Bogie reminded us “that we’ll always have Paris.”  Indeed, we will. Paris defines what a city should be.  Beyond it’s being a City of Lights, a Moveable Feast, and so many other things, it is a model, the model for what urban life should be.  And that’s how it grew up.  From a desolate, war torn landscape to one of the first cities to embrace street life, to welcome pedestrians, to be lit at night, to have public gardens and where, as Joni Mitchell said, “they kiss on main street.”

Joan DeJean celebrates this history and explains How Paris Became Paris: The Invention of the Modern City.

My conversation with Joan DeJean: