Paris’s La Défense business district reels from working-from-home trend • FRANCE 24 English

33 comments

1. 5:17 building small gardens for local deliveries.

2. It's like people hate to work on soulless corporate buildings or something

3. San Francisco is facing the same problem. However, attempts to turn offices into flats are on the way, but at the same time, it costs a lot of money and time.

4. Let me guess, there aren't affordable homes, affordable rent, or affordable student housing in that area?

5. Inventory has been created for the New Officespace.

6. I have been self-employed for almost 30 years. When you have a dream, it is very difficult to give up on it and close a business. But knowing when to quit is very important.

7. The whole idea of a business district is stupid. Why travel to work? There needs to be housing within walking distance

8. France's priority should be decentralization – there are many reasons, and many levels of reasons, why La Defense is obsolete.

9. Migrant housing

10. La Défense could actually be a nice place to live. Located at the gateway to Paris, it has one of the cleanest, most efficient metro lines, there is very little car traffic to speak of, and it benefits from wide open plazas and decent (if insufficient) green spaces. The problem is, its urban model was almost solely dependent on offices from the very beginning. When the offices are vacant, the neighbourhood is empty; so good luck recovering lost business customers in the form of inexistent local residents.

11. It was time to scrap la defense 15 years ago already, people are sick of cold modernist garbage, they want warm and bustling cities again, no esplanade can do that

12. The problem with office buildings, that are purpose built to be office buildings is that they are ALMOST impossible to convert into housing units.

    This is an architectural problem. Buildings built for housing are essentially built around their plumbing system. Office buildings are built around a central core (the elevator tower and air conditioning/ventilation towers) with minimal plumbing required to run the one or two bathrooms per floor, which are usually situated towards the inner core of the building. The floors themselves are largely empty flat surfaces with minimal load bearing capacity.

    Plumbing is very heavy and in apartment blocks bathrooms are usually built in a way so you can open a window and ventilate, to deal with humidity build up. This can be an inner courtyard, ventilation shaft, or the building's exterior.

    Office buildings usually can't bear the weight of plumbing used for housing. It's often cheaper and easier to tear these down than to convert them into housing units.

    For example a hospital building or a factory is usually easier to convert because they are designed to be able to bear the load. It's just not the case with office buildings. Especially sky scrapers, unless they were designed for the purpose from the start.

13. Office buildings are costly and challenging to renovate. Moreover, they often feel unwelcoming and unsafe at night. What we can not acccept in France is that we need "new towns," and La Défense could be an ideal location for this. However, we are still grappling with the stigma associated with the "banlieues."

14. If you are in Paris, go support this lady and her restaurant!!!

15. Allow people to live in the office spaces. What the hell is wrong with people.

16. It is affordable to be the start-up incubator, for those who survive the incubator stage could become new leader in the industry. Think about also providing affordable back office functions (such as accounting, IT, legal) via shared services for these start ups.

17. france has no economy lol

18. I worked in La Defense for 3 years… hated this place!

19. In India people are forced to work everyday in office. What are Indians going to do? Waste fellows.

    Developed countries are really great

20. As a UX designer, I work in La Défense, twice or 3 times a week. As I read in one of the comments, I'll try Koedo at lunchtime soon so I can support the business.

    That said, the places I go for lunch are often packed (Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays). I sometimes sleep at a hotel at la Défense. It's very expensive and after a certain time in the evening, it does feel "unsafe" sometimes unfortunately.

21. There are plenty of business districts in the world similar to La Défense. They often face the same problems as we do. So all we have to do is draw inspiration from what's being done elsewhere that works. It that simple!

22. When your largest company makes over-priced T-shirts and shoes, and your second largest company makes over-priced handbags, and your third largest company makes over-priced make-up, it's little surprise you are struggling to fill up the business district.

23. transform them into apartments

24. The company I work for has its offices at La Defense. They're trying to cancel remote working (solely because the CEO paternalistically said so, there are no tangible business reasons for it given our numbers) but employees don't want to go back working there and renting buildings costs an insane amount of money to companies. The only way to solve the equation is to drastically change the purpose/environment of La Défense, there's no going back to the pre-covid era.

25. Thx for this insightful video, with intelligence not easily found elsewhere

26. La Defense is so badly designed. One of ugliest places in France. You need to make it mixed use residential. Open up the streets below. Well Street has slowly but surely turned into a mixed use neighborhood. Now when you go at night to see people on the streets. La Defense needs to do the same. Convert the office buildings or make new residential housing. Also make the street level walkable and not ugly car only. Paris is very pedestrian friendly but once you cross into La Defense it turns into Houston or some other non-walkable car friendly city in the US.

27. There is nearly no more white during the weekend in the commercial center (les 4 temps) there..

28. We have that in the Silicon Valley: entire towers that were never occupied… and will probably never be.
    But we learned something from Covid, and not commuting on a daily basis is one of them!

29. It can easily reinvent itself. Gear towards the arts, hotels, parks.

30. 0:28 I gave up video here when I see a brainwashed stupid person in a mask indoors on their own.. was she afraid of catching something over the phone with the other person ??

31. with real estate being out of control everywhere, work from home would help decentralize cities and "should" help with housing prices.
    what is the issue here ?
    also how does the price of a square meter cost 6.4k and drop to 88 euro when the price of the meter in paris for housing in >10k

32. Just convert into student studios that are hugely needed in Paris

33. Why not convert the buildings into other uses for housing, education, cultural arts, event spaces [perm and temp], as well as for non-profit businesses, and start ups at a discounted rate for short and long-term use depending on their monthly intake.

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