An ‘Impossible City’: Author Simon Kuper on the reality of life in Paris • FRANCE 24 English

now it’s time for today’s perspective on the program and I must admit I’m fascinated to hear what my guest today is going to say Simon Cooper is a journalist at the financial times and a football writer as well and in his spare time he does have some he’s also written a book about what it has actually been like to live in Paris during the past two decades I think he’s been here slightly longer than I have but I’ve been here for almost about the same amount of time as he has Cooper experiencing the city both as a human being but also as a journalist as the city has changed around him his book is called impossible City Paris in the 21st century and Simon Cooper joins us now thanks very much for being with us on the program uh first of all let’s start off by being a little bit positive shall we give us some ways the city you think has changed in a in a good way I mean did you have optimism for example when you first arrived here I didn’t arrive planning to stay I thought I’ll just uh stick around for a few months and uh enjoy eating and then move on I didn’t really have a particular attachment to France and now 2 years on I’m a French Citizen and my children are parisians so yes these things happen unexpectedly I am quite optimistic about the future of Paris firstly because they forced the car out very largely so as you know it’s become a city with um much more cycling with cleaner air than before where it’s easy to get around in a healthy way and the other thing that makes me optimistic is they’re starting to build and open 68 new Metro stations in the suburbs of Paris because the sub suburbs and the city have never really been connected together the suburbs are where uh mostly poorer people were pushed out to suburbs now much bigger than the city 10 million in the suburbs 2 million in the city and with these Metro stations it will suddenly for the first time be much easier than ever before to move between the two yeah it’s interesting you’re saying that we’re looking at some very lovely beautiful pictures of Paris while you’re talking there but of course it’s not all like that is there notably in in those suburbs yeah I mean most of the suburbs were built in the decades after the war initially there was some very ugly tower blocks uh that were unpleasant to live in those have now largely been torn down so the so do look better but yeah when people think of Paris they think of this picture postcard City inside the periphery Green Road where only two million people live you know the Paris that we all know that pictures we have in our heads but what I try and explain in the book is that that’s one sixth of what we think of Paris what about within the center of Paris as well I mean there are problems there too aren’t they absolutely I mean Paris has become a kind of hate symbol for much of the rest of France and you see that in politics as well so the naal doesn’t get any significant votes in Paris but is very strong in the rest of the territory so there’s this French idea that you have this bad Elite in Paris which is embodied by Emmanuel mcor which is out of touch with the rest of the country and um the wealth gap between the two is quite quite strong problems inside Paris I would say 2 million bad-tempered people living in apartments that are too small for them everybody lives very cramped here and um trying to carve out tiny private spaces for themselves on the streets and cafes in any public space yeah what do you think Paris is actually like to live in because I I mean as I say I’ve been here for about 14 15 years and there are a lot of advantages and as you say a lot of disadvantages too well I mean the Perfection of Paris is the density and the horor of Paris is the density it’s perfect because everything you’d want to see or meet or eat or any Museum you want to go to is a short distance from your home and you could have so many different wonderful experiences just within 5 minutes walk of your apartment in most of Paris but then the problem is that you don’t have space I mean it’s a more densely populated ssy for the book I went through a lot of the stats so I’m now oo with the stats it’s more densely populated then New Delhi uh then Manhattan I believe it’s um and I you notice that when tourists come because in Paris you learn to take only your tiny stretch of the pavement of the sidewalk and a tourist will kind of spread out and take a selfie with two other people and you think you don’t understand how space Works in Paris and it’s also let’s not forget older buildings as well I mean you can hear quite often a lot of what people are saying uh not not word for word but you can hear people talking in in the rooms next door you can hear creaky floorboards as well from people above and below as well yeah I’m speaking to you from my 19th century office we live in a home with floorboards that Creek like most parisians as you say I mean Elman who was the architect of Paris from the 1850s till about 1870 he created this beautiful city with these six seven story buildings but it’s very very noisy yeah and so you spend a lot of time trying to protect your private space and your intimacy from your neighbors it’s almost sometimes like you live in the same home as your neighbors that’s how close it is and you you sort of alluded to this earlier on but I mean Paris does has this reputation doesn’t it as being full of very contaner people uh who who moan and complain a lot is that really true do you think I think it’s becoming less true I’ve already noticed in the last few years that especially younger people have become much friendlier and sometimes you see a young person walking down Street and you pass them and they do this thing with their face which I think is called a smile which i’ seen in Paris for the first 15 years or so here so I think that the kind of norms of the rest of the world are gradually creeping into Paris but there is a cantankerousness just because people are constantly getting in your space and it makes people I think there’s a kind of Cabin Fever that parisians live with and that’s quite stressful would have been the turning points do you think for Paris I mean inevitably of course we think of the terrorist attacks yeah I mean I write about the terrorist attacks in my book because I felt we were right in the middle of them I was in the St of France on November 13 2015 where the attacks began there was an explosion outside the stadium which is now about to be the Olympic stadium and then most of the shooting was in our neighborhood we live a few minutes walk from the batak clan where 130 people were massacred so that was a moment when I thought is it still possible to live in Paris is uh it going to become like Beirut where just the few people violent people make the city unlivable I mean there was a a good year wasn’t there where people were very very on edge maybe maybe two years I would say but now not people have forgotten about it of course they haven’t but but you know life goes on I suppose yeah there were a few months where you didn’t go to a cafe because the cafes with the places that have been shot up so you know you weren’t going to sit there and make yourself a Target so I remember months having my morning coffee in the house which is not how parents is supposed to work and then after a few weeks people start cautiously to go back I remember I’d go into a cafe and look around as I walked in and think if men with guns walk in where will I go where will I dive to that’s how we used to think and you’re right over the years that just that just Fades away although now with the Olympics coming back and a huge anxiety about potential terrorist attacks those worries are returning yeah exactly my next question Olympics um again a lot of parisians saying I don’t want this this is causing even more uh chaos in in the densely pack City and and saying they’re going to leave for the Olympics it’s a bit of a shame though isn’t it parisians are very hard to impress because you know you can say to them well the Olympics Paris will be the center of the world for a fortnite a lot of pisans think weren’t we the center of the world already they they don’t need an Olympics to validate the city and um you know it’s it’s always been a city that tries to match itself with the greatest cities on Earth so it looks at New York and looks at London and says we should be up there and ahead of them and so yeah parisians are quite blasé and of course there is always every day great sport great art great entertainment in Paris anyway even without an Olympic Games enormous numbers of people are leaving I think um most of the excitement will be felt in France outside Paris yeah I mean certainly in those suburbs that we were talking about earlier there are a lot of areas that are being redeveloped because of the Olympics aren’t there well the poorest Department of Mainland France department is a kind of small region is s Su which is just North of Paris which is where the Olympic stadium and the Aquatic Center for the games are and it’s true that they built a wonderful athletes Village which is going to become housing you know in a month or two just after the games and the par Olympics but if you look at the map of sense underne there’s way more building going on that has nothing to do with the Olympics there’s all sorts of skyscrapers going up Office Buildings but also so housing so I actually don’t think that the Olympics are the main thing that’s happening to Paris I think the main thing that’s happening is the building of these 68 new Metro stations in the suburbs and then what comes with that the building of way more new housing in the suburbs often on top of stations so um the Olympics are kind of going to be a blip I hope a happy blip in the history of Paris and we’re going to come out with a kind of grand par um as is the phrase for the the big Paris the Paris that includes the suburbs as well as the City sounds like you got another book to write in 10 years time to update the one you’ve already done Simon thank you very much for being with us Simon Cooper his book impossible City Paris in the 21st century thanks for joining us on the program today

