I love Manhattan, and I love Paris. Both are, of course, legendary in their magnetic power to inspire, to gather together great artists and thinkers. The two cities represent, each in its own way, a glittering vision of what a city can be.<\/p>\n
Yet as a New Yorker walking around in Paris I am reminded of the immense differences. Manhattan is magnificent, but Paris is beautiful. Beautiful in a way that is hard to truly grasp unless you’ve been there. There is a gracefulness and elegance that pervades everything, from the architecture to the lifestyle to the conversational politesse<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Aesthetics matter to Parisiens<\/i> in a profound and fundamental way that might not quite make sense to New Yorkers — and perhaps to Americans in general. And to be fair, Manhattan possesses compelling qualities that Paris does not. Our city has a drive, a sense of focus, a churning momentum and intensity of action, that one does not see in Paris.<\/p>\n
It’s as though each city represents a different fundamental principle of human value, the way the gods of the ancient Greeks each represented a fundamental principle of human value.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it makes sense to see great cities as a pantheon of gods, as constituting a kind of collective urban mythology. After all, why does anyone move to a place like Manhattan or Paris, if not to worship at its feet?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I love Manhattan, and I love Paris. Both are, of course, legendary in their magnetic power to inspire, to gather together great artists and thinkers. The two cities represent, each in its own way, a glittering vision of what a city can be. Yet as a New Yorker walking around in Paris I am reminded … Continue reading “Pantheon”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6640"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6640"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6643,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6640\/revisions\/6643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}