Do you find as a tourist Paris clean or dirty ? (citizen, time)
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despite 10-15 million population, which is much larger than Paris.
No, not really, because the Paris urban area includes not only Paris city proper, but also the gigantic suburbs, alltogether the most recent data give 11 million people (and growing...)
Thank you very much for your anwer! Well, I see. It seems to me that they were pretty unprepared for such a growth. Especially thoose old extremely narrow trains in Paris Metro are sometimes even more airless than in Moscow. It's good that they are changing them with the new trains, which are much better. In Moscow trains are much more noisy (it's sometimes awful), but even here they are less airles.
Maybe I was too critical to Paris. Certainly, the amount of garbage depends on the area... But sometimes it looks very awful. The same is with the aroma of human urine.
But Parisians are quite friendly. I even asked some young Muslim priest (I am not sure, but it seems to me he was some kind of priest) to show me the way in RER, had no problems.
In talking clean vs dirty, you have to consider the city's density. More populous cities tend to show more litter. You really can't compare the cleanness of Shanghai to Zurich, the former being 10 times bigger.
Maybe, but my native city is very populated and while you can find garbage, it is not in such amounts as in some Paris districts.
I understand that one of the reasons why in my native Moscow there is less garbage is that our cleaners work not once or twice a day, but sometimes during the day also. If European rules are more humanistic in this way (which is good) there should be some other decisions, I hope.
I suppose there should be some disciplinarian methods, e.g. a person should pay money for that.
Maybe I am just a little bit angry, you know, Paris is far from the cheapest city, and to live in the city is one thing and to visit it as a non-European tourist is the other...
And again this habit of urinating just on the corner suprised me very much. Maybe it's difficult to find some bare ground.... but still.
Some friends of mine unfortunately had the same impressions or even worser. I'm trying to be objective, it is still very interesting city from a historical point of view, but I do not envy its' citizens.
I have never thought: "I would like to live here", when I was in Paris, despite the beauty of its' historical buildings. From the point of modern city infrastructure it is sometime not much better than my native city, to which I was always very critical.
Last edited by Muscovite; 07-25-2012 at 10:55 AM..
OK. Well, maybe every big city have some problems with garbage (though, I was shocked to find plastic bottles even on the railways in the Metro).
But what's about public urination? Is it an old Parisian tradition? . I have never smelt such amounts of human urina as in Paris. Is it normal to urinate just on the corner, parents do not teach their children not to do so? I just do not know what to think. Maybe I am some wild uneducated person...
No, the suburbs isn't Paris. Paris inside the Paris city limits. So it's as big as other capitals. Looked ok to me and I've been there several times. Not particularly dirty. Now, the suburbs.. that's a different story. Lots of ghettos.
I didn't know that there were country field just after the Peripherique, obviously the suburb are Paris even if those are not officially inside the city.
Honestly I find the suburbs on average cleaner than the inner city of Paris.
While some poor suburbs are dirtier, the majority of the suburbs are cleaner.
Paris is probably worse now than when Muscovite visited, because of the crisis they are expanding public works, so the French government can keep the unemployment statistics (relatively )down, there are scaffoldings and rip up pavements and sidewalks everywhere, and as a consequence gigantic traffic jams.
Well, maybe I was too critical to Paris yesterday.
It is still beautiful in the centre. I just hope they will spend my money on some renovation of underground system (esp. ALL old trains should be changed to the new ones). And I hope that they will find some way to increase the finaces for bad public behaviour. I just thought that such a city which is far from cheap should be a little bit more luxurious... Still, it was quite interesting to find that not only my native city to which I have been always very critical, has urbanistic problems...
Maybe I am just tired of living in a big city... And now I spent some pretty large (for me) amount of money to find that Paris is just another large city, maybe with older city centre and lots of gothic churches, but...
A few pictures in order to show those who still think Paris is a clean city the reality of the streets of Paris : Klebeurk | Galerie | DELANOPOLIS
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