The article comes across as a bit confusing and misguided, because whilst there are certainly aspects London can learn from a whole range of cities, I don’t see either Paris or New York as being the adequate role models for the city: there are just too many differences.
Granted, there is an issue with housing affordability in London, but Paris has its own problems including the unbridled decline within the banlieues (rampant unemployment, isolationism, destitution, fundamentalism, etc...) and the bizarre situation where wealthy and well-connected people are rampantly abusing subsidised housing.
The author then proceeds to talk about measures to tackle pollution, but London has been operating the Congestion Charge (£11.50, $17.70) since 2003 and the Low Emission Zone (£100-200, $154-308) came into force in 2008. At points the message of the article becomes a bit flaky; talking about
”the city’s regenerative energies are ignoring the small print of daily livability and being channelled into ridiculously flash grand projects”, but these aren’t government mandated projects, merely the visions of design and architect studios with spare time on their hands.
Transport wise, Paris is certainly making a credible push with the GPE, but London too is making substantial investments, many of which are evidently visible from the
London Transport Thread (Crossrail 1, Crossrail 2, Thameslink, Northern & Metropolitan Line Extensions, Overground Expansion, new river crossings, 24 hour tube, DLR & Overground, move towards automation of the tube network, etc...).
Finally, whilst there is undoubtedly a tendency on both sides of the Channel to bash each other, the
FT article that the author links to poses legitimate criticisms of the French business climate which is partly responsible for the atrocious levels of unemployment and moribund economic growth figures. Last year Yorkshire created more new jobs than all of France.