Parisian Real Estate Prices

Q: Le Parisien has an article on real estate prices in Paris. Prices up, sales down. Prices are up 12% for the year on the average, more in the lower price arrondissements than the more expensive The VIth is up 9% reaching 5800 euros/sq meter (around $600 sq foot) That is the most expensive. The least expensive is the 19th at 2600 euros sq meter, up 14% with the adjacent 18th (2700 euros sq meter) up 16%. The VII, which is snazzy, is up 16% at about the same level as the VI, near 5800. The article and the map of Paris is given at http://www.leparisien.fr/home/info/economie/article.htm?articleid=206... The Parisian is a low brow newspaper but for those who which to get a bit closer to the life in Paris, it will give you that. Interesting but why was I immediately made to think while looking at this map of Paris that this is truly a wonderful example of "class warfare" a la francaise?

A: What your comment made me think of immediately was our recent trip to Los Angeles. There we got a good look at a truly wonderful example of the separation of ethnic communities this city provides. We decided to drive from Pasadena to the LA airport on the surface streets instead of using freeways. This was also a little trip into our individual pasts. We started out through San Marino, which is middle and upper middle class, just as it was fifty years ago when I lived there. We then moved on down into Monterey Park, to the south, which was white working class fifty years ago when Earl lived there, but is now completely Asian. We didn't see anyone of any other ethnic group on the streets. We then started east, through East LA. It has not changed. It is strictly Hispanic, just like it was fifty years ago, when I used to commute through it on my way to college. Continuing east and south, we drove along Imperial Highway through South Central Los Angeles. It was always a black neighborhood, but it is larger now than it was in 1955, when we lived there just after we got married. We lived at 115th Street and Figueroa, Figueroa being the racial divide in those days. Now the black

area has moved across Figueroa. The apartment building we lived in then is still there, however, and looks just about the same. Then, finally, our last stop before the airport was Inglewood, a middle class white area when Earl lived there when he was in grade school, now black. All the housing was well maintained, except in the Asian area, where the house where Earl used to live was definitely shabby looking, and the wall with the neighboring property which he and his father built was falling down. I don't know if you can talk about "class warfare", but to me it was side by side rather than together. The boundaries are just as sharp as you saw in the map of Paris.