Steps and More Steps

If you're the type of person who counts these things, you might be interested to know that it's not difficult to get in a decent step count every day just in the course of living in Paris.  (I am currently doing the MIT GetFit Step Challenge, so I am that type of person for the time being at least.)  

We typically take the RER from Luxembourg to Cite Universitaire to get to work every day.  That entails at least 1000 steps each way, a number of them on stairs.  Taking Sandy out on a walk is a minimum of 1000 steps, often more like 2000, if he wants to roam for a while.  And, of course, he needs a few of those every day.  Walking to dinner and back could be as much as 4000 if the restaurant is deep in the 5th or 6th.  And the almost-daily trip to the vegetable stand or the boulangerie or the Franprix adds more.  It all takes a fair amount of time--I don't walk any faster here than I do back in Newton--but none of it feels like a chore.  I have puzzled over why walking here is so much easier and more natural for me than it is in Newton (and even Boston and Cambridge), and a number of differences come readily to mind.     

1. Higher density.  The most obvious reason, I suppose, is the higher density here of interesting and useful things, which encourages walking and makes outings much more efficient if you want to take care of some errands.  Within a 10-minute walking radius of our apartment, there are dozens of pharmacies, clothing stores, toy stores, sporting goods stores, home stores, etc., and every type of establishment selling food and drink in various forms you could imagine.  I can honestly say that it would never occur to me to hop in the car to go grab a baguette, even if we owned a car here.  In Newton, it is more or less a 10-minute walk to arrive at the first business that is selling something you might want and more than 20 minutes one way to be able to buy groceries.  So I hop in the car for pretty much everything.  It's a little counter-intuitive that having so many amenities close by makes you walk more, but it's not hard to see why.

2. Details of the built environment.  Second, I think there is something important about the structure of the built environment.  Many (not all) streets in Paris have the following structure: sidewalks abutting the buildings, which have commercial activity at street level and a few stories of residences above.  The fact that the commercial activity is precisely at street level is important.  Compare that situation to certain dense neighborhoods in Boston or New York where commercial activity might be half a story above or below street level.  (I'm picturing neighborhoods with the iconic brick townhouses or brownstones.)  Having the businesses half a story above or below means that pedestrians are less likely to pop in and have a look, and that window-shopping is difficult or impossible.  Also, businesses in Paris seem to almost always have doors opening onto the street.  Urban malls, like Copley Place or Prudential Center in Boston, where a collection of shops and restaurants are sequestered inside larger buildings, are pretty rare here.    

3. Interesting window displays.  Third, the content of windows in Paris is informative and delightful in a way that it is not in Boston.  So, combining the interesting content with the fact that they tend to be at street level means that window shopping becomes a great distraction.  I suspect that there are some important regulatory differences that account for some of the different content.  Restaurants, for instance, must post their menus outdoors.  It's fun, then, to walk past a restaurant that you haven't tried, take a peak inside, and then peruse the menu to see what they're offering.  I also suspect that there is a regulation requiring that all clothing displayed in a window must have the prices also displayed.  (It's possible that it's just common practice, not regulation.)  So, as I'm walking by a clothing store, I not only study the clothing on display, but I also glance down at the prices to decide whether it's a store that I might like to visit at some point.  And, on occasion, I go in for a few minutes.  

The mix of businesses also matters.  Paris has a lot of art galleries, which always have mini-art shows in their windows.  Paris seems to have fewer of the more boring businesses to pass--cell phone stores and bank branches--in the center than many US cities, and certainly has a smaller density of Starbucks.     

The mix of businesses and regulations governing some window displays is only part of the difference, though.  One aspect of the content of window displays that I don't quite understand is how artfully composed they are.  Pharmacies offer the biggest contrast I think.  Below is the window of a pharmacy near us on Rue Saint Jacques.  I also took a close-up of the left window, so you could get a better view of some of the displays of ordinary soaps, lotions, sprays, etc.  

Contrast those with two photos of the entrance and window display of the CVS in Newton Centre.  

Did I cherry-pick these two examples?  Only a little.  It's not difficult to find pharmacies with lovely, well-composed window displays here.  And we can agree that they're pretty much nonexistent in the US.  I honestly don't know what accounts for the difference.  It's difficult to imagine a city imposing regulations on how beautiful a window display must be, but the contrast is striking.       

4. Few modern office lobbies.  Another big difference between dense US cities and Paris is the modern office building lobby.  In the US, so many of them are large, private, boring, barren spaces, which offer no amentities or visual interest to pedestrians walking by.  Maybe these lobbies exist out in La Defense or other areas outside of Paris proper, but I have seen virtually none of them in the center of Paris.  Given how they kill foot traffic, I don't know why US zoning boards, which are typically comfortable being quite prescriptive about all kinds of things, don't simply outlaw them.  They could be repurposed as public spaces with shops, cafes, and restaurants.     

5. Vehicle traffic.  One of the worst parts of walking in Newton Corner is having to traverse the huge traffic circle.  At busy moments, it's chock full of cars, trucks, and busses at a standstill emitting exhaust.  At less busy moments, it becomes a motor arcade of death, with the lower volume allowing greater speeds and causing treacherous conditions for pedestrians.  Either way, it's smelly, unpleasant, ugly, and unsafe.  The center of Paris has few areas where car traffic dominates so much, so life is better for the pedestrians.  (Bastille is probably Paris' counterpart to the Newton Corner traffic circle.  We actually have a friend who was hit by a car while walking there several years ago, and seriously injured. We do not need to go there very often, luckily.)  

6. Street life.  Finally, I would say that I find the liveliness of the streets energizing.  The sidewalk cafes and outdoor restaurant seating can sometimes make navigating the sidewalks a little tricky, but on balance I think they make walking more fun.  They are responsible for a lively and convivial vibe and they also provide excellent people-watching, both for the patrons and the passersby.