains to commute, as parking in Paris is also a PITA. I was mildly amused to hear that our company in the middle of Paris only provides underground parking places to high level managers, and I can’t imagine renting a parking place somewhere else is any cheap.

For anyone interested in the linked chart labeled in English: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Paris_Hi...

Most of commuters from other counties use public transportation, not cars.

I think this is a problem with any disproportionately large city. But I’m not sure there’s a great solution, because the pseudo-Paris areas here presumably want their autonomy.

In Ireland, a country of under 5 million, all of the local authority decisions for the central bit of Dublin are made by Dublin City Council, which covers half a million people. But that’s largely an arbitrary distinction; the metropolitan area mostly covers three other local authorities and leaks into some others, and contains 1.5 million people. The only sign you have that you’ve wandered outside DCC in any direction is that the traffic lights are a bit different. And ‘greater Dublin’, which encompasses the adjacent local authorities, contains over 2 million. And that’s not the end of it; lots of people outside Greater Dublin commute in.

So, DCC makes decisions that impact at least 2 million people, but is elected by a population of 500k. I think there’s actually an argument for merging the four Dublin local authorities, but even that would be a political nightmare. Extending DCC to cover half the country is clearly not viable, and would not be accepted. But given that, it’s natural for DCC to care more about making the city work for people who live in its area and who vote for it than those commuting in from far away.