Western cities weren't always like this. They don't have to be like this.
Encampments have an big and long history in Paris even after the 2nd world war... It's not great, just people looking for a better place to live and survive.
Readit NewsThat is unfortunate but realistically there's never going to be a political overhaul of that scale where all moves are perfectly synced. As long as they're actually working on the transit enhancements it seems completely acceptable to me (in the abstract; I'm not a Parisian)
Paris is building a lot of transit enhancements right now.
testingParisGPE commented on Why are most sofas so bad? dwell.com/article/dtc-sof... · Posted by u/jtsnow
Few years ago I moved to another country and had to get rid of everything I had minus ~25kg.
It's bloody hard to get rid of a lot of stuff. I had a great leather sofa, about 15-20 years old (inherited from my grandparents) still in great condition, but I couldn't get rid of it at any price and none of the charity shops took it because it was missing some fire hazard label (sigh...). Same with almost everything: I sold my 2-year old £1,200 mattress for £50 (and I had to practically beg to guy to take it, because it would have been a complete shame to chuck it). Washing machine, fridge, all the "little stuff" (cutlery, books, DVDs, what-have-you). I ended up putting a lot outside "free stuff" and that got rid of a lot.
Actually the only things I managed to sell was an IKEA sleeping sofa and an IKEA dinner table set.
That said, since then I found that actually finding good stuff isn't always easy.
What I find helpful with buying IKEA items second hand, I know the exact measurements and can find more infos online. With other furniture items, it much harder. And their names are distinct so I can just search for it.
The rest of Paris is pretty "European city" and maybe I'm not tuned into the differences, but it seemed quite like Munich, Rome, or Barcelona except for the language, etc.