To some extent, the changes that Flonneau decries—the home-price run-up, the deindustrialization, the Uberization of work, the recent population decline—have happened in all of Paris’ peer cities, whether they pursue anti-car policies or not. What sets Paris apart isn’t really the degree that it has become bourgeois (the rich own more cars and drive them more than anyone else) but the rapid rollout of its anti-car policies. That is because of a structural fluke of municipal boundaries: The city line here was drawn in the 1860s and hasn’t moved since, even as the metropolitan population has grown sixfold. (The land area of New York City, by contrast, is 15 times larger than it was in 1860.) As a result, Paris proper accounts for less than 1 in 5 residents of the metro area—a lower ratio of core-to-suburb population than in London, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Hamburg, Milan, or Rome. Hidalgo’s voters really can ride a bike to get where they need to go.
So the complaints from Paris' detractors are from the adjacent boroughs that had a free pass to use Paris' streets for their personal automobile & those complaints are about things hardly unique to conditions inside to Paris alone?
Maybe, just maybe, those people...Instead of going into Paris for all things economic activity, they are choosing to spend money, travel, & live in their own city and stay closer to home. You would think whatever local 'burb that is retaining the benefit of being adjacent to a major metropolitan area would be delighted at the money & tax base kept local.