Paris does have formless towers in its outer suburbs that are woefully designed, even compared with the worst of our soulless blocks, but the stylish apartments that line the streets of central Paris feature wrought iron balconies and window boxes bursting with vibrant geraniums, making them as attractive outside as they no doubt are inside.
Often built in squares around a central courtyard, the apartments combine a communal private space with tightly packed city living. It may not be the quarter-acre paradise we have long held dear, but at least there's somewhere to put the bins, and no lawn to mow.
While Paris may be a model of urban lifestyle design, they may have taken the concept of having-it-all a little too far with the "Paris Plage". Each summer they truck in tonnes of sand and dump it on the concrete sidewalk next to the Seine River, throw up a few umbrellas, lay out some loungers, and call it a beach.
Parisians slip into their speedos to bask next to an aromatic river they can't plunge into for health reasons. This is either a Parisian Bondi or the world's largest litterbox.
It is a great example of civic money being used to create usable public spaces, even if it is just for those members of the public who want to lie and fry in the sun as thousands of tourists walk past taking photos.
The lesson we can learn from the gargoyles, geraniums, and Gallic speedo-wearers is that developers, and those who allow development to happen, have a civic duty to create visually appealing, family functional, and ultimately desirable higher density environments so that people will move into them through choice and not necessity.
Money spent on a city's aesthetics is not money wasted.
We can also learn that not everyone is adept at keeping geraniums alive, that speedos are not for everyone, and that gargoyles might be attractive but when they channel rainwater away from walls it falls instead in a torrent onto the middle of the footpath, making it rather difficult to stay dry.
Even as I strolled the boulevards, one of the Auckland's flagship apartment buildings, supposed to herald the successful transition to higher-density urban living in New Lynn, was being castigated for having pillars in the bedrooms. Pillars. As if no one would notice this rather inconvenient design flaw.
In fact it seems that no one did, at least until they tried to get a bed in.
We don't have a large history of apartment building but I would have thought that at some stage during the sketching of the plans someone might have said "Should we really have a pillar there?"
The correct answer would have been "No". And, "Let's add some gargoyles."
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