Archive for December, 2010
Wednesday, December 29th, 2010
Paris bid to ban SUVs?
Those French, so logical and practical, yet so infuriating to the American sensibility of freedom and waste. Ten years after the Hummer was introduced as the ultimate extension of small apartment masquerading as automobile, this seems like a sensible step, especially in cities where there are no mountains to climb or icy roads to navigate. Bulky, gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles (SUVs) could be banned from the chic but traffic-clogged streets of Paris within 18 months following a resolution passed by the city council.
No Comments » - Posted in In the News,Transports: Métro, Taxi, Trains and Planes,Understand France and the French by Paul
Thursday, December 2nd, 2010
French jobless rate hits 25 pct among young
Huge issue in France and the not surprising effect is that most college grads want safe jobs in the government bureaucracy if they can get one at all. French parents worry they are preparing their kids for a lifetime of unemployment, made worse by a lack of ambition and risk-taking. PARIS (Reuters) – France’s youth unemployment rate rose to a record 25 percent in the third quarter, well above the European average, and the overall jobless rate remained stuck at 9.7 percent in the latest gloomy news for euro zone growth. The jobless rate among people aged 15-24 years rose from 24.2 percent in the preceding April-June quarter, the highest level on records going back to 1975, data showed on Thursday.
No Comments » - Posted in In the News by Paul
Wednesday, December 1st, 2010
Paris Skyline Ready to Tour Montparnasse heights
Hidden in the fine print of all the articles on this however, is that the development will only be allowed to take place in the 13th arrondissment, leaving almost all of what tourists think of as “classic Paris” untouched. … One of the striking things about Paris is that, for a major city whose metropolitan area includes nearly 12 million people, there are very few buildings more than five or six stories tall. Since 1977, soon after the construction of the 689 foot tall Tour Montparnasse, a building that sticks out like a sore thumb and is widely disliked by Parisians, there has been a height limit of 121 feet on all new buildings. … But on Tuesday, Le Monde reported, the Paris City Council voted to raise the height limit to a revolutionary 590 feet, meaning that in the next few years, the Paris skyline will have a growth spurt.
