ABSTRACT
Paris is a "city that works", and while explaining why would take more information than the author could acquire in a year as a resident not involved in any formal study of the city, one must lay out the contrasts and ponder the problem. The author speaks now of the ordinary facilities based on municipal public investment and services—transportation, garbage collection, utilities, parks, and open spaces. He leaves out crime and police services, because it is taken for granted, and understood, that American crime rates are peculiarly high and that the lack of safety in New York and other American cities can scarcely be ascribed to inadequacies of policing as such. Further, as a capital, Paris can call on many more police, of more varied types, than New York can. The relative difference in crime and the sense of safety must be attributed to social factors for which, one assumes, no public administration can be held responsible.