Paris is a city of huge positives but also negatives. That’s the view of the author of a new book on what he calls an “Impossible City”. Simon Kuper, a journalist for The Financial Times, describes in the book how the French capital is not at all simply the picture-postcard city we tend to think of. While 2 million people live in central Paris, another 10 million live in the banlieues, or suburbs. Kuper says he’s hopeful that plans to open 68 new metro stations will connect the two parts of the metropolis better. He spoke to us in Perspective. 

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16 comments

  6. More metro heh? That's good, now the looters, rioters and burners can have an easy access to Paris to enrich the French people!😂

  8. giving paris to host the olympics was a really bad idea very big and no security at all , i will prefer lyon or bordeax amazing cities ….

  12. I have lived in Paris city center most of my youth. In the 5th Arrondissement. People do not realize how poor it was, dirty and dingy back in the 70's and 80's. It has become completely gentrified.
    Having said that I left just 20 years ago. Lived overseas and in Annecy. No regret, no tears.
    BUT I will come back to retire there. Because if you do not need to work and move around on a daily basis, it can be so cool.
    Indeed it has become a sort of retiree paradise. And you'll benefit from the cheapest / Highest quality Health system.

  13. I’d far rather live in Paris than in the States… McMansions, immense violence, racism, cheap developments, cars and petrol rule above all else, a lack of caring for anyone but one’s self (let alone your neighbor or the environment). I’ve spend a lot of time in Paris and France, looking forward to leaving the States and making that move permanent.

  14. A meaningless commentary on a selfish city that only the well-off live in. It has always been looking at its noble belly button but once upon a time it was open to those on low incomes.

  16. I absolutely loved this interview and plan to buy the book right away.
    The focus on density is so important. People don’t realize how dense the city is, and that the Western suburbs are as, if not more dense! This is the trademark of Paris. The astonishing thing is how quiet and sleepy the city gets after dark. If you catch it right, sometimes it feels like you have that little corner of Paris all to yourself.

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