Comment by vonnik

Let's be really clear: Haussmann built an autocrat's city. He was the architect of Louis-Napoleon, nephew of the former French emperor, and the city was built during the so-called second empire. That is, it does not reflect democratic values. How does it not reflect them? Well, the broad avenues radiating from star-like intersections are meant to favor the artillery if rebels ever try to build a barricade. This structure was later used to shape Washington DC. These considerations were important because of the Paris Commune of the 1870s, where the people of Paris rebelled against what they felt was bourgeois oppression. Except for a few periods after WWI and WWII, when artists like Picasso or Hemingway briefly frequented a poor and beautiful city, Paris has been a bourgeois stronghold ever since. This has huge cultural ramifications, many of them negative, for life in the city, since a premium is put on proper behavior and, above all, silence. Haussmann's ravages pushed the working class out into the suburbs -- what people now refer to the Red Belt -- depriving Paris of much of its vibrant street life. There were huge tradeoffs in the makeover, so let's not unduly idolize him.