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