Indeed, unlike London Paris and its citizens have an inexhaustible passion to preserve their history by a rather strict code of entirely absent in the UK - planning laws are some of the toughest in the world, local authorities set caps on how much landlords- both commercial and domestic - can charge and, in doing so, avoid this hideous feeding frenzy that London in now suffering as rapacious landlords and foreign investors tear down our heritage in favour of building luxury flats to accrue as much rent per square metre as possible.
Ergo, many of little shops that made London have been forced out of business by rates that are linked to rents, many of the cities young creatives are compelled to leave the city as they can’t afford the rent leaving a conurbation that is rapidly losing its soul. We’ve all seen developers and property magnates, in an effort to turn our cities into rather enlarged homogenized shopping malls, rip the guts out of London and New York by tearing down the familiar and the beautiful in favour of nondescript, multinational store fronts.
This hasn’t happened in Paris and you can smell the cities vibrancy and history just as soon as you hit the street. The French capital is a city overflowing with individuality and a very pronounced joie de vivre. A city that is embraces non-conformity that is enjoying being itself and a city that is above all real with no amount of balls. It seems that the city has achieved this. They have realized that a real city has diversity and colour that, never a consequence of bending over for huge foreign investment companies is achieved simply by being itself - an aphorism that fits both its inhabitants and establishments alike.
Indisputably, Paris seems to have it all at the moment and, in truth, I was totally gob smacked and thoroughly envious. The city and its inhabitants seem to enjoy certain self-reliance, individuality and pride in each other that I have rarely seen of late. Unfortunately, both London and New York once had this in spades but it is now sadly lacking our cities having been disembowelled by rancid rapacious developers and their greedy and corrupt lickspittle Tory pals. Thank the firmament Paris only its just a few hours train journey away.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson proclaimed, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” I think we have to applaud Paris for just that.
Chris Sullivan travelled on the Eurostar www.eurostar.com
He stayed at Mama Shelter Paris East www.mamashelter.com