Try installing new windows and spicing up a joint with IKEA furniture, in a building that’s a thousand years old

The port city of Marseille, is one of the oldest in France, and if you go to the oldest part of town, it seems a bit abandoned. Apparently, the Nazi’s destroyed most of it in the war, because the old school basements and tunnels proved to be too resourceful for the resistance. Even so, it still feels a bit odd, in this modern age of urban renewal, that such a city center would remain broken and somewhat abandoned. If you go to the other parts of town, like on top of the hills or around the beach, it’s a different story altogether, almost like there’s two different cities in one.

Maybe it’s a more natural progression in a county like France, maybe the French, especially in the south, got so much old shit, they just can’t be bothered. All these other cities that have this urban renewal thing going on, like in northern Europe and especially the States, are happy if they can preserve a building that’s a hundred years old, which at least is something you can work with. Try installing new windows and spicing up a joint with IKEA furniture, in a building that’s a thousand years old, probably a pain in the ass. And in a city like Marseille, where visitors are more likely trying to get to the beach than anywhere else, there’s no tourist incentive to rebuild the old town. Which in the end, let’s old Marseille keep it’s abandoned charm intake, cuz it would probably be Starbuck’s and MacDonalds, that would be fixing the windows and throwing IKEA furniture in those old buildings, if things were different.